Matteo

Matteo comes from the Latin Matthaeus, a rendering of the Greek Matthaios that goes back to the Hebrew Mattityahu. That old Hebrew form joins a word for gift with a name of God. So the meaning stays simple: gift of God, or in Polish, dar boga.

The name reached Europe through the Gospels. Matthew the apostle, the tax collector who left his post to follow, gave it a fixed spot in the Christian calendar, and his feast falls on 21 September. Italy took the name up and never let go. It ranks among the most common men's names in the country, given to tens of thousands of Italians. Matteo is thoroughly Italian now.

On a Polish class register, Matteo reads as the foreign cousin of Mateusz, the two sharing one Latin root and one meaning. A Polish Matteo and a Polish Mateusz would celebrate the same imieniny. What the child answers to is a gift of God.