Cyril
Fewer than a hundred people in Poland carry it, and no child got it last year: meeting one would stick in your memory. The root is Greek, with the sense of "lord" or "master".
Cyril Pronunciation
Cyril is pronounced TSIH-reel (/ˈt͡sɨril/).
What Cyril means
Where Cyril comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The name Cyril comes from Greek, from `Kyrillos`, built on `kyrios`, meaning lord or master. That root gives the short sense carried into Polish too: pański, belonging to the lord. English-speaking families kept the name closest, which is why Cyril reads as an English form today, with the Polish spelling Cyryl standing beside it.
The most documented bearer is Saint Cyril, who with his brother Methodius carried a written alphabet to the Slavs in the ninth century. The Cyrillic script takes its name from him. So a name meaning master became attached to a man remembered for teaching.
The variant Cyryl is the one a Polish teacher reads from a class register. Both forms trace back to the same Greek word for lord.
A boy named Cyril or Cyryl carries a short, hard opening sound and a meaning that points upward, toward mastery rather than modesty. The name-day association keeps the saint close. The origin stays plain: Greek kyrios, lord.
How many people are named Cyril
1 in 232024 men in Poland is named Cyril. 96 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3536 among male names.
Cyril as a middle name
Cyril is a first name for 96 men in Poland and a middle name for another 40, a 71/29 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1251st, between Boguslaw (40) and Dragomir (40).
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#1249 Bjorn40
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#1250 Boguslaw40
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#1251 Cyril40
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#1252 Dragomir40
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#1253 Gotard40