Lyudmila
Around 400 women in Poland carry it, and no girls have been given it in years: a name you'd meet once and remember. Slavic at root, it means "favour of the people".
Lyudmila Pronunciation
Lyudmila is pronounced lih-ood-MEE-lah (/lɨudˈmila/).
What Lyudmila means
Where Lyudmila comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Lyudmila grows from Slavic roots, joining lyud, meaning "the people," to a second part that means dear or favourable. Put together, the name reads as favour of the people. In Polish it appears as the variant Ludmiła. The roots are plain.
The name belongs strongly to Russian tradition, where Lyudmila has been common for generations. Its oldest famous bearer comes from Bohemia. Saint Ludmila, a duchess and Christian martyr, helped raise her grandson, later known as Saint Wenceslas. She was killed around 921 and is honoured as a patron of Bohemia.
Alexander Pushkin gave the name fresh life in his poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, finished in 1820, where Lyudmila is the stolen bride whom Ruslan travels to rescue. Later audiences met her again in Glinka's opera of the same title. Behind a modern Ludmiła stands that old sense: dear to the people.
How many people are named Lyudmila
1 in 55254 women in Poland is named Lyudmila. 408 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1466 among female names.