Qais

Qais comes from Arabic, and its short meaning holds two ideas at once: firm, and measure. A name about steadiness suits a word that also means to gauge or weigh a thing. The origin here sits outside the Slavic and Latin families that fill most Polish registers, so Qais reads as a guest with a long history of its own.

That history has a famous face. Qais ibn al-Mulawwah was a poet of 7th-century Arabia who loved a woman named Layla. His devotion undid him, and people began calling him Majnun, "the madman." The tale of Layla and Majnun spread across Persian and later European verse, so the name Qais sits at the root of one of the oldest love stories still retold.

On a Polish szkolny register the spelling stands out. There is no diminutive, no Polish variant to soften it.

A child named Qais carries a word that meant firmness long before it meant anything else. The later fame belongs to the poet. The meaning, firm and measured, came first.