Iraida
Fewer than 200 Polish women carry it, and most people here have never met one. The root is Greek, tied to the goddess Hera: "belonging to Hera".
Iraida Pronunciation
Iraida is pronounced ee-rah-EE-dah (/iraˈida/).
What Iraida means
Where Iraida comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Iraida comes from the Greek Ἡραΐς, Herais, built on the name of Hera, the queen of the Greek gods. The short meaning stays close to that root: of Hera, belonging to Hera. Polish renders it as bohaterka, a heroine, which turns a goddess into a woman who acts.
The name found two homes far from Greece. It settled into Russian as Iraida and into Spanish across the wider Hispanic world. A documented bearer stands behind it: Saint Herais, a martyr at Antinoöpolis in Egypt around 303, under Diocletian. Orthodox calendars remember her on September 23. Church records list her under several spellings, Rais and Irais among them.
Read on a school register in Kraków, Iraida still points back to Hera. Its Polish gloss remains bohaterka.
How many people are named Iraida
1 in 147345 women in Poland is named Iraida. 153 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2621 among female names.