Nadav

Nadav comes from Hebrew, from the root n-d-v, which speaks of giving freely and of a willing, open hand. The meaning carried into Polish reads generous and noble, hojny, dar od boga. In the Hebrew Bible, Nadav, rendered Nadab, is the eldest son of Aaron, and a later Nadab ruled as a king of Israel. The name sits close to nadiv, a word for a generous or noble person, and to nedava, a freewill offering brought without compulsion.

The Jewish association stays strong. Nadav has no Polish diminutive of its own and no cross-gender variant, so it appears on a school class register plainly, three syllables read straight off the page.

The meaning here is not decorative. Giving of one's own free will is what the Hebrew root actually says, so the sense of the generous, the hojny, belongs to the origin rather than to a gloss added afterward. Nadav means, quite literally, one who gives.