Baby name

FADING BOY · HEBREW-POLISH
🇵🇱

Rafał

/RAH · fahw/


“God has healed”

Polish form of the Hebrew Raphael, meaning God has healed; the hook under the l (ogonek) marks it as distinctly Polish, and it carried a wave of popularity tied to Polish Catholicism.

rafek

gentle

How it ages.

Well-established Polish classic; peaked in the 1980s but ages without embarrassment.

The cultural moment.

Top 20 in Poland during the 1980s and 1990s; still in regular use but declining in new births since 2005.