Todor

Todor is the Bulgarian and South Slavic form of Theodore, from the Greek theos and doron, gift of God. The name trims Theodore's classical three syllables down to two compact, percussive beats, and the effect is earthier, closer to the soil than to the seminary. Bulgarian history is dotted with Todors: medieval despots, revolutionaries, composers, the writer Todor Zhivkov who loomed over the twentieth century. In villages it is often shortened further to Tosho or Dodo. Todor reads rural, warm, and quietly devout, a grandfather's name that has not yet circled back into fashion in the West. Understated, sturdy, unmistakably Balkan.