Idris

Idris begins in Celtic ground. In Wales the name belonged to a legendary giant and astronomer, and his seat survives as Cadair Idris, a real mountain in Gwynedd whose name means the chair of Idris. That older Welsh name held a sense closer to lord than to scholar.

The meaning Polish parents meet today, interpreter and teacher, arrives from another direction. In Arabic tradition Idris is a prophet tied to writing and learning, and this is where the reading tłumacz took hold. The sense of a teacher was attached to the name later, through that Arabic layer rather than the Welsh giant.

So one name holds two homelands. A boy called Idris in a Polish class register sits between a Welsh mountain and an Arabic prophet of the pen.

The actor Idris Elba has made the name familiar far past either source. Short, with no diminutive to soften it, Idris still means interpreter, teacher.