Tariel
The name of a knight from a Georgian epic, given to Shota Rustaveli's hero in his panther's skin. In Poland it stays rare: most Poles have never met a Tariel, and no newborn took it last year.
Tariel Pronunciation
Tariel is pronounced TAHR-yel (/ˈtarjɛl/).
What Tariel means
Where Tariel comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Tariel belongs to the hero of a Georgian epic. Writing around the twelfth century, Shota Rustaveli gave the name to the knight at the centre of Vepkhistqaosani, known in English as The Knight in the Panther's Skin. That Tariel loses the woman he loves, retreats to a cave, and wears a panther's skin through his mourning. Readers have long traced the name to a Persian root touching on darkness, which sits close to the English gloss "dark hero" and to the grieving knight who earned it.
The Polish sense runs elsewhere. Here the name is read as "czysty duch," a pure spirit, a reading fixed to it later rather than drawn from the poem. One set of letters, two meanings.
In Poland the name stays rare. A child called Tariel on a school register stands a little apart, since the name brings no Polish name-day and no home-grown diminutive. What it brings instead is the story behind it: an eight-century-old poem and a knight in a panther's skin.
How many people are named Tariel
1 in 86773 men in Poland is named Tariel. 246 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1967 among male names.