Zagadka: jak ma na imię mama?

How do you say “what’s your name” in Polish?

Polish asks for your first name with a curious formula: Jak masz na imię? — literally “How do you have for a name?” The answer keeps the shape: Mam na imię Julia, “I have Julia for a name.” This clip is a riddle that hammers the third-person version — Jak ma na imię mama? (“What’s the mom’s name?”) — over and over, which makes the pattern impossible to forget.

Mieć na imię covers only the first name (imię). For the full name, Polish switches verbs: Jak się nazywasz? / Nazywam się Jan Kowalski. Both questions will be among the first ten sentences you ever exchange in Polish, so the riddle — mom has three children named Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... — is sneaky-good drilling: by the punchline you’ve heard the question six times.