Andrey is a Slavic form of Andrew, from Greek Andreas, meaning manly or brave.
Andrey is the Eastern Slavic form of Andrew, a name whose roots reach back to the ancient Greek Andreas, derived from aner (genitive andros), meaning "man" in the sense of an adult male of courage and strength. The name entered Christian tradition through Saint Andrew the Apostle, the fisherman brother of Simon Peter who became the first called among Christ's disciples — and who is now the patron saint of Scotland, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, and several other nations, making his name one of the most geographically widespread in the Christian world. In Russia, Ukraine, and neighboring Slavic countries, Andrey has been a fixture for centuries, carried by princes, soldiers, painters, and thinkers.
The great filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky — whose name shares the same root — gave it a visionary, artistic dimension; his meditative cinema remains some of the most revered in world film history. In contemporary times, tennis champion Andrey Rublev has brought the name to new global attention, associating it with athletic precision and mental fortitude. In Russian literature, the name appears across Tolstoy's work, most memorably in Prince Andrei Bolkonsky of War and Peace, one of the most complex and searching characters in the Western literary canon.
The Andrey spelling, with its distinctive terminal "y" rather than the anglicized "Andrew" or the French "André," immediately signals Eastern European heritage and carries a cosmopolitan elegance that the more familiar English form sometimes lacks. It feels both ancient and contemporary — a name rooted in apostolic tradition that has traveled remarkably well into the twenty-first century, lending its bearers an air of old-world gravitas alongside very modern achievement.