Ignacy
A boy's name climbing back into wider use: more newborns carried it last year than in years past, enough that it rings familiar again. Slavic at root, with fire in the meaning, plain and literal: fiery.
Ignacy Pronunciation
Ignacy is pronounced eeg-NAH-tsih (/igˈnat͡sɨ/).
What Ignacy means
Where Ignacy comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The name Ignacy comes with a meaning already attached: fiery, or in Polish ognisty and płomienny. The Latin word for fire, ignis, sits right beside it, close enough that the fire sense has held. Strip the name down and you reach Ignac, the plainer variant a boy answers to.
Poland has handed the name to men who worked with flame and with words. Ignacy Łukasiewicz built the first kerosene lamp and used it to light a street in Lwów in the 1850s. Ignacy Krasicki, bishop and fabulist, wrote the sharp short fables that Polish schoolchildren still read today. Fire twice over, once in the lamp glass and once in the cut of a verse.
His imieniny falls on 31 July.
On a class register the full Ignacy stands formal in ink, while the same boy turns his head for Ignac.
When Ignacy celebrates name day
Ignacy appears 9 times in the Polish name day calendar, 2 of them as a main name, the first on 11 May.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Ignacy
1 in 437 men in Poland is named Ignacy. 48,817 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #192 among male names.
Ignacy's popularity over time
4,222 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #8 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2000.
Where Ignacy is most popular
Ignacy is most popular in Greater Poland, 15% above the national average (3,276 boys born 2019–2025), followed by Pomeranian (+12%) and Masovian (+11%). It is least common in Opole and Silesian, 25% and 22% below average respectively.
-
Greater Poland3,276 boys born+15%
-
Pomeranian2,187 boys born+12%
-
Masovian5,185 boys born+11%
-
Kuyavian-Pomeranian1,571 boys born+9%
-
Lublin1,475 boys born+9%
-
Subcarpathian1,687 boys born+6%
-
Warmian-Masurian1,005 boys born+6%
-
West Pomeranian1,124 boys born+1%
-
Lubusz656 boys born0%
-
Świętokrzyskie722 boys born−1%
-
Łódź1,647 boys born−2%
-
Lower Silesian1,927 boys born−7%
-
Podlaskie774 boys born−11%
-
Lesser Poland2,518 boys born−16%
-
Silesian2,342 boys born−22%
-
Opole457 boys born−25%
Ignacy as a middle name
Ignacy is a first name for 48,817 men in Poland and a middle name for another 23,016, a 68/32 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 85th, between Zenon (23,662) and Julian (22,467).
-
#83 Hubert23,737
-
#84 Zenon23,662
-
#85 Ignacy23,016
-
#86 Julian22,467
-
#87 Radosław22,343