Leander
Fewer than three dozen people in Poland carry Leander, so meeting one sticks with you. The name comes from Greek and reads as "lion-man", a man as brave as a lion.
Leander Pronunciation
Leander is pronounced le-AHN-der (/lɛˈandɛr/).
What Leander means
Where Leander comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Leander comes from the Greek Leandros, joining leon, "lion," with andros, "man." The literal build is lion-man, and Polish gives the sense as mężny jak lew, brave as a lion.
The name travelled far from Greece and settled comfortably in German-speaking lands, where it kept its strongest hold. Part of that is literary. Friedrich Schiller gave it a German audience in his 1801 ballad Hero und Leander, retelling the old story of the youth who swam the Hellespont each night to reach the woman he loved. The Greek poet Musaeus had written the same legend centuries before. Schiller made it German.
Leander stays whole. It has no diminutives, no variants, no cross-gender twin. A boy on a Polish class register carries it as one unbroken word.
The lion sits inside it. Say the name and you say leon, the Greek lion that gave Leander its first syllable and its meaning, mężny jak lew.
When Leander celebrates name day
Leander appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar, never as a main name. The first of these dates is 27 January.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Leander
1 in 688587 men in Poland is named Leander. 31 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #7320 among male names.
Leander's popularity over time
2 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1662 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2024.
Leander as a middle name
Leander is a first name for 31 men in Poland and a middle name for another 23, a 57/43 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1809th, between Kristopher (23) and Ludovic (23).
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#1807 Kerim23
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#1808 Kristopher23
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#1809 Leander23
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#1810 Ludovic23
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#1811 Maksim23