Andrei

Meaning of Andrei

Andrei, the Slavic-and-Romance adaptation of the Greek Ἀνδρέας (Andréas), inherits from its classical root the semantic field of “man,” “male,” or, in extended theological glosses, “courageous one,” a sense long amplified by its association with the apostolic Saint Andrew. In the Russian and Romanian phonological systems the name settles, respectively, as AHN-dray (/ɑnˈdreɪ/) and ahn-DRAY (/ɑnˈdrej/), yet its orthography remains largely unaltered across Cyrillic and Latin scripts, underscoring a transnational stability unusual among given names. Historical currency is reinforced by cultural figures—film auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov, and contemporary novelist Andrei Codrescu—who collectively lend the name an aura of intellectual rigor. Within the United States, Social Security records chart Andrei’s quiet but consistent presence since the mid-twentieth century, the annual count hovering in low triple- or high double-digits and peaking at rank 764 in 2006 before stabilizing near the mid-800s in recent cohorts. Consequently, Andrei offers Anglophone parents a technically resonant, pan-European alternative to Andrew: familiar in meaning, infrequent in use, and textured by an intercultural lineage that bridges Greek etymology, Eastern-Orthodox tradition, and modern scholarly acclaim.