Żegota
Built from the old Slavic verb żec, to burn, so the name means one thing: fire. It stays rare enough that most Poles have never met one, and not a single newborn got it last year.
Żegota Pronunciation
Żegota is pronounced zhe-GO-tah (/ʐɛˈgɔta/).
What Żegota means
Where Żegota comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Żegota is a Slavic name built from the old verb "żec", to burn, to set alight. The short meaning is plain: fire. That root gives the name a heat few Polish names carry so directly.
Old Polish usage treated Żegota as a native match for Ignacy, because the Latin "ignis" also means fire. The two names met on that idea. So a boy written down as Ignacy might answer to Żegota at home, and no one found the swap odd.
The name has a literary anchor. In Adam Mickiewicz's "Dziady", part III, Żegota is one of the imprisoned young conspirators, modelled on the poet's friend Ignacy Domeyko. He keeps the other prisoners steady and tells them a fable about a grain that will not stay buried.
One more fact fixes it. During the war, the codename "Żegota" belonged to the Council to Aid Jews. Open a school class register today and you will rarely find the name. The meaning holds all the same: to burn.
How many people are named Żegota
1 in 3757306 women in Poland is named Żegota. 6 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #24742 among female names.
Żegota as a middle name
Żegota is a first name for 6 women in Poland and a middle name for another 13, a 32/68 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2722nd, between Zvikomborero (13) and Achille (12).
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#2720 Ziv13
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#2721 Zvikomborero13
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#2722 Żegota13
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#2723 Achille12
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#2724 Adebola12