Yves
Just about 112 men in Poland carry it, so most people here have never met one. The root is Celtic, meaning "yew," the tree.
Yves Pronunciation
What Yves means
Where Yves comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Yves comes to French from an old element for the yew tree, a word with Celtic and Germanic roots that names the dark evergreen once planted in churchyards across Brittany. The short meaning is plain: yew. That single tree stands behind the name, and behind the name stands a saint.
The saint is Yves of Kermartin, a Breton lawyer and priest of the thirteenth century who became the patron of jurists. His feast falls on 19 May, and Brittany still keeps it. The reputation for fairness and for defending the poor attached itself to the name later, through the man rather than through the wood.
In the twentieth century the name traveled far past Brittany. Yves Saint Laurent put it on labels in every city. Yves Montand sang it into French cinema.
On a Polish class register the spelling can trip a teacher, since Yves keeps its French shape and its silent letters. It has no Polish diminutive and no local variant. What it keeps is the yew.
How many people are named Yves
1 in 190591 men in Poland is named Yves. 112 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3228 among male names.
Yves as a middle name
Yves is a first name for 112 men in Poland and a middle name for another 109, a 51/49 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 677th, between Kaspian (109) and Adel (108).
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#675 Federico109
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#676 Kaspian109
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#677 Yves109
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#678 Adel108
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#679 Juhani108