Hipolit

Hipolit comes from Greek, built from hippos, meaning horse, and a verb meaning to loose or set free. Read plainly, it means freer of horses. The horse sits right inside the origin, not added later.

In myth the name belonged to a son of Theseus, a young hunter devoted to the goddess Artemis. It also names an early Christian writer of Rome who was later venerated as a martyr, and the Polish calendar keeps his imieniny on the thirteenth of August. On that date a boy named Hipolit might hear his name read out at an urząd counter or copied into a school class register.

The name has a cross-gender partner, Hipolita, worn by the Amazon queen of Greek legend. Both forms hold the same animal. Old and short, Hipolit still points back to horses set free.