Simona

Simona reaches back to Hebrew, to the old name Shim'on, the same source that gave Poland its Szymon. The root means listening. Polish glosses it as "bóg wysłuchał," God has heard, the sense of a child received as an answer to prayer.

The masculine forms came first and are the better documented. Szymon and its older shape Symeon run through the Gospels, and from that line the feminine Simona was formed. She is not native to Polish in the way Szymon is. The name arrived later by way of Italian and other neighbors, where Simona has long been common.

On a name-day list at the urząd, Simona and Szymon can sit close together, two forms of one Hebrew word. Whatever else the name suggests, it keeps its first meaning near the surface: to hear, to be heard.