Emanuel

The name Emanuel comes from Hebrew, from the phrase immanu el, which translates to "God is with us." It appears in the Book of Isaiah as a sign given to a king, a promise folded into one word rather than a plain label.

Because of that origin, the name reads almost as a short sentence. Its Polish meaning, bóg z nami, keeps those same three words alive in another language.

Emanuel travels well. In Italian it softens to Emanuele, and the feminine form Emanuela gives the name to daughters as well as sons. A Polish class register might hold an Emanuel next to an Emanuela, both tracing back to the same Hebrew root.

One documented bearer is Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and theologian whose writings shaped a good deal of later mystical thought. Centuries after him, the name still says what it said at the start: God is with us.