UkrainianHebrew root3 syllables
Meaning: God is my judge.
Danylo
Lviv exists because of a Danylo. King Danylo of Galicia founded the city in the middle of the thirteenth century and named it for his son. His name is the Ukrainian form of Daniel, not a spelling of the Russian Daniil.
| Origin | Ukrainian form of Hebrew Daniyyel, by way of Greek and Church Slavonic |
|---|---|
| Meaning | "God is my judge", from Hebrew din/dan (to judge) + El (God) |
| Pronunciation | da-NY-lo (three syllables, stress on the second; the y is Ukrainian и, close to the vowel in bit) |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; among the names most often given to Ukrainian boys over the past two decades |
| Variants | Daniel, Daniil (Russian), Danilo (Serbian, Italian), Daniël, Daniyel |
| Nicknames | Danylko, Danko, Dania |
| Namesake | Lviv, founded by King Danylo and named for his son Lev |
History & meaning
The Hebrew name is a small sentence: God is my judge. It belonged to the exile of the Book of Daniel, the reader of the writing on the wall and the survivor of the lions' den, and it travelled through Greek Daniēl and Church Slavonic into every Christian language in Europe. Ukrainian took it as Danylo, with the stress in the middle and an -o where English has a consonant. Russian took the churchlier Daniil. The two are not variant spellings of one another; each is the ordinary form of the name in its own language.
Danylo Romanovych (1201–1264) put the name into Ukrainian history. Prince of Halych and Volhynia, he rebuilt his lands after the Mongol invasion, accepted a crown from a papal legate at Dorohychyn in 1253 and so ruled as King of Rus, and founded the towns of Kholm and Lviv, the second named for his son Lev. Modern Lviv keeps him close: the equestrian monument on Halytska Square, the Danylo Halytskyi international airport and the Danylo Halytsky national medical university all carry the name of a king who died three-quarters of a millennium ago.
Why parents choose it
It is biblical without being English, three syllables without being heavy, and it comes with Danko for daily use. For families abroad it also has the advantage that Daniel is waiting as an instant translation if anyone needs one.
Middle names for Danylo
Danylo already fills the mouth, so the middle can be brief. Danylo Petro and Danylo Taras stay in Ukrainian; Danylo James and Danylo Luke settle into English without a seam. See the middle names guide for the rhythm behind those picks.
Famous Danylos
King Danylo is the towering bearer, and Ukrainian institutions from an airport to a medical university are named after him. In the twentieth century the name belonged to Danylo Shcherbakivskyi, the ethnographer who built the folk-art collections of the Kyiv museum in the 1920s. Its second life is with the very young: a Ukrainian classroom now holds several Danylos to every one born a generation ago.
Consider instead
Daniel is the same prophet by the English road. Bohdan keeps God in the name but does it in Slavic words rather than Hebrew ones. Illia gives you another Old Testament prophet in a distinctly Ukrainian shape.