Fatema
About 20 women in Poland carry it, so meeting one would stick in your memory. A variant of Fatima, Arabic in origin, from a root meaning "one who abstains" or "weaned".
Fatema Pronunciation
Fatema is pronounced fah-TE-mah (/faˈtɛma/).
What Fatema means
Where Fatema comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Fatema comes from Arabic, from the root f-t-m, which points to weaning and holding back. The short meaning handed down with it is "one who abstains, weans." A mother who weans her child ends the feeding. The name grew from that ordinary act, and the sense of restraint stayed attached to it.
The best known bearer is Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, often called al-Zahra. Fatema is one of the spellings the same Arabic name takes when it travels into Latin script. In Poland the form turns up mostly in families with roots in Arabic-speaking countries. A registrar writing it down is recording a name older than a thousand years.
It has never entered the Polish name-day calendar, so no imieniny marks it.
Picture the class register at a school in Warsaw. Fatema sits among the Zuzannas and Amelias, one line that traces back to an Arabic verb for weaning. The name means, quite literally, one who abstains.
How many people are named Fatema
1 in 1127192 women in Poland is named Fatema. 20 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #9898 among female names.
Fatema as a middle name
Fatema is a first name for 20 women in Poland and a middle name for another 2, a 91/9 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 5867th, between Fara (2) and Fatimata (2).
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#5865 Fania2
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#5866 Fara2
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#5867 Fatema2
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#5868 Fatimata2
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#5869 Fatime2