Milla

Milla comes to Polish from Latin, arriving as a short form rather than a name coined whole. It grew out of longer Latin names, the kind ending in -milla, and shed that ending until only the bright first part remained. The Latin origin is the fixed point, the thing that holds when everything softer is stripped away.

The sense of "dear" and "gracious" was attached to the name later, once Polish ears set it beside the adjective miła, kochana. That reading feels natural, since the variant mila sits close to the Polish word for a beloved person. It works as a welcome given to the name.

In a Polish class register Milla lands quickly, two syllables and done. Short, but never slight. The doubled l marks it apart from the plainer variant mila, which trims one letter and keeps the same meaning of dear.