I know there are some foreigners out there who are convinced that 50% of Polish women are named Anna and the other 49% – Agnieszka. The remaining percent is claimed by Katarzyna, Małgorzata and Edyta, with a few Grażynas stuck in there for variety’s sake.
I always shook my head with disbelief when I heard such a thing and went on my merry way murmuring something under my nose about clueless foreigners.
But lately, I see that, golly gee whiz, they actually might have been right. I did a first name tally of my Polish female friends and acquaintances and to my utter shock and horror saw the naked truth about Annas and Agnieszkas.
Exactly 50% of the women I know are named Anna (and I didn’t even include myself in this head count). About 30% are named Agnieszka. And the rest are indeed Katarzynas, Małgorzatas, Edytas and Grażynas. There’s also a Wioletta and a Paulina and a Dominika and two Monikas.
And that got me thinking. How do people choose those names for their children?
My parents wanted something universal in every language, without any funny Polish letters, impossible pronunciations, and short enough so every dummy (including myself) could remember it very easily.
And while Anna is pronounced differently in different parts of the world, it’s still easy to guess that it’s me they’re talking about. In Poland, it’s “ahn – na”, by the way. The middle “n” is doubled not only in writing, but also in sound.
But not all Polish names are so accommodating. If you’re ever heard a foreigner butchering “Katarzyna”, you know what I’m talking about.
Still, that doesn’t explain the immense popularity of Annas and Agnieszkas in Poland.
And why am I writing about it today? I met a new person yesterday, a foreigner. I told him I was Polish, but didn’t introduce myself.
He said, “let me guess – Agnieszka?”
I said, “no.” And his answer was, “then it must be Anna.” And bingo.
Now there’s another person out there convinced that every Polish woman is named either Anna or Agnieszka.
Comments:
John:
My nieces are Anna and Agnieszka and my niece-in-law is named Kasia, so I have all three under my wing. My daughter is Natalia and I find many of them also in Poland.
russ:
Ever since I moved to Poland I was struck by the tragic shortage of first names here. (It’s not just female names. I know more Michałs and Maciejs, for instance, than I can remember now.)
In the US, most of my friends had unique names, e.g. I knew only 1 Bob, only 1 Sam, etc.
In Poland, most of my friends have names shared by several other of my friends.
And it’s entrenched in the language (all women’s names MUST end in -a, and no men’s names can – except Kuba for some reason, I guess just because there must always be exceptions in Polish…) and even in law (I am told that by law you MUST give your child a traditional Polish name, unless perhaps one of the parents is foreign… can you confirm this?)
I suppose the conservatism of Polish culture also plays into this, making parents not want to give a “weird” or “unusual” name to a baby, whereas more parents in the US seem willing to give unusual names like River or Peace or Moon Unit or whatever. 🙂
So I imagine that the severe shortage of first names is why many Poles are so into nicknames – out of necessity, to disambiguate who they’re talking about.
Mary:
You missed one!!!!
My husband knows loads and loads and loads of Ewa’s.
We only know 1 polish anna, 1 natalia and one agnieszka.
In the UK there are repeats to (re:Russ’ comment) There are 100’s of Daves and Johns at work!
M
kuba:
Most of my realtives female are Halina, Katarzyna, Julia, Stanislawa, Zdzislawa, Kasmira,
Elzbieta, Wioleta, and of course an Anna no dups.
Michael:
Anna and Agnieszka are beatiful names inmho. Maybe you would do a sound file for some names, to get a person’s name wrong is insulting to them and I hate butchering Katarzyna or anyone for that matter! 🙂 silly joke 🙁
Krzysztof is a difficult one also I think.
Alexander Dyle:
Anna,
I’ve always wondered why the Polish haven’t tried to create some new names even harder for English readers to pronounce like Azkryzwkzczelzcza for a girl and Krzwzawzel for a boy?
It’s so much fun watching an English person holding their crisp new phrasebook at Port Lotniczy im. Fryderyka Chopina as they quickly search for that one word they can actually prounounce without spitting.
I remain, &c.
Alexander Dyle
Jasia:
I was interested to read about the popularity of Anna and Agnieszka for women in Poland. It came as a surprise to me. As a genealogist with hundreds of Polish ancestors on my family tree, my first thought was that Marianna was the most popular name for women in Poland. I did a quick check of my data base and found 83 were named either Anna or Agnieszka but 109 were named Marianna. I wonder if this was a case of family naming conventions or if Marianna was more popular historically but Anna and Agnieszka are more popular now. Any thoughts?
Anna Ikeda:
Ewa? I don’t know any Ewas currently!
About Marianna, I do think that it’s also a generational thing, some names are more popular now than 40 or 60 years ago.
And part of the problem with the shortage of names is that there is a list of “approved” names and if you plan to name your baby in Poland, the name should be on that list. Otherwise you have to apply for a special dispensation, or somesuch.
But it’s slowly changing. My friend named her kid Laura Johanna, for example.
Aga:
Hi, I know this post is quite old, but I just need to write a word about a list of “approved” Polish names:
sure, maybe we can’t call children anything (as in the US), but the rules are very reasonable
1) female names should end with “-a” (there are a few exceptions for both male and female names), which is important because of the grammar (declension is different for feminine and masculine nouns)
2) it cannot be derogatory or ridiculous (I’ve heard anecdotes of people wanting to call their daughter “kurtyzana” until they were told that it is actually an old-fashioned word for a high-class prostitute, or their son “opieniek” which is a kind of a mushroom. But there was also a case of people who named their son “Dąb” (oak), and when the registrar denied them they took the case to court and won, because “Dąb” even though it’s not a (traditional) name evokes positive connotations of strength, etc.
3) cannot be a diminutive, so you can’t call your daughter Ania it has to be Anna. That rule is more flexible than the other two – there are quite a few names that used to be diminutives of other names and now they are used as full names in their own rights (e.g. Aneta apparently used to be a short form of Anna, Magda of Magdalena, Lena of names ending with -lena)
You’ll surely agree that those rules are really reasonable – especially no 1&2, and there are a lot of beautiful names to choose from.
As to the example given by Anna: Laura Johanna – Laura is a perfectly traditional Polish name, Johanna is a version of our Joanna, which – while sounding foreign – does not brake any of the rules I cited, so I cannot see any contraindications to naming your child that, so I’m not really sure what you mean by >>it’s slowly changing<<
Aga:
Oh, and also: the rules were slightly changed in 2015.
Actually, the one big change I’ve noticed is that parents (even if they are both Polish and of Polish origin) can choose a foreigh name for their child without having to somehow adjust the spelling to pronunciation, even using letters that are not normally used in the Polish alphabet (v,x,q). The rest of the rules still applies:)