Danylo is a Slavic form of Daniel, meaning God is my judge.
Danylo is the distinctly Ukrainian form of Daniel, one of the great names of the Hebrew Bible — derived from דָּנִיֵּאל (Daniyyel), meaning "God is my judge." While the name shares its deep Biblical roots with every European Daniel, Stefan, or Jean, Danylo wears the phonology and orthography of the Ukrainian language, giving it a character that is simultaneously ancient and specifically Eastern Slavic. The final -o, characteristic of Ukrainian masculine names, marks it unmistakably as a name of the steppe and the Carpathians rather than of Rome or Paris.
In Ukrainian history, the name's greatest bearer is Danylo Romanovych (c. 1201–1264), better known in the West as Daniel of Galicia — king of the Rus', founder of the city of Lviv (named for his son Lev), and one of the most consequential rulers of medieval Eastern Europe. He consolidated Galicia-Volhynia into a powerful western Rus' principality, fended off the Mongol Golden Horde, received a royal crown from Pope Innocent IV, and forged diplomatic ties across Europe.
He remains a foundational figure of Ukrainian national identity, and streets, monuments, and schools across Ukraine bear his name. Danylo has always been common in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian diaspora communities of Canada, Argentina, and Australia. In the aftermath of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the surge of global Ukrainian cultural awareness that followed, distinctly Ukrainian names like Danylo, Mykola, and Oksana have gained new visibility in Western naming culture — chosen by parents of Ukrainian heritage as declarations of identity, and by others as expressions of solidarity or simply admiration for a culture asserting its distinctiveness.