Dmytro

Dmytro is the Ukrainian form of an old name that reaches back to Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and harvest. The short meaning, devoted to Demeter, records that link plainly. The name entered Slavic use through the eastern Church, carried by Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki, a soldier and martyr whose feast the calendar keeps in autumn.

For a long time the name belonged to Ukraine in an everyday way. Dmytro Bortniansky, born in Hlukhiv in 1751, wrote sacred choral music sung across the Orthodox world. Dmytro Yavornytsky spent his life documenting the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Both wore the name with no diminutive attached to it. It travels alone.

On a Polish class register the entry reads Dmytro, usually marking a family with Ukrainian roots. The Polish calendar has its own Dymitr, an imieniny kept on 26 October, though Dmytro holds to the eastern spelling. The sense that stays with it is devoted to Demeter, goddess of the ripened field.