Odyseusz

Odyseusz is the Polish form of the Greek Odysseus. The short meaning reads flat and cold: hated, angry. Ancient Greeks tied the name to the verb odyssomai, to be angry at, to bear a grudge. So the label in the record, znienawidzony, wywołujący gniew, sits close to the oldest sense.

Homer gives the naming scene himself. In the Odyssey, book 19, the grandfather Autolykos arrives and says he has come full of anger toward many people. He tells the parents to call the boy Odysseus for that reason. The hero's name marks him as the object of wrath, and later as the man who deals it back to the suitors.

In Poland the name is rare. You are more likely to meet it in a translation of Homer than in a school register. A child called Odyseusz would spend a life spelling it at the urząd. The form stays Greek in Polish mouths, unbent by diminutive or local variant. What it hands the bearer is old and unsoftened: the sense of one who angers and is hated.