The male name Kiril (or Кирил or Кирилл) is a common first name in the Orthodox Slavic world, in particular in

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

North Macedonia North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...

, and

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. It is also well known in Greece but in different forms like Kyriakos. (Note that in modern Russian the spelling Кирил is considered to be a mistake, the correct spelling is Кирилл.) Kiril has several variant forms:

Cyril Cyril (also Cyrillus or Cyryl) is a masculine given name. It is derived from the Greek language, Greek name (''Kýrillos''), meaning 'lordly, masterful', which in turn derives from Greek (''kýrios'') 'lord'. There are various variant forms of t ...

, Cyrill, Kirill, Kirillos, Kiryl ( Belarusian), Kyril, Cyryl ( Polish), Kyrill, Kyrylo ( Ukrainian) and a diminutive Kiro (common in the Balkan Sprachbund).

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem Cyril of Jerusalem (, ''Kýrillos A Ierosolýmon''; ; 386) was a theologian of the Early Church. About the end of AD 350, he succeeded Maximus as Bishop of Jerusalem, but was exiled on more than one occasion due to the enmity of Acacius of ...

was a 4th-century bishop and a

Doctor of the Church Doctor of the Church (Latin: ''doctor'' "teacher"), also referred to as Doctor of the Universal Church (Latin: ''Doctor Ecclesiae Universalis''), is a title given by the Catholic Church to saints recognized as having made a significant contribut ...

. Saint Cyril of Alexandria was a 5th-century

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

. Another Saint Cyril, known as Kiril, was a 9th-century

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

and a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

to the Slavs. He, together with his brother Methodius, created an

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

called the

Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

to serve the needs of the Slavic world, translating the Bible into the Church Slavic language. Later, their students created a simpler and graphically usable script, which is named after Cyril as the

Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...

and is still used by millions of people.

People with the name

* Kiril Džajkovski, Macedonian musician *Kiril Juha Kainulainen, Finnish photographer * Kirill Pokrovsky, Russian/Belgian Composer *Kiryl Tarasenka, Belarusian Aeronautical Engineer *

Kiril Petkov Kiril Petkov Petkov (; born 17 April 1980) is a Bulgarian politician, economist, and entrepreneur, who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from December 2021 to August 2022. He is the co-leader of We Continue the Change, a political party he ...

, Bulgarian politician

People with the name

See also