Vlas

Vlas reaches Polish ears as a Russian name. It is the eastern Slavic form of Blaise, the saint's name that traveled from the Latin world into Orthodox use. Behind Blaise stands the Latin word `blaesus`, meaning lisping or stammering. That is the sense carried in the short meaning of Vlas: `sepleniący`, one who lisps.

In Russian folk tradition the name bound itself to Saint Vlas, `Vlasiy`, guardian of cattle and of the throat, whose February feast farmers once kept for their herds. The lisping root and the throat-healing saint sit close together, since both point at the mouth and what it struggles to do. The meaning was never a compliment. It named a small defect of speech and let it stand.

On a Polish class register `Vlas` would look foreign, a single blunt syllable among the Krzysztofs and Kacpers. It has no Polish diminutives of its own, no softened variant to hide behind. What it offers instead is candour about its source. The word for lisping became a man's name, then a saint's name, and the plain meaning held. Vlas still says `blaesus`: lisping.