Dafne
Fewer than sixty Polish women carry this name, so most Poles will go a lifetime without meeting one. It comes from Greek and means "laurel", the leaf once braided into victory wreaths.
Dafne Pronunciation
Dafne is pronounced DAHF-ne (/ˈdafnɛ/).
What Dafne means
Where Dafne comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Dafne comes from Greek. The word daphne meant laurel, the tree that crowned poets and victors in the ancient world. Behind the name sits the story of a nymph who fled the god Apollo and turned into a laurel to escape him. So the name and the plant grew from one root.
Italy and Spain kept the form close. In Rome, Bernini carved the moment of the change into marble, and the laurel leaves sprout from the nymph's fingers in stone. Richard Strauss later wrote a whole opera called Daphne, first staged in Dresden in 1938. In Italian and Spanish the spelling Dafne stays plain, without the silent letters English adds.
In a Polish class register, Dafne reads as something Mediterranean, rare among the Zuzannas and Julias. The Polish word for laurel is wawrzyn, the same leaf that flavours a pot and once crowned a champion. Dafne carries that leaf under a Greek name.
How many people are named Dafne
1 in 417478 women in Poland is named Dafne. 54 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5062 among female names.
Dafne's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 girls were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Dafne as a middle name
Dafne is a first name for 54 women in Poland and a middle name for another 22, a 71/29 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1518th, between Concepcion (22) and Desiree (22).
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#1516 Carole22
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#1517 Concepcion22
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#1518 Dafne22
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#1519 Desiree22
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#1520 Dvora22