Jagna

Jagna began as a homegrown Polish form of Agnieszka, itself the Slavic reshaping of Agnes. The older name reaches back to Greek hagne, meaning chaste, and to Latin agnus, the lamb, so the sense of "pure" was fastened to it long before Polish speakers softened the sound. What Poland added was the shape: the g pulled forward, the Latin edges filed off, until Agnieszka could shed most of itself and answer to Jaga, Jagienka, or Jagna.

That is why the meaning and the origin sit a little apart. The Slavic ear made the word; the idea of purity arrived with Agnes.

The name's most famous bearer is not pure at all. In Reymont's Chłopi, the novel that won him the 1924 Nobel Prize, Jagna Paczesiówna is christened Agnieszka, the loveliest girl in Lipce, and the village turns on her. Reymont knew exactly what he was doing when he let a name meaning chaste rest on her.

Say it in a classroom register and it still runs the full length: Agnieszka on the roll, Jagna to her friends. The diminutives do the everyday work. Aga, Jaga, Jagienka, and behind all of them the plain meaning, czysta, nieskalana.