I almost missed her. Paraskevia.
The first time I worked through the parish records from Leluchów, Nowy Sącz County, in Austrian Galicia, I was looking for birth records for the daughters of Andreas Knysz. The handwriting is dense and heavily abbreviated. The ink had faded in places, the Latin running into Church Slavonic in ways that require patience and a lot of zooming in. I found the daughters. Then I noted the mother’s name in the margin of my research notes, spelled approximately, with a question mark.
Parasceva. Paraskevi? Something like that.
And then I moved on.
It took me a while to come back to that question mark. When I did, I discovered the name in that register was Paraskevia. It belonged to my ancestor Paraskevia Kowalski, born 15 November 1848 in Leluchów.¹ She married Andreas Knysz in 1868. She buried him in 1873, widowed at roughly twenty-four with three daughters under the age of four.² She remarried in 1875. Through her daughter Julia, a thread runs from that Galician village directly to me.
I wrote about Paraskevia and Andreas before. (See: “From Leluchów With Love: Andreas Knysz and Paraskevia Kowalski“.) That post was about who they were. This one is about her name, and what her name means. Because once I finally stopped to look it up, I could not stop thinking about it.
What the Name Means
Paraskevia comes from the ancient Greek Paraskeuē, meaning preparation. In the Greek New Testament, Friday carries the name “the day of preparation,” the day before the Sabbath and, in Christian tradition, the day of the Crucifixion.3 So the name holds two meanings at once: Friday in everyday usage, and preparation in the theological sense.
That layered meaning traveled through Byzantine Christianity into Eastern Europe, taking on local forms along the way. In Greek it became Paraskevi. The Slavic languages gave it Paraskeva. Romanians knew her as Parascheva. Russian speakers, unaware of the Greek root, added their own word for Friday, Pyatnitsa, creating the beloved figure of Paraskeva-Pyatnitsa, “Saint Friday-Friday.”4 The Latinized form Parasceva appears in the Greek Catholic parish registers of Austrian Galicia, but the name itself was deeply rooted in the Byzantine Catholic world my ancestors inhabited.
The Saint Behind the Name
There is not one Saint Paraskeva but several, their stories braided together over centuries of devotion. The most prominent in the Byzantine world was Paraskeva of Iconium, a third-century martyr whose parents named her for the day of Christ’s suffering. The meaning of Saint Paraskeva’s name (preparation, Friday, readiness) shaped her veneration across the Eastern Slavic and Carpatho-Rusyn world. Over time, she became associated with marriage, family life, women’s work, fields, livestock, and the rhythms of everyday village life.5
Furthermore, other saints bearing the name, including Paraskevi of Rome and Paraskeva of the Balkans, were also widely venerated. Over the centuries, their stories and attributes often blended together in local tradition.6 In nineteenth-century Galicia, therefore, Paraskeva was not a distant figure from the early church. She was woven into the church year and into the daily world of women like my ancestor.
Why Her Name Matters to Me
Paraskevia Kowalski was born on 15 November. That date does not correspond closely to any of the major Paraskeva feast days: October 28 for the Great-Martyr, October 14 for the Balkan saint, July 26 for the Roman martyr. So she was likely not named for the day-proximity reason that governed some naming practices in this tradition. Instead, her name more likely reflects her family’s devotion to the saint, or simply the name’s deep roots in their Byzantine Catholic community.
In that world, naming a daughter Paraskevia carried real meaning. It connected her to a saint associated with marriage, women’s labor, and endurance. It also connected her, through the name’s Greek root, to the concept of preparation. To the idea that the hardest days are the ones that make the next thing possible.
And readiness would define her life.
A Life That Required It
She was still a young woman when Andreas died. He left her with an infant and two toddlers in a province where the economic margin for widows was almost nothing. In a rural Galician village, widowhood at that age was not simply a personal tragedy. It was an economic crisis.
The records do not tell me how she managed those years. They only tell me that she did.
She remarried, she raised her daughters, and she remained in Leluchów while Julia eventually left for America. Moreover, she built a second family and a second life, and the records I have found give me only the bare outlines of it.
Her daughter Julia knew how to endure. Julia survived the death of her own husband in 1912, raised a son alone through hard years in Johnstown, and lived into old age. (See: “She Lost So Much, But Found Unexpected Strength“.) I still wonder whether Julia learned some of that resilience at home, watching a mother who understood what preparation looked like, who had learned it the hard way, and who kept going anyway”
A name meaning preparation.
A life that required it.
A legacy that endured..
Your Turn
Have you ever encountered a name in your family tree that turned out to mean more than you expected — one that changed the way you viewed the person who carried it? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
- Roman Catholic Parish, Leluchów (Nowy Sącz, Małopolska, Poland), Liber Natorum pagi Dubne 1840–1889, entry for Parasceva Kowalski, baptism 16 November 1848; imaged, “Poland, Church Books, 1568–1990,” FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KS9-H4HX: accessed 10 March 2024), digital folder no. 008120491_004_M99WQ4N, image 19 of 55. ↩︎
- Roman Catholic Parish, Leluchów (Nowy Sącz, Małopolska, Poland), Liber Natorum pagi Dubne 1840–1889, entry for Andreas Knysz, burial 1 August 1873; imaged, “Poland, Church Books, 1568–1990,” FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KSS-Y7JV: accessed 9 March 2024), digital folder no. 008120491_003_M99WQ4F, image 151 of 155. ↩︎
- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Feast of the Holy Righteous Martyr Saint Paraskevi,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (https://www.goarch.org/-/feast-of-the-holy-righteous-martyr-saint-paraskevi: accessed 31 May 2026), Life of the Saint section. ↩︎
- “Paraskevi of Iconium,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraskevi_of_Iconium: accessed 31 May 2026). ↩︎
- Lauren Enk Mann, “Saint Paraskeva Pyatnitsa,” Catholic Stand (https://catholicstand.com/saint-paraskeva-pyatnitsa/: accessed 31 May 2026). ↩︎
- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Feast of the Holy Righteous Martyr Saint Paraskevi,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (https://www.goarch.org/-/feast-of-the-holy-righteous-martyr-saint-paraskevi: accessed 31 May 2026); “Paraskeva of the Balkans,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraskeva_of_the_Balkans: accessed 31 May 2026). ↩︎
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