Gleb

Gleb comes to us from the Slavic world, and it is bound tightly to Russia. Among the earliest saints venerated in Kievan Rus were two brothers, Boris and Gleb, killed in 1015 and honored as passion-bearers. From them the name moved out through the Orthodox calendar.

The meaning fixed to Gleb is "heir of God." Some scholars trace the form back to Old Norse Guðleifr, which carries that same sense of one left as God's heir. Whatever the route, the name settled into Russian speech and stayed there.

A Polish ear hears something else. Gleb sits close to gleba, the word for soil, so it picks up an association with earth and land. That sense was attached later. It never was the origin. On a class register in Poland, Gleb still reads as a visitor from the east, short and firm, an heir of God by its oldest meaning.