Odarka
A Ukrainian name meaning "gift". Only about 60 women in Poland carry it, and the records show no girls given it since 2000: most Poles have never met an Odarka.
Odarka Pronunciation
Odarka is pronounced o-DAHR-kah (/ɔˈdarka/).
What Odarka means
Where Odarka comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Odarka comes to Polish ears from Ukrainian, where it has long been read as a name about a gift, "dar" in Polish, one who is "obdarowana." The literal origin is filed simply as other, so the sense of "gift" is best told as a meaning that settled on the name rather than a root dug from one word. In Ukrainian villages it stood as a full given name, not a nickname.
Anyone who knows Ukrainian opera knows an Odarka. In "Zaporozhets za Dunayem," the 1863 work by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, Odarka is the sharp-tongued wife of the Cossack Ivan Karas. That role fixed the name in the popular memory of a whole region.
The name travels light. It has no diminutives or variants listed beside it here, so Odarka carries itself alone. On a Polish urząd form it reads as clearly foreign, Ukrainian in every register, and the meaning stays close to the surface: dar, obdarowana, a gift.
How many people are named Odarka
1 in 375731 women in Poland is named Odarka. 60 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #4772 among female names.