Fortunata
From Latin for "fortunate" or "blessed". Barely more than 50 Polish women carry it and no girl has been given it in years, so most Poles will never meet one.
Fortunata Pronunciation
Fortunata is pronounced for-too-NAH-tah (/fɔrtuˈnata/).
What Fortunata means
Where Fortunata comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Fortunata comes straight from Latin. It grows from fortunatus, and behind that sits fortuna, the Roman word for luck and the goddess who handed it out. The short meaning has barely drifted from the source: fortunate, blessed, lucky. The cross-gender form is Fortunat.
Italy kept the name close to home, and it carried a real woman with it. Saint Fortunata of Caesarea was an early Christian martyr, killed in 303 under Diocletian and remembered on 14 October. Her relics were carried to Naples in the eighth century.
In a Polish class register the name reads plainly. Its Latin is legible on sight. A teacher meeting Fortunata for the first time can guess the sense before any lesson, because fortuna still means luck in Italian and Spanish alike. The name promises nothing about a life. It only says fortunate, and points back to Fortunat.
When Fortunata celebrates name day
Fortunata appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar, 1 of them as a main name, the first on 14 October.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Fortunata
1 in 442036 women in Poland is named Fortunata. 51 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5267 among female names.
Fortunata as a middle name
Fortunata is a first name for 51 women in Poland and a middle name for another 64, a 44/56 split, almost evenly. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 851st, between Filipa (64) and Gertrud (64).
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#849 Alberta64
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#850 Filipa64
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#851 Fortunata64
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#852 Gertrud64
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#853 Henrietta64