Marzanna
Named for a Slavic goddess of winter, death, and renewal. Around 12,000 Polish women carry it today, but almost no newborns receive it now, so meeting one sticks in the memory.
Marzanna Pronunciation
Marzanna is pronounced mah-ZHAHN-nah (/maˈʐanna/).
What Marzanna means
Where Marzanna comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Marzanna is Slavic in origin, and she was a goddess before she was a name on any register. In old belief she governed winter and the end of things, which is how death became the meaning fixed to her. Polish holds more than that: śmierć, zima i odrodzenie, death and winter and the rebirth that follows after.
That last part still happens every spring. On the first day of spring, children across Poland build a straw Marzanna and drown her in a river to send winter off. The effigy is old. The custom is documented and alive.
The softer variant is Marzena, and Marzenka is the diminutive a child answers to. Marzena is sometimes tied by ear to marzenie, the Polish word for a dream, though that link came later and sits beside the older goddess rather than replacing her. A girl called Marzanna answers to a name that once meant the drowning of winter itself.
When Marzanna celebrates name day
Marzanna appears 2 times in the Polish name day calendar, 2 of them as a main name, the first on 21 March.
The days Polish calendars list this name on. By custom you celebrate one of them, usually the first after your birthday.
How many people are named Marzanna
1 in 1837 women in Poland is named Marzanna. 12,269 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #338 among female names.
Marzanna as a middle name
Marzanna is a first name for 12,269 women in Poland and a middle name for another 3,124, an 80/20 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 168th, between Otylia (3,219) and Sonia (3,110).
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#166 Marie3,239
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#167 Otylia3,219
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#168 Marzanna3,124
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#169 Sonia3,110
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#170 Ryszarda3,030