Daniil is the Slavic form of Daniel, from Hebrew, meaning 'God is my judge.'
Daniil is the Russian and Ukrainian rendering of the ancient Hebrew name Daniel — דָּנִיֵּאל (Daniyyel) — meaning "God is my judge." The name entered the Slavic world through Byzantine Christianity, carried by monks, scholars, and saints who translated scripture into Church Slavonic. While the Western form Daniel traveled through Latin and then Norman French into English, Daniil preserved the older Greek-inflected phonology of early Eastern Christianity, retaining a gravity and formality that its Western cousins gradually shed.
The name's most luminous bearer in Russian letters is Daniil Kharms, the eccentric Leningrad avant-garde writer of the 1920s and 30s, whose absurdist miniatures influenced generations of writers from Samuel Beckett to contemporary Russian postmodernists. Earlier still, Daniil Alexandrovich was the first Prince of Moscow in the 13th century — the ancestor of the Rurikid dynasty that would eventually rule all of Russia. In the modern era, tennis champion Daniil Medvedev has brought the name fresh international visibility.
Daniil has remained a perennial favorite across Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus for centuries, frequently topping baby name charts in those countries. In the English-speaking world it appears as an elegant alternative to Daniel — recognizably connected but carrying a distinctly Eastern European texture. Parents drawn to heritage names or Slavic roots find in Daniil a name with deep spiritual resonance, literary pedigree, and a soft, melodic cadence: the double-i ending gives it an almost musical lilt when spoken aloud.