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Girl · Greek, through Latin
Agnieszka
Say it: ahg-NYESH-kah
Meaning
Polish form of Agnes, from Greek hagnos 'pure, chaste'; the link with Latin agnus 'lamb' is a later association, not the origin.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
Used in Poland since the Middle Ages, it peaked among births in the 1970s and 1980s.
Its wave through time
Rare in the records
In the United States
- 233 babies given this name since 1979
- At its height in 1990, about 1 in 82,500 girls
- 7 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Agnes
| Czech | Anežka |
|---|---|
| Slovak | Agnesa |
| Russian | Agnessa |
| Croatian | Janja |
| Latin | Agnes |
Famous bearers
- Agnieszka Holland, Polish film director
- Agnieszka Radwańska, Polish tennis player
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.