Rusłan
A Slavic name meaning "lion". In Poland it stays rare: around 150 men carry it, and newborn boys with the name barely turn up now.
Rusłan Pronunciation
Rusłan is pronounced ROOS-wahn (/ˈruswan/).
What Rusłan means
Where Rusłan comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Rusłan grew out of Slavic naming and settled deep in Russian and Ukrainian speech. In Polish its short meaning is "lew", the lion. That lion sense ties the name to the old Turkic word "arslan", meaning lion, which passed into Slavic use and stayed there. So the animal came first, and the name kept its claw.
Alexander Pushkin handed the name its most famous bearer. In his 1820 poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the hero Ruslan rides after his stolen bride, past a giant severed head and a treacherous wizard. Mikhail Glinka reworked the tale into an opera in 1842, and the overture is played to this day.
The cross-gender form is Rusłana. Ukraine's Ruslana Lyzhychko carried it to a Eurovision win in 2004 with "Wild Dances". A boy named Rusłan on a class register in Poland stands beside a name that means lion.
How many people are named Rusłan
1 in 143263 men in Poland is named Rusłan. 149 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2662 among male names.
Rusłan's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been climbing since 2025.