Ilarion
Most Poles have never met an Ilarion: only about 130 carry it, all of them men. A few boys are getting it again now, a quiet revival for a name Greek at root, meaning "cheerful".
Ilarion Pronunciation
Ilarion is pronounced ee-LAHR-yon (/iˈlarjɔn/).
What Ilarion means
Where Ilarion comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Ilarion comes from the Greek name Hilarion, built on hilaros, meaning cheerful or glad. The short sense fits the root closely: radosny, pogodny, a person of good cheer. That match was there from the beginning.
The name sits deep in Ukrainian history. Ilarion of Kyiv became the first metropolitan of Kyivan birth in 1051, appointed under Yaroslav the Wise. He wrote the Sermon on Law and Grace, among the earliest surviving works of East Slavic literature. Almost nine hundred years later the scholar and churchman Ivan Ohiienko took the monastic name Ilarion and gave Ukrainian readers a full translation of the Bible.
In Poland the name is rare. A boy named Ilarion on a school register is the only one in the class. He answers to a Greek word for gladness and to a line of Ukrainian churchmen who carried it. No standard Polish diminutive has settled on it, so the full form does the work. Ilarion means cheerful, and it has meant that since Hilarion.
How many people are named Ilarion
1 in 168080 men in Poland is named Ilarion. 127 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2959 among male names.
Ilarion's popularity over time
2 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1606 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2024.