Liana

Liana comes from Latin, and its meaning is plain. It names a vine, a climbing plant, the kind that grips a trunk and hauls itself toward the light. The botanical word reached scientific Latin through the French liane, which ties back to ligare, the verb for binding. That root fits the plant. A liana fastens onto whatever it can reach.

Botanists still use liana for the woody vines of tropical forests, the ones that loop from one crown to the next. So the name holds a picture rather than a virtue. Where Katarzyna gained its sense of "pure" only later, Liana points straight at a living green thing that reaches.

On a Polish class register, Liana sits between older, saintly names, and in Polish the word behind it is pnącze, a vine.