Orestes
Greek at root, meaning "of the mountains". Just 31 men in Poland carry it, and almost no boys get it now, so most Poles will never meet one.
Orestes Pronunciation
Orestes is pronounced o-RES-tes (/ɔˈrɛstɛs/).
What Orestes means
Where Orestes comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Orestes comes from Greek, built on oros, the word for mountain. The short meaning stays close to that root: of the mountains, a dweller in the high country. Polish renders it as góral, mieszkaniec gór.
The oldest famous bearer belongs to Greek tragedy. Orestes is the son of Agamemnon in Aeschylus's Oresteia, the man who kills his mother to avenge his father and is then chased by the Furies. His story holds no mountains at all. The name kept its plain root anyway.
In a Polish class register, one Orestes would stand out among the Piotrs and Kacpers. It reads foreign. A teacher might pause on the name during roll call. What the child answers to still means what it meant in Greek: a person of the mountains.
When Orestes celebrates name day
Orestes appears 3 times in the Polish name day calendar, never as a main name. The first of these dates is 9 November.
Rarer dates. Only the most complete calendars add this name on these days. Most skip them, so hardly anyone celebrates then.
How many people are named Orestes
1 in 688587 men in Poland is named Orestes. 31 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #7357 among male names.
Orestes's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Orestes as a middle name
Orestes is a first name for 31 men in Poland and a middle name for another 22, a 58/42 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1878th, between Odyseusz (22) and Pekka (22).
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#1876 Odon22
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#1877 Odyseusz22
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#1878 Orestes22
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#1879 Pekka22
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#1880 Petros22