Tereza
From Greek, the name of the summer harvest and the one who gathers it in. Most Poles have never met a Tereza, but it's given a little more often each year, and always to girls.
Tereza Pronunciation
Tereza is pronounced te-RE-zah (/tɛˈrɛza/).
What Tereza means
Where Tereza comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The Greek word theros, meaning summer or the summer harvest, sits behind Tereza. From it comes the plain sense of the name: a harvester, a woman who brings in the crop. In Poland the fuller written form is Teresa, and ordinary speech wears it down to Tereska, or reaches sideways for Renia.
The best-known bearer belongs to Spain. Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century Carmelite reformer and writer, carried the name across Catholic Europe long before it settled into Polish parish registers. Her fame helped fix the Polish name-day, and a Teresa still marks her imieniny on the first of October.
The name keeps its work close.
A child listed as Tereza in a class register, and called Tereska by everyone in the room, is holding onto an old word for late summer and the gathering that ends it. The meaning has not drifted far. Under the variant Teresa and the diminutives Tereska and Renia, the root still points to one thing: the harvester.
How many people are named Tereza
1 in 39275 women in Poland is named Tereza. 574 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #1242 among female names.
Tereza's popularity over time
5 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #963 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2018.
Where Tereza is most popular
Tereza is most popular in Greater Poland, 904% above the national average (2 girls born 2019–2025).
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Greater Poland2 girls born+904%
Tereza as a middle name
Tereza is a first name for 574 women in Poland and a middle name for another 25, a 96/4 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1437th, between Temitope (25) and Thị (25).
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#1435 Siobhan25
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#1436 Temitope25
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#1437 Tereza25
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#1438 Thị25
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#1439 Yasemin25