UkrainianGreek root2 syllables
Meaning: from the Greek Tarasios; the underlying sense is uncertain.
Taras
No name here carries one person the way Taras does. Taras Shevchenko was born a serf in 1814 and wrote the poems that turned everyday spoken Ukrainian into a literary language. Every Ukrainian Taras is named after him, whether or not the family says so.
| Origin | Ukrainian, from Greek Tarasios, through the Orthodox church calendar |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Uncertain. Usually traced to Taras, the legendary founder of the Greek colony of Taras in southern Italy, now Taranto. The link sometimes drawn to Greek tarassō, to stir up, is folk etymology and should not be repeated as fact |
| Pronunciation | tah-RAHS (two syllables, stress on the second) |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; a distinctly Ukrainian choice, uncommon even elsewhere in the Slavic world |
| Variants | Tarasios (Greek), Tarasiy (older church form), Taras (Belarusian, Russian) — the shape barely changes from language to language |
| Nicknames | Tarasyk, Taraska; the full name is already short enough to stand |
| Famous bearer | Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), poet, painter, and the central figure of modern Ukrainian culture |
History & meaning
Tarasios was a Greek name of no great frequency, attached in the East to St Tarasios, Patriarch of Constantinople from 784 to 806, who presided over the council at Nicaea in 787 that restored the veneration of icons. That put him in the calendar, and the calendar carried the name north into Rus. It never took hold in Greek use afterwards. It took hold in Ukraine.
Shevchenko is the reason. Born into serfdom at Moryntsi, he was bought out of it in 1838 with money raised by artist friends who raffled a portrait. His collection Kobzar appeared in 1840 in the language peasants actually spoke, and it did what no argument could: it demonstrated that Ukrainian was a literary language, not a dialect. In 1847 he was arrested with the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and sent to a remote garrison under a personal order from Tsar Nicholas I forbidding him to write or paint. He died in 1861 and was reburied above the Dnipro near Kaniv, as his poem Testament had asked. Kyiv's national university carries his name.
Why parents choose it
Choosing Taras is a statement, and Ukrainian families know it. The sound helps: two syllables, both open, ending on a hard s that gives it a spoken firmness few names on the Ukrainian list can match.
Middle names for Taras
The stressed second syllable pairs best with something that starts softly. Taras Hryhoriy and Taras Petro keep the whole name at home. Taras Gabriel and Taras Nathaniel stretch the rhythm out for English ears. The middle names guide explains why the long middle works here.
Famous Tarases
Beyond Shevchenko, the seventeenth-century hetman Taras Fedorovych, remembered as Taras Tryasylo, led the Cossack uprising of 1630 and became the subject of one of Shevchenko's own poems. The most famous Taras of all, Taras Bulba, is fictional: he is the Cossack hero of Gogol's 1835 novella, written in Russian by an author born in the Poltava region. That is worth saying plainly, because the character is often taken for a historical figure.
Consider instead
Ostap, from the Greek Eustathios, has the same church-calendar route and the same Cossack colouring; it is also the name Gogol gave Bulba's elder son. Hryhoriy belonged to the philosopher-poet Skovoroda, the other great literary Ukrainian. For something equally short and equally national, Bohdan carries the hetman rather than the poet.