Leo

Leo comes straight from the Latin word for lion. Roman writers used leo for the animal, and the Latin itself borrowed from the Greek leon, so the cognate sits one language over. The Polish for lion is lew, which puts the same beast behind the name in two tongues.

The lion carried the name far. More than a dozen popes have used it, from Leo the Great in the fifth century onward, which kept it in church calendars and, later, on Polish name-day lists.

In Poland the fuller form Leon has long stood beside it, and a boy written as Leo in a school register might be Leon on his birth certificate. The two share one root and one short meaning. Whatever else attaches to it, the name still says lion, lew, leo.