Leticia

Leticia comes from the Latin laetitia, a word that means joy or gladness. Roman writers used it plainly, and it appears on imperial coins as Laetitia, a small personification of public gladness holding a wreath. The name reached Spanish through Latin and settled there as Leticia, which is why the Spanish-speaking world claims it most warmly.

The short meaning has barely drifted. Joy is what the word said in Rome, and joy is what it says now. That is unusual for a name this old.

In a Polish class register, Leticia sits among the Zuzannas and Julias, foreign in shape yet easy to say. It keeps its Latin bones. No Polish diminutive has fixed itself to it, so it tends to stay whole: Leticia on the form at the urząd, and Leticia in the register, a Latin word for gladness worn as a name.