Matthew

Matthew begins in Hebrew, in the name Mattityahu, which joins a word for gift to a name of God. The meaning that reached English is "gift of god," and in Polish that is "dar boga." The name passed through Greek and Latin before it settled into the spelling used today.

Its best documented bearer is Matthew the Evangelist, the tax collector credited with the first Gospel. His feast falls on the 21st of September, and Polish calendars still mark that day for Mateusz, the close cousin of the English form. A boy named for the apostle inherits a very old claim about what a name can promise.

The English spelling gives the name a particular cast. It is short. On a Polish class register it sits a little apart from Mateusz and Maciej, forms grown from the same Hebrew root. That small difference is easy to notice.

The sense has not drifted far. Matthew still says what Mattityahu said: a gift of god.