Haci
A Turkish name for a man who has made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Only about 65 men in Poland carry it, and no boy has been given it this century. Most Poles have never met one.
Haci Pronunciation
Haci is pronounced KHAH-chee (/ˈxat͡ɕi/).
What Haci means
Where Haci comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Haci comes from Turkish, where Hacı marks a person who has completed the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The word goes back to Arabic ḥājj, the pilgrim. In Polish the sense is pielgrzym. That is the whole of it: someone who reached a holy place and came home.
In Ottoman and later Turkish use, Hacı began as an honorific before it settled into a given name. A man returned from the road and wore the title in front of his name, and families held onto it. The meaning stays plain. Here the short sense sits right on top of the origin, so there is no folk gloss to pull apart.
Haci carries no recorded diminutive and no variant. On a Polish class register the name would stand alone, with no pet form beside it. What the reader gets is the root and its short meaning together: pilgrim, pielgrzym.
How many people are named Haci
1 in 328403 men in Poland is named Haci. 65 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4516 among male names.
Haci as a middle name
Haci is a first name for 65 men in Poland and a middle name for another 4, a 94/6 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 5427th, between Haakon (4) and Hafeez (4).
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#5425 Gökay4
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#5426 Haakon4
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#5427 Haci4
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#5428 Hafeez4
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#5429 Hafiz4