Klim
From Greek and meaning gentle or merciful, it reaches Polish by way of Russian. Still rare enough that most Poles have never met one, and given only to boys, but climbing: a few newborns carry it now where none did before.
Klim Pronunciation
Klim is pronounced KLEEM (/klim/).
What Klim means
Where Klim comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Klim starts in Greek, in the name Klēmēs, the source of Kliment and of the Western Clement. Under it sits a single idea: mercy, the gentleness a Pole would call łagodny. In Latin the same word was clemens, said of a man slow to anger.
Russian speakers wore the long form down to Klim. Maxim Gorky gave it to the hero of his last novel, The Life of Klim Samgin, which he worked on from 1925 until his death in 1936 and never finished. The Soviet marshal Kliment Voroshilov answered to Klim as well. The short form keeps the meaning of the long one, merciful and mild.
In a Polish class register Klim looks spare beside a Kacper or a Kamil. Two hard consonants, one open vowel. Read it off the list once and it is done.
The name promises no grand story. It gives back łagodny, and the old Greek root that means to show mercy.
How many people are named Klim
1 in 164201 men in Poland is named Klim. 130 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2925 among male names.
Klim's popularity over time
2 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1647 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2024.