Riccardo

Riccardo is the Italian form of a name that settled into Latin in medieval Europe, copied by scribes into charters and church registers. The meaning handed down with it is strong ruler, brave ruler, courage and command bound together in one word.

In Poland the name still reads as unmistakably Italian, arriving with the sound of the opera house and the football pitch. Riccardo Muti, the conductor born in Naples in 1941, carried it to concert halls around the world, while the physicist Riccardo Giacconi shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for opening the sky to X-ray astronomy.

The double c gives it away. On a Polish class register that spelling catches a teacher's eye during the roll call, marking the boy as someone whose name crossed a border. The Polish gloss stays plain: silny władca, a strong ruler.