...I have been trying to find whether my mother's family name is Polish or not, but we haven't had any success so far. The name is Andryszyn, yet we are not 100% sure that's the way to spell it, but my greatgrandfather's name was Mikolaj and his wife's Anna Helena. Maybe she was not Polish, we believe she was Austrian.

I think I can help a little -- Andryszyn is a Polish spelling of a Ukrainian surname, which in English we'd spell as Andryshyn (the original, of course, was spelled in Cyrillic). It's rare in Poland these days -- as of 1990 there was only 1 Andryszyn, living in Wloclawek province -- but is probably not so rare in Ukraine and in places where Ukrainians have settled, such as Canada, Brazil, etc. The name comes from Andriy, "Andrew" -- from that is formed Andrykha, "Andrew's woman," and the suffix -yn is added, softening the kh to an sh sound = Andryszyn or Andryshyn, literally "son of Andrew's woman." Surnames ending in -ishin or -yshyn (in Polish spelled -iszyn or -yszyn) are almost always Ukrainian, formed the same way, e. g., Petryshyn (son of Peter's woman), Romanyshyn (son of Roman's woman), etc.

...They came to Brasil around 1924-30, with 6 of their 7 kids. The names were, as my grandmother used to tell us, Olga, Mary, Ida, Eugenia, Stevo, Steva and Jose Guilherme (probably Jozef Wilhelm in Polish).
It's a small world -- just yesterday I visited a Web page telling of Ukrainians in Brazil celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian Catholic church in Brazil. Odds are it would have nothing relevant to your research, but if you're interested, here is the address:

http://www.ugkc.lviv.ua/WEBMAIL/mesg00011.html

I'm not sure exactly where to go from here, but perhaps it will help knowing the name is Ukrainian. One good Website you might check is http://www.infoukes.com/

They provide a lot of good info.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

... I am looking for information on my surname, Arnista. Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

The derivation of the name is difficult -- none of my sources mention it specifically. In Polish -ista usually refers to one who operates a particular tool or plays an instrument, so that an organista plays the organ, a cymbalista plays the cymbals, etc. But I find no native Polish root with arn-, except as a name root from Arnold, and that makes no sense with -ista... I do note that the first name Ernest has appeared in Polish as Arnest, so it's not outrageous to suggest a connection -- Arnista might have started as a patronymic, that is, a name meaning son of Ernest. But that's just a guess, and I have nothing solid that indicates whether it's a good guess.

As of 1990 there were 195 Polish citizens named Arnista, living in the following provinces: Białystok 3, Gorzow 7, Katowice 6, Łomża 102, Olsztyn 8, Opole 2, Suwałki 50, Torun 7, Walbrzych 2, Wroclaw 4, Zielona Gora 4. It's interesting that there's also a name Arnister, borne by 71 Poles, living in the provinces of: Łomża 33, Olsztyn 9, Opole 1, Suwałki 10, Szczecin 18. This suggests the original form might have been Arnister, but Poles don't care for the suffix -er and often change it to an -a. Still, then we're left wondering what Arnister means? All we know for sure is that these names are definitely most common in northern and eastern Poland, in the provinces of Łomża and Suwałki.

If you'd like to ask the best experts about this, I suggest writing the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.

Also, if you do write them and hear back, I'd be very interested in hearing what they say. I would love to include this name and some reliable info (as opposed to my guesses) in the next version of my book on Polish surnames. So I would appreciate very much hearing anything you find out.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

...I have a couple of names. My own, Stygar and my sister married an Andrychowski. Any information you have would be greatly appreciated.

Stygar probably is a variant of Sztygar, a word meaning "foreman," especially in mines. This term comes from German, and is comparable to the German names Stieger, "one who lived by a mountain path," and Steiger, literally "climber." So this could be the German name rendered in Polish spelling, or it could be a Polish name from a Polish word borrowed from German. Either way, the ultimate origin is German. The form Stygar is most common in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 310 Poles with that name. The largest numbers were in the provinces of Krosno (126) and Rzeszow (29), with smaller numbers in several other provinces, mostly in southeastern Poland, which is quite mountainous.

As with most names ending in -owski and -ewski, the name Andrychowski probably started as a reference to the name of a place the family came from or (if noble) owned. In this case two likely candidates are the villages of Andrychy, in Łomża province, and especially Andrychow, a reasonably good-sized town in Bielsko-Biala prov., southwest of Krakow. As of 1990 there were 311 Polish citizens named Andrychowski, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (57) and Łomża (54) and smaller numbers in many other provinces. The place names Andrychy and Andrychow are derived from the first name Andrzej, "Andrew," and mean basically "Andrew's place" -- so Andrychowski is literally rendered as meaning having some association with a place or thing associated with a guy named Andrew, but for all practical purposes this means "person from Andrew's town."

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

...I'm interested in knowing more about the Wawro and Bialaszewski (my grandmother's family name) family names.

The name Bialaszewski almost certainly derives from a connection with a place named Bialaszewo, or something similar; the most likely source is the village of Białaszewo (The Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w), about 15-20 km. SSE of Grajewo in modern-day Łomża province in northeastern Poland. There could be other, smaller places with similar names that gave rise to this name in some cases; but probably most families with this name came from, or were otherwise somehow connected, with this village of Białaszewo. The village, in turn, takes its name from the ancient first name Białasz -- probably the name of the village's founder or owner at some point; this name is from the root bial-, meaning white, with Białasz meaning something like "Whitey" in English.

This surname is not very common -- as of 1990 there were some 146 Polish citizens named Białaszewski. They lived mostly in the provinces of Warsaw (13), Gdansk (25), Gorzow (10), Pila (40), Slupsk (22), and Suwałki (22).

I should also mention there is a surname Białoszewski, somewhat more common (345 by that name in 1990), and in some cases the names might be related. But if the form Białaszewski is correct (rather than a variant of Białoszewski), I think derivation from the name of the village Białaszewo is most likely.

Wawro is an interesting name, mentioned in documents as early as 1453. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, it is most likely a short form or nickname of Wawrzyniec, the Polish form of the first name Lawrence. It might also be connected to the Ukrainian first name Lavro, which some say is a separate name, from Latin laurus, "laurel," whereas others see it as a variant of Wawrzyniec; Polish influence might explain the change from an l sound to the v sound of Polish w (as happened with "Wawrzyniec" = "Lawrence"). The surname Wawro is fairly common, borne by 1,827 Poles as of 1990. The largest concentrations lived in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (322), Katowice (286), Krakow (265), and Przemysl (215); no other province had as many as 200 inhabitants by this name. All these provinces are in southern Poland, near Krakow (or near the Ukrainian border, in the case of Przemysl), areas with large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians. As I say, the name might be Polish, or it might be Polish-influenced Ukrainian, since in those areas we see many names of mixed origin.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I would appreciate any information you have on Bulawa and Stawecki (mother's maiden name.) Thanks in advance.

Buława (The Polish slashed l sounds like our w, so that Buława would sound something like boo-WAH-vuh) is a moderately common name in Poland. As of 1990 there were 1,130 Polish citizens by that name, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (250), Bydgoszcz (147), Katowice (83), Pila (79), and Tarnobrzeg (200) -- the largest numbers appear in provinces in southern Poland, but other than that I see no particular pattern. The most likely origin for this name is the noun buława, which means "mace, staff of office" -- apparently it was a staff certain officials carried as part of their paraphernalia. I suppose a family would get this name either because a member was an official who carried such a staff, or because something about a person's shape or demeanour somehow reminded folks of the staff.

Stawecki is almost certainly derived from place names, including candidates such as Stawek, Stawce, Stawki, Stawiec -- there are quite a few places by those names, so nothing in the name itself gives us a clue as to where a particular Stawecki family might have originated. As of 1990 there were 866 Polish citizens by this name, with the largest numbers (more than 50) living in the provinces of Biala Podlaska (59), Białystok (51), Katowice (57), Kielce (112), Leszno (59), and Lublin (141). Again, if there is a particular pattern to this distribution, I'm afraid I can't see it.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

Note: the original question and reply were in Polish. I've translated them to make them more accessible to users of this page, most of whom presumably aren't fluent in Polish! - WFH

The surnames Chądzyński, Przyłęcki, Malewicz, Markowski, and Mękarski appear in Part Two of my book, a list of surnames arranged by the roots they derived from, (i.e., Mękarski appears under Mąk-, Markowski under Mar[e]c-, Mar[e]k, etc.). The surnames Gołoński, Odachowski, and Strzetelski don't appear in the book because they are quite rare, and there wasn't room for rare names.

I can make the following short comments on these surnames:

Chądzyński surely comes from place-names, for instance, Chądzyn in Siedlce province, Chądzyny in Ciechanow province. In 1990 there were 1,344 Poles by this name, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (235), Ciechanow (135), Czestochowa (106), Lodz (68), and Piotrkow (115).

I don't know what Gołoński comes from -- probably from a place name, but I could find no such name in atlases or gazetteers. In 1990 there were 22 Poles with this surname, in the provinces of Warsaw (4), Białystok (11), Torun (2), Walbrzych (3), and Wroclaw (2).

Malewicz is a patronymic, meaning for example son of a little guy (mały) or son of a man named Mal, where Mal or something similar might be a short form of an old compound name such as Malomir. In 1990 there were 1,113 Poles with this name, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (109), Białystok (117), Bydgoszczc (173), Gorzow (82), Szczecin (82), Wroclaw (69), and Zielona Gora (68).

Markowski comes from names of villages such as Markow, Markowo, Markowka, Markowa -- of which there are many in Poland. Obviously these place names come from the first name Marek (Mark) and meant something like village or estate belonging to Marek or Marek's kin. In 1990 there were 21,938 Markowskis in Poland.

Mękarski can come from the place name Mekarzow in Czestochowa province, or from the first name Mękarz, a variant of the name Makary. In 1990 there were 561 Poles with this surname, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Czestochowa (92), Lodz (85), and Piotrkow (93).

I've never run across the name Odachowski before, but in 1990 there were 415 Poles with this surname, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Białystok (140), Łomża (101), and Walbrzych (25). At first I had no idea where this name came from, but I saw that the form is toponymic (i. e., from a place-name), and I found a locality called Odachów (currently Adakavas in Lithuania) and one called Odachowszczyzna in Nowogrodek county of Minsk province in the former Russian Empire. It seems probable to me that the surname comes from these place names.

The name Przyłęcki probably comes from place names such as Przyłęk and Przyłęki, of which there are several. As of 1990 there were 351 Poles with this name, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (23), Kalisz (56), Lodz (50), and Wroclaw (20).

I've also never seen the surname Strzetelski before, and in 1990 there were only 34 Poles by that name, in the provinces of Warsaw (3), Jelenia Gora (3), Kielce (3), Krakow (24), and Tarnow (1). The name is toponymic in form, but I could find no place with a name that seemed to fit. It is possible that such a place exists or did exist, but was too small too show up on maps or in gazetteers.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

... I am trying to find the origin and history of my surname which is Chlapowski (with a line over the l).

Most names ending in -owski derive from a place name ending something like -ow or -owo or -owa (similarly with -ewski). This isn't always the case, but usually with a name like Chłapowski (the ł stands for the Polish l with a slash through it or line over it, pronounced like our w) the first thing to do is look for places named Chłapow(/o/a), and usually the surname name began as a way of distinguishing people who came from that place.

According to Polish name expert Dr. Kazimierz Rymut, names beginning with the root chłap- have some connection with the verb chłaptać, which means "lap up, swill." In some cases, I can't help wondering if it might also be related to the root chłop-, which means "peasant" -- often Polish a and o sound very similar, so it's not outrageous to suggest a possible connection there. Now as to why a village would get such a name, that I don't know -- your guess is as good as mine. But the surname Chłapowski almost certainly means connected with, coming from, formerly owning, or prominent in Chłapowo.

As it happens, there are at least two villages named Chłapowo, one in Gdansk province, one in Poznan province; there may be others too small to show up on the map. Anyway, chances are good families named Chłapowski originally came from one of those villages; but without detailed genealogical research, however, there's no way to tell which one (or some other, smaller place with a similar name) would have been the one associated with your particular family. However, as you do research, if you start noticing that certain geographic facts add up, that might allow you to draw a fairly reliable conclusion as to which one is relevant.

As of 1990 there were 119 Polish citizens named Chłapowski, living in the follow provinces: Warsaw 13, Bydgoszcz 5, Elblag 4, Kalisz 2, Krakow 1, Leszno 39, Lodz 1, Opole 3, Poznan 26, Szczecin 21, Zielona Gora 4. No further info (first names, addresses, etc.) is available to me, I'm sorry to say.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
 

... I am starting research on two names: 1) Tuszynski and 2) Cielcizka.

Cielcizka looks to me like a misspelling of Cieliczka, a name borne by some 260 Poles as of 1990, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Leszno (16), Lublin (15), Przemysl (178), and Walbrzych (13) -- so it looks as if southeastern Poland, and especially the Przemysl area, is the main place to look for this name.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions that most names beginning with the root ciel- come from the term cielę, "calf"; the dictionary shows cieliczka as a term meaning "young heifer." I'm not sure exactly how this came to be the name of a person, perhaps it was a nickname, for someone who bawled like a heifer, or was especially good at raising heifers -- about all we can be sure of is that the name arose due to some sort of association with heifers.

Tuszyński would most likely be a name suggesting a family was connected to (at one time owned, or worked at, or lived in) a place named Tuszyn, Tuszynki, Tuszynek, something like that. On the map I see four places with names that could spawn this surname, and there are probably more too small to show up on the map -- so the surname probably got started independently in several different places. Thus it's not surprising the surname is rather common in Poland; as of 1990 there were 4,711 Poles by this name. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers showing up in the provinces of Warsaw (653), Bydgoszcz (335), Katowice (388), Radom (319), Torun (360) -- basically, the only pattern I see to this is that the surname is most common in provinces with larger populations. So I'm afraid the name doesn't offer much in the way of clues as to where a family by that name might have come from.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
 

...I just wanted to drop you a line and thank you for your help. One more favor. If you know anything about the names Cwojdak and Sikora I would appreciate you passing the information along. Thanks again.

Sikora comes from the noun sikora, "titmouse" (a kind of bird). This is an extremely common surname, as of 1990 there were 39,850 Poles by this name, living all over the country (plus another 26,051 with the name Sikorski).

The root of the name Cwojdak is something I would like to know more about. I mentioned the root in my book because some fairly common names are derived from it - Cwojdziński (834), Czwojdrak (376), Czwojdziński (201) -- but I could find nothing definite on it. As of 1990 there was no one named Cwojdak, there were 32 Poles named Cwojda, and 14 named Cwojdrak. I did find one source that mentioned that this name is found in Silesia (southwestern Poland), and it might be related to a term cwajda, a call used for cattle or horses. It might also be a Polonized form of a German word, although so far I haven't been able to figure out what word that would be -- it just sounds as if it might have a German origin. But the bottom line is, I'm not sure, and I hope one day to find a source that tells me more.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
 

I saw your web page on Polish names. Below is what I've learned about my Czaplicki name so far. Can you review what I have and correct or add to the information. I would be pleased if you chose to add this information to the web page.

----------------------------------------------------
CZAPLICKI FAMILY NAME HISTORY

Name Origins

The Polish surname Czaplicki is classified as being of toponymic origin. Such names refer to an origin which is derived from the place name where the initial bearer lived on held land. In this instance, the surname derives from Czaple which is the name of a city located in north-western Poland, south east of Olsztyn. Thus, the original bearer of the surname Czaplicki was someone who was identified by members of his community as "one who hailed from Czaple." Etymologically, this toponym derives from the Polish term czapla which literally means "heron, stork," hence indicating a place frequented by this bird. In some cases, this surname originated as a nickname for a man with long thin legs, or perhaps for one who was shy and easily frightened.

Four Czaplicki Families

Czaplicki was the surname borne by four noble Polish families who were septs of the great clans Grabie, Kotwicz, Lubicz, and Grzymala, respectively. The Czaplickis of the clan Grabie had their ancestral seal located in the region of Chelmo which is about 50 kilometers northeast of Czestochowa, where their existence was documented in 1640. The Czaplicki of the clan Grzymala lived in the region of Prussia, although a branch of this family were registered in the district of Chelmo in 1700. The family who belong to the clan Kotwicz came originally from Mazovia where they were recorded in 1650. A Czaplicki family from Silesia used this coat of arms although their family probably faded out. Members of this family were documented as living in Lithuania in 1700. A descendant of this house, Stanislaw Czaplicki, made an endowment to the Dominican friars of Ostrowie, and in 1640 donated 5000 zloty to the monastery funds. The Czaplickis of the clan Lubicz had their ancestral seat located in Mazovia where their existence was registered as early as 1436.

Our Czaplicki Roots

This family from which my both paternal Czaplicki grandparents were born were from the Przasnysz district. The Lubicz-Czaplicki family were very branched out. Today about 6500 persons in Poland use that surname. The nest of this family was probably from the estate Czaplice in the Przasnysz district. In the gazetteer Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego, 1880, that place was divided into several villages, i.e.;

1. Czaplice- Bąki
2. Czaplice- Jaworowo
3. Czaplice- Furmany
4. Czaplice- Pilaty
5. Czaplice- Kurki
6. Czaplice- Milki
7. Czaplice- Wielkie
8. Czaplice- Rajki-Golanki
9. Czaplice- Koty

There is also a Czaplice-Osobne village in the nearby Łomża district and a Czaplice village in the Sluck district in Lithuania.

It looks as though the common ancestor of many of the Czaplicki families in these areas was knight Mroczeslaw de Czaplice who lived from 1410 to 1444. His descendants divided into 3 main lines: Mazovian, Lomzynian and Sandomierian.

In the 1432 Register of the Mazovian principality it lists that two first cousins from the sword side: Marcin Falislaw and Mroczek (diminutive of Mroczeslaw) de Czaplice were the owners of Czaplice in the parish of Krzynowloga in the Ciechanovian district in 1432. It appears that the Czaplicki's of the Łomża line are descendants of Mroczeslaw and that Marcin Falislaw was the ancestor of the Mazovian line.

In the Armorial of Ignacy Kapica Milewski it lists that Mroczeslaw de Czaplicki moved to Łomża district in 1436 and established the village Czaplice Osobne (parish Szczepanki). Furthermore the book mentions that Marcin de Czaplice born 1440, Andrzej de Czaplice born 1441 and Jøzef de Czaplice, son of Andrze (1498-1502).

Note: all this is information from Mr. Czaplicki, and as far as I can tell it seems accurate. I would think that while the term czapla, "heron," is clearly the ultimate root of the surname, most of the time the surname Czaplicki would derive from the place name Czaplice, rather than from Czaple. But Mr. Czaplicki got his information from some fairly good sources, and they indicate what he gives above is correct. Polish surname suffixes can be tricky, and what he says is quite plausible, so I don't disagree with it. And in any case, this is a good example of how a person who does good research can soon become much more of an expert on his/her name than I can ever be! -- WFH.

... Is there a way to find out if this name (Danisiewicz) is common in Poland and in what part of the country if it is.

Yes, I consulted a 10-volume set, the Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych [Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland], which used a 1990 Polish government database with data on 94% of the Polish population to extract all surnames borne by Polish citizen and to give a breakdown of where they live by province. Unfortunately, further details (first names, addresses, etc.) which are surely in that database are not available -- the government office won't share them with researchers. So what I give here is all that's available.

As of 1990 there were 106 Polish citizens named Danisiewicz. They were scattered all over the country in 17 of the 49 provinces. Here are the provinces in which 10 or more lived: Warsaw (15), Katowice (10), Lodz (31), and Olsztyn (10). There were also 82 Poles named Danisewicz, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Białystok (10), Gdansk (9), Koszalin (8), Olsztyn (8), Slupsk (16), Suwałki (8), Szczecin (10). These names are so close that it's quite possible they could become confused, so it seemed advisable to give info on both. Danisiewicz shows no real pattern, except that the Lodz is where it's most common; Danisewicz shows up almost exclusively in the northern provinces along the Baltic that were once ruled by Germany.

I'm not surprised there is no really striking pattern to the names' distribution. The name just means son of Danis, where Danis is a first name that originated as a nickname for such Polish first names as Daniel, Bogdan or from the root word meaning to give. Names of this sort could and did arise anywhere Polish was spoken and there were guys with the appropriate first name. So -ewicz and -owicz names generally originated independently in many different places and families all over the country. It's kind of frustating for researchers, but it's a lot like trying to trace Johnsons in England -- the name itself just isn't distinctive enough to give you any clues.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...While doing some research for my family tree, I came across a reference on the Net regarding a possible list you may have of Polish surnames. I was wondering if you have ever came across the name of Raflewski or Deyo? Any help you may provide would be greatly appreciated.

The spelling Deyo is not correct by modern Polish standards, which say that y can only be used as a vowel; however, in older Polish y could be used where these days they use j. So Dejo is a more likely form; however, it is quite rare -- in 1990 there was only one Pole by that name, living in Lodz province.  But -o and -a can be very hard to distinguish in handwriting, so it's not outrageous to suggest the name may have started out as Deja -- and there were 3,178 Poles by that name as of 1990. It probably comes from a dialect or slang term deja, meaning "heavy, awkward fellow." That name is found all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (500), Gdansk (345), Katowice (455), and Radom (619) -- if there's a pattern to that distribution, it escapes me. There were also 577 Poles named Dej, and I think it's highly likely one or the other of these names is the one you want.

I'm fairly sure that Raflewski ultimately derives from the first name Rafał (Raphael in English; the Ł stands for the Polish L with a slash through it, which sounds like our W). Usually surnames in -ewski or -owski derive from a place name ending in -ew- or -ow-, so I would expect Raflewski to have started as meaning one associated with a place named Raflewo (or something like that), and that place in turn probably took its name from a Rafał who founded it or owned it. I can't find any such place on the map, but sometimes Polish surnames came from names of places that were quite tiny, names used only by the locals, so it's not necessarily surprising that I can't find a place with an appropriate name. This is a fairly rare surname in Poland: as of 1990 there were only 42 Poles named Raflewski, living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (3), Elblag (4), Gdansk (2), Katowice (4), Lodz (6), Olsztyn (3), Suwałki (4), and Torun (16). (Unfortunately, I don't have access to further details, such as first names, addresses, etc.).

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...There are three more surnames that I wasn't able to locate and am reasonably sure that they exist, save one. The two I'm most interested in are Prokowski and Derlanga. The third one is to clarify a point, while Malik is listed in your book, one of my cousins insists that his name is spelled as Malick.

Malik and Malick are probably the same. In German and English -k and -ck are pronounced the same, and those are the two foreign languages that most often affected the forms of Polish names -- so chances are that's just a variant spelling of no great significance. The one case where it might be significant is if Malick is a shortened form of Malicki, another surname from the same basic root. This is not out of the question, but I wouldn't give it much thought unless you find other evidence that supports the idea -- and even then, it doesn't necessarily mean much.

Derlanga is a tough name to nail down, but considering how e and y often switch in Polish, I suspect it comes from the term dyrlaga, "tall, thin person," and the related term dryląg, "tall, clumsy fellow." I notice that as of 1990 there were 236 Poles named Derlaga (see below for distribution). There were 290 named Dyrlaga, and there was a listing for Derląg but data was incomplete. The spelling Derlanga did not appear in the Surname Directory, but Derlęga did, and that's very close. All in all, considering where the name is most common, I suspect it's a southeastern regional variant of a surname deriving from the term dryląg -- from a phonetic point of view, that's quite plausible.

Here are the distributions for the names mentioned above:

DERLAGA: 236; Bielsko-Biala 2, Elblag 11, Gdansk 10, Gorzow 24, Jelenia Gora 3, Kielce 37, Krakow 3, Krosno 1, Legnica 3, Rzeszow 1, Suwałki 4, Tarnobrzeg 31, Tarnow 93, Walbrzych 10, Wroclaw 3

DERLANGA -- no listing

DERLÉGA: 62; Krakow 6, Legnica 5, Tarnow 43, Walbrzych 5, Wroclaw 3

DYRLAGA: 290; Warsaw 9, Bielsko-Biala 210, Bydgoszcz 1, Chelm 4, Ciechanow 1, Czestochowa 7, Elblag 2, Katowice 4, Koszalin 2, Krakow 3, Legnica 4, Leszno 4, Nowy Sacz 2, Opole 5, Szczecin 2, Tarnow 3, Walbrzych 11, Wroclaw 10, Zielona Gora 6

Prokowski is a rare name, as of 1990 there were only 30 Poles by this name. That is often a handicap, but in this case it might work to your advantage -- of those 30, 28 live in the province of Szczecin (the other 2 in Jelenia Gora). Thus the name is very concentrated, making it more likely you can find relatives in Poland. As for the origin, one would expect it to mean "person from Prokow/Prokowo/Prokowa," and I see there is a village Prokowo in Gdansk province, about 4 km. west of Kartuzy. The surname may refer to this village, or perhaps to another I can't find on my map.

There's no way to guess exactly how people living in Szczecin province (near the border with Germany) came to bear a name that refers to a place near Gdansk. One possibility is that the Prokowskis used to live in the village near Kartuzy and took their name from it, but later moved. That happened sometimes, especially with the nobility, who often sold and bought estates and moved around. But I'd say chances are decent the surname does refer to that village, unless you turn up evidence of another place with the same or a similar name.

You might contact the Polish Genealogical Society of America to ask about having the Szczecin provincial telephone directory searched for Prokowskis. I don't know how much it would cost, probably not a whole lot. There's no guarantee any relatives will be listed, but it seems the best bet for getting an address and finding those 28 Prokowskis. If you ever find out more about the origin of the Prokowski name and any link with Prokowo, I'd be interested in hearing about it -- it might be good material for the next revision of my book!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

... My mother's father is Alex Dudynic, and my mother says only that he came from the Ukraine. I have checked all U.S. Internet phone directories, all genealogical indexes I can find, and I can find no one with that surname. I don't even know if it is truly Ukrainian?

RE: Dudynic/Dudynich, Dudynets, etc. It would be nice to see how your name was spelled in Cyrillic, especially the suffix (nets, ich, etc.). A dudi or dudy (however it is transliterated) is a cuff on a shirt sleeve. A dudko is a simpleton or fool. Let's assume your name was not based on the town fool. A duda is a bagpipe or an amateur musician. So your surname could be derived from any of these root words.

I recommend that you obtain the arrival record of your immigrant ancestors. That will state where they were born.

Tavarishch Lavrentij

I have nothing to add, except that in Polish the usage is pretty much the same.
 

...I am trying to trace the origin of the surname Dulka. According to the family tree the name originated in the current geographical region of Poland but I can not verify any other reference except the last known city of ancestry is Vilnius (sp?) Poland.

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, but a great many Poles lived there (the Poles call it Wilno), especially back when Poland and Lithuania joined up as one very large country consisting of two distinct but (theoretically) equal parts, the Commonwealth of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. My wife's paternal ancestors were Poles living in Lithuania -- so this is not at all unusual.

I'm afraid the name Dulka doesn't give any clues that will help you focus on a specific place. Dulka is a name that has appeared in documents as early as 1414, but the person mentioned in that document lived near Krakow in southcentral Poland -- a long way from Vilnius! As of 1990 there were 245 Dulka's in Poland, living in the provinces of Warsaw (3), Białystok (1), Bydgoszcz (4), Gdansk (26), Katowice (22), Koszalin (3), Krakow (5), Lodz (13), Łomża (2), Olsztyn (6), Rzeszow (2), Slupsk (1), Suwałki (2), Szczecin (2), Torun (116), Walbrzych (2), Wroclaw (2). As you can see, the largest concentration is in the province of Torun, in north central Poland; but there are people by that name living pretty much all over the country...

The compilation that gives this data (and does not have first names, addresses, or any other info, unfortunately) used a database that had data only for citizens of Poland in its current boundaries, so it tells us nothing about how many Dulka's might still be living in Lithuania... There is a gentleman who has a similar source on Lithuania, however, you might contact him and ask if the name still shows up in Lithuania and what derivation they give -- David Zincavage.

If the name is of Polish origin, it comes from a basic root dul- meaning "swelling, thickening." In some dialects there is a word dula meaning a kind of pear, and dulka would be a diminutive of that. Or it might have started as a nickname for a thickset person; there are plenty of terms like that which became names in Polish. If the name is of Lithuanian origin, Dave Zincavage might be able to tell you something about it.

Note: Mr. Dulka did contact Dave Zincavage, who had this to say:

This is a very difficult one, but it's not uncommon in Lithuania. Vanagas finds 11 persons named Dulka, 65 Dulke, 1 Dulkevićius, 15 Dulkinas, 12 Dulkis/Dulkys.

Possible roots include: the Lithuanian dulke "a grain of dust"; the Polish dul-, "swelling", dulka, "oarlock", and do'l, "pit"; the German dul, "swamp" and duel [u-umlaut], "doll"; and the White Russian name Doolko [meaning not explained] which may be related to the Russian doolo, "muzzle" and "barrel" [according to my dictionary].

I wonder if there is not some Slavic name, like Dolislaw, which is the actual source. My guess would be that there is one, whose diminutive is the root.

An interesting idea! But unfortunately I can find nothing that seems to qualify to prove or disprove it either way. This is one I have to put in the "Unsolved" file, and hope one day I will find a more satisfactory answer.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...any information on Polish surname Palzewicz, grandfather's name Stefan Palzewicz, came over on U.S.S. Lincoln about 1901, port of entry New York. Also had brothers 2 died another returned to Poland - Fredryk Palzewicz-but returned to america grandfather lived in East Chicago, Indiana. I have no known relatives other than family in USA.

As of 1990 there were 10 Polish citizens named Pałzewicz (the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our W); they lived in the provinces of Warsaw (5) and Lodz (5). There were also 18 named PałŻewicz (the z with a dot over it, pronounced like "s" in "measure"); they lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (7), Gdansk (3), Katowice (3), and Olsztyn (5). These folks are pretty well spread out, so it doesn't appear that the name is concentrated in any one area of Poland; and unfortunately I don't have access to any further data such as first names, addresses.

The root -ewicz means "son of," so the question is what Palz- means. It might just be an old first name that is no longer used, but I can find no mention of such a root in any of my sources. There is one thought that occurs to me: if Stefan's papers were filled out in Germany, or there is German influence on the spelling, Palzewicz may be a German-influenced spelling of Polish Palcewicz. The Poles pronounce c as "ts," and Germans spell that sound as z, so this is possible. Also, "Stefan" can be either Polish or German. All in all, I think it's at least possible the surname was originally Palcewicz. Not that that's a common name either -- as of 1990 there were 9 Poles by that name, in the provinces of Warsaw (6), Katowice (2), and Wroclaw (1). This appears to come from the root palec, "finger," so perhaps it was used as a nickname, "son of the Finger." Poles are very imaginative in the use of nicknames, so it's hard to say exactly what such a name meant originally.

The Palcewicz connection may not be right, but I thought it was worth mentioning, in case you run into that form during the course of further research. If the root is Palz-, I'm afraid I have no info on it.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...When you have a moment I would be most curious as to the origin and meaning of the surname Puchlik. This is my great great grandmother's maiden name. She was raised in Rutkowszczyzna, Białystok.

As of 1990 there were only 112 Polish citizens named Puchlik, and 57 of them lived in Białystok province (there were also 39 in nearby Suwałki province, and a few scattered in other provinces). So this suggests the northeastern part of Poland is definitely the right place to look for Puchliks. According to my sources, Rutkowszczyzna is served by the Catholic parish church at Suchowola in Białystok province, so that's where the family probably went to register baptisms, deaths, and marriages.

Puchlik appears to come from a root meaning "to swell, be swollen," and it seems likely the name began as a nickname or a name derived from a personal trait or characteristic -- perhaps an ancestor looked swollen. There is also a root puch meaning "down, feathers," so it's not impossible that the name also means "downy, feathery," perhaps referring to someone's hair. But that l in Puchl- strongly suggests it does come from the root meaning "swollen," so that strikes me as the most likely derivation.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...If you have information on the names Dec or Mitus, I would be very pleased to receive it.

Dec is a bit of a problem, when I was working on my surname book I couldn't find any really good, firm info on it. One scholar mentioned that it was seen sometimes as a kind of short form or nickname for Dyonizy, which is more or less equivalent to our "Dennis." But there may be other derivations I don't know about; it wouldn't take too much for it to derive from some German names, e. g., Dietz, a nickname or short form for the German name Dietrich. (Dec in Polish would be spelled Detz in German, but I don't think that's related -- apparently Detz was an archaic term for "dung", so let's not go there). As of 1990 there were 7,500 Poles named Dec and another 299 named Deć. With such a common name, there might well be more than one source, and it's quite reasonable it derives from common first names, so the Dyonizy and Dietrich connections are plausible.

Mitus is the same way, I didn't find anything that let me really nail it down. As a rule, however, names beginning with Mit- tend to come from nicknames for the first name Dymitr or Dmitri. As of 1990 there were 173 Poles named Mituś, scattered all over but with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Krakow (27), Nowy Sacz (60) -- this suggests it is most common in southcentral Poland. By the way, there is a Polish term mituś that means "crosswise," I don't know whether that plays a role in this or not.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Found your really interesting site just surfing for genealogy info on the net. I have just started looking for roots, and am really interested in mine and my husbands polish ancestry. If you have time, could you let me know anything at all about the following: Oborski, which is my husband's, and Piglowski, also seen written as Peglowski and Piklowski, which is my mom's maiden name.

The name Oborski comes from the term obora, "cow-shed, barn." In practice the surname probably indicates a family came from, owned (if noble) or worked as peasants at a village or estate named Obora, Obory, Oborki, something like that (those places, in turn, took their names from the term for "cow-shed") -- and there are several places with those names. As of 1990 there were 1,029 Poles named Oborski, living all over the country, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (57), Kielce (51) Lodz (68), Warsaw (72), and Zielona Gora (59). I don't see any really helpful pattern to that distribution, which is not surprising because the various places with names beginning in Obor- are scattered all over.

It's hard to say for sure if the proper form of the other name is Piglowski or Peglowski or Piklowski, but I'm going to assume it's Pigłowski, that seems the most likely. As of 1990 there were 492 Pigłowski's in Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (42), Konin (32), Lublin (54), Lodz (48), and Poznan (69)-- again, I don't see any real pattern there. This name might come from a place name such as Pigłowice in Poznan province, or it might come from the basic root pigłać, "to nurse, care for," but with -owski surnames you usually want to go with a place name, if there is one that seems suitable. There may be other places with names beginning Pigłow- that are too small to show up on maps or in gazetteers yet could have yielded this surname. But Pigłowice in Poznan province seems a good possibility.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I am contacting you from Australia in an endevour to trace the lineage of my surname Oryl. My father was killed some twenty three years ago so I do not have any information to work with apart from the fact that he was from somewhere near Osiek and his name was Stanislaw Oryl. Anything you could offer to answer my question would appreciated.

When I was working on my surnames book, I could not find a reference book with analysis of the origins of Oryl. I did find a Polish term oryl, meaning "raftsman; lout" -- in other words, the main meaning is "raftsman," and apparently a secondary meaning developed later, "uncouth fellow, lout," presumably because folks came to have a rather low opinion of raftsmen's manners. While one cannot simply pick a word out of a dictionary and say "There, that's what it comes from," there are instances where such terms are plausible sources of surnames, and that's so in this case. I can find no other source that seems applicable, and occupation-derived surnames are very common in Polish. So we can't be positive, but it seems a pretty good guess that's what Oryl means.

As of 1990 there were 561 Poles named Oryl, living all over Poland but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (61), Ciechanow (175), Elblag (52), Olsztyn (55), and Torun (40). This seems to indicate northcentral Poland (in its current boundaries, that is) is the area where this name is most common. That's not too surprising, there are numerous rivers in this region, one would think a good number of people made their livings as raftsmen. Unfortunately, I have no access to more detailed data such as first names, addresses, etc. of those Oryls, the info I give here is all I have.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Am trying to learn more about my Polish ancestry and have no living relatives (except younger siblings). My mother’s maiden name was Pahucki...

Pahucki is probably a variant spelling of Pachucki -- in Polish ch and h are pronounced the same, so we often see names spelled either way. Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says names beginning with Pach- can come from the term pacha, "armpit," or from nicknames for once popular first names such as Pakosław and Paweł (= Paul; Pakosław has no English equivalent). Poles often formed nicknames or short forms of names by taking the first couple of sounds, chopping off everything else, and then adding suffixes. Thus there is a name Pachuta seen in records as far back as 1451, and it probably originated that way: pa- + ch- + uta. Pachucki looks like and probably is an adjectival form of that name, meaning basically "kin of Pachuta, folks who came from Pachuta's place," something like that. It's a moderately common surname, as of 1990 there were 1,067 Poles named Pachucki, living all over the country, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (88), Biala Podlaska (80), Łomża (144), and Suwałki (328). This suggests a concentration in northeastern Poland (Łomża and Suwałki provinces).

...My grandmothers maiden name was Blochowiak -- I have also seen it spelled Blohoviak.

Blohoviak is just a phonetic spelling of Błochowiak (ł = the Polish slashed l, pronounced like our w), the latter is the form that matters. There are several ways that name could have originated. It could be from German Bloch, "block"; from a variant of Włoch, "foreigner"; as a rabbinical surname; or as one of those nicknames of the kind I mentioned above. In this case Poles took such names as BlaŻej (Blaise) and Błogota (no equivalent), chopped off everything but the Bl-, and added suffixes. In this scenario Bloch- started out as a nickname, the -ow- is a possessive suffix, and -iak usually means "person from, of, son of." Thus this name might mean "person from Błochowo or Błochy (= 'Bloch's place')." There is a village Błochy in Ostrołęka province -- the surname might come from that. But it could have originated several other ways, as I said.

These days in Poland Błochowiak is not extremely common, but it's not rare either -- as of 1990 there were 518 Poles by this name. They lived all over the country, but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (92), Gdansk (40), Leszno (63), and Poznan (167).

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I would like to ask if you know the meaning of two place names: Budzyn and Jaktorowo?

I can't always answer questions about the meaning of place names, but in this case I believe I can. Both names derive from personal names with the addition of possessive suffixes.

Vol. I of Nazwy Miejscowe Polski [Place Names of Poland], edited by Kazimierz Rymut, covers names beginning with A and B. The name of Budzyn comes from a very old Polish first name, Budza, with the possessive suffix -yn added (after some roots the suffix would be -in, which explains where names ending in -ynski and -inski come from). In modern Polish the verbal root budz- means "to awaken, arouse," but in archaic Polish it meant "to feel, sense," so Budza was not a Polish Buddha but rather a name given a son in the hope that he would be sensitive -- not in the modern touchy-feely sense, perhaps, but rather "alert, wide-awake, perceptive." And the village name Budzyn means "of Budza, something belonging to Budza" = "Budza's place." The book also mentions that the name could be associated secondarily with the noun budzyn, "shabbiest, worst-built part of a village."

Unfortunately I don't have copies of any further volumes of this work (I understand the next volume has only recently been printed and is on its way to me), but I'm still pretty certain that Jaktorowo comes from Jaktor, a variant form of the name Hektor (= Hector in English). J. Bubak's Ksiega nazych imion [Book of Our First Names] mentions that Jaktor is a form of "Hector" seen in records back as early as 1386; in some Polish dialects there was a predilection to modify certain sounds to Ja-, as seen with Jagnieskza as a variant of Agnieszka, Jadam instead of Adam, Jagata instead of Agata, Jaracz instead of Horacy, and so forth. So if Jaktor = Hector, the -owo suffix is just a possessive, and Jaktorowo means literally "thing, place belonging to Jaktor (Hector)." Jaktorowo is "Hector's place," presumably referring to a noble who owned the area at one time, or a man who founded the village, or a prominent citizen at some point.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Having Polish ancestry on both mom's and dad's side, I was wondering if your book contains any info on either Penc (dad's side) and Chowaniec (mom's side).

My book does mention both names, but I can add a little to what's in the book. The name Chowaniec (pronounced roughly "hoe-VAHN-yets") appears in documents from 1628 and comes from the noun chowaniec, which means "adopted child." As of 1990 there were 2,959 Poles by this name, scattered all over the country but with the largest numbers (over 100) in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (656), Katowice (458), Krakow (149), Nowy Sacz (699), Opole (122), Tarnobrzeg (109). This suggests that the name is most common in southcentral Poland (the provinces of Bielsko-Biala, Katowice, Krakow, and Nowy Sacz). I'm not sure why it is more common there, perhaps people in other parts of Poland had other words besides chowaniec they preferred to use for "adoptee."

Penc is not quite so clear-cut, there are several things it might come from but no one really obvious one, and I can't find any source that really nails it down. The most likely origin is from the word Pęc (the ę represents the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail, pronounced very much like en, so that either Penc or Pęc would be pronounced roughly "pents"). The term pęc is from a root meaning "splash, smack," a splashing or smacking sound. The name might also come from a nickname for ancient pagan compound names such as Pękosław, or from a root pąk, meaning "bundle, bunch, bud." As you can see, there are several words that are close, but none is a direct hit.

As of 1990 there were 204 Poles named Penc, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Poznan (25) and Tarnobrzeg (70) and much smaller numbers in many other provinces. There were only 7 named Pęc, in the provinces of Katowice (1), Krakow (3), Opole (1), and Wroclaw (2). So this name is not a particular common one, although there are other names presumably from the same roots that are pretty common: Pęcak (1,666 from a word for hulled barley), Pęczek (1,535, from a word for "tuft, whisp"), etc.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I'm curious to find out more about my last name, Grzybowski. Someone had actually showed me an article from the NY Times magazine a few years ago saying the was a park in Warsaw with the same name as my last name.

Surnames ending in -owski usually derive from place names ending in -y, -ow, -owo, -owa, and so on. There are at least 17 villages in Poland named Grzybow, Grzybowa, Grzybowo, etc., (probably more too small to show up on maps), and the name Grzybowski originated as a reference to association with any or all of them; it could have meant "family from Grzybow/o etc.," or it might have referred to a noble family that owned the estate there, peasants who worked on an estate there, a man who traveled there often on business, or so on. It is virtually certain the name was adopted by many different families in many different places... The root of the place name is grzyb, "mushroom," so all these places got their names because of some association with mushrooms, and the surname just means basically "one associated with the place of the mushrooms."

When a surname can come from so many places, it is usually pretty common, and that's the case here: as of 1990 there were 14,498 Polish citizens named Grzybowski, living all over the country.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I'm researching the Bronder family history, and I have traced the Bronder lineage back to Keltsch, Prussia, which was once part of German Silesia and is now part of Poland. It seems to be an uncommon name, I think it is either German or Austrian in origin. Do you have any information on this surname? Would you happen to know its nationality and meaning? Thanks for your time.

The only info I can find on Bronder is that as of 1990 there were 460 Polish citizens with that name, living in the provinces of Czestochowa (92), Katowice (161), Krakow (2), Opole (201), Poznan (1), Walbrzych (1), Wroclaw (2). These are areas with large German populations, and the name does sound German to me, but neither George F. Jones nor Hans Bahlow mentions it in their books on German surnames.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...The surnames I have are Bugno and Moizuk and Judicky(sp).

Bugno probably comes from the root bug-, "bend, curve," especially in a river. The most obvious case of this is the name of the Bug River, part of the eastern border of modern Poland. Bugno might mean an ancestor lived by a bend in a river, something like that. As of 1990 there were 651 Poles with this name, living all over but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (89), Krakow (33), Lodz (31), Nowy Sacz (160), Opole (30), and Tarnow (82) -- so the largest numbers are in southcentral and southeastern Poland.

Judycki (the standard spelling in Polish) looks like an adjectival form of the name Judyta = our "Judith." So Judycki might refer to an association with a person named Judith or a place name for her. It might also refer to Juda, "Jew" (actually that's all Judith originally meant, "Jewess"). As of 1990 there were 578 Poles named Judycki, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (54), Białystok (48), Katowice (41), Olsztyn (34), Pila (40), Suwałki (99) -- mostly in the northern and especially northeastern part of Poland.

I could not find Moizuk, but it is very likely that is a variant spelling of MojŻuk (I'm using Ż to stand for the z with a dot over it, pronounced like the "s" in "measure"). This name comes from the name Mojzesz, "Moses," and is an Eastern-Polish form meaning basically "son of Moses." This might suggest Jewish ancestry, but doesn't have to -- in medieval times the name Moses was used by both Christians and Jews, it wasn't until later that the name came to be associated exclusively with Jews. As of 1990 there were 105 Poles named MojŻuk, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 9, Białystok 24, Łomża 4, Olsztyn 7, Sieradz 4, Suwałki 46, Szczecin 3, Walbrzych 1, Wroclaw 5, Zielona Gora 1.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...My great-grandfather was Piotr Juszkowski and his wife was Julia Danielewski. He found under Wilhelm I in the German Army. He was born in 1861 in West Prussia in a town named Logewnik (?)... We know that he left from the port of Bremen in January 1888 for America and ended up eventually in Detroit, Michigan area where he raised his family. Have you seen this name before? What might it mean? Do you know of a town named Logewnik or something like that in Prussia? I can't find anything. He was definitely of Polish descent.

I have seen the name Juszkowski before. The root of names with Juszk- derives from the first names Juszka (seen in records as early as 1388) and Juszko (1368), which in turn originated as nicknames for such common first names as Justyn, Julian, Jozef, etc., much as "Joe" or "Joey" is formed from "Joseph" in English.

More directly, surnames ending in -owski usually refer to an association with a place name ending in -i or -ow/-owo. There are two or three places that might be relevant in this case: there's a village Juszki, south of Koscierzyna in Gdansk prov.; a village Juszkowo, some 15 km. south of Gdansk; and a Juszkowy-Grod in Białystok prov. Since your ancestors came from West Prussia, odds are the places in Gdansk province are relevant (although you can never rule anything out on such slim evidence). In any case, the surname Juszkowski means "associated with a place called Juszki or Juszkowo," and the place name means "place of Juszka or Juszko."

As of 1990 there were 79 Polish citizens named Juszkowski, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (9), Ciechanow (23), Elblag (3), Leszno (11), Lublin (1), Łomża (8), Lodz (1), Slupsk (9), Szczecin (9), Torun (3), and Wroclaw (2). Unfortunately I have no further details such as first names or addresses (people always ask, and this is all the data I have access to). If your ancestors came from West Prussia, the Juszkowski's living in Slupsk, Szczecin, and Torun provinces are the ones most likely to be related.

Logewnik seems to me a slight distortion of Łagiewniki (ł stands for the Polish slashed l, pronounced like our w, so that the name is pronounced roughly "wag-yev-NEE-kee"). This is a term for residents of settlements occupied mainly with making łagwi, wooden or leather containers for liquids used before glass-making became widespread. Unfortunately, the fact that this is a reasonably common term means there were quite a few places with this name, at least 16 in my atlas of Poland.

However, I see only two in territory that might have been considered "West Prussia" (always assuming we're not dealing with a place too small to show up on maps or in gazetteers). One, called Elvershagen by the Germans, is in Szczecin province, maybe 5 km. southeast of Resko; technically it was in Pomerania, but could easily have been regarded as West Prussia. The other is 1-2 km. south of Kruszwica in Bydgoszcz province, more in Provinz Posen than West Prussia, but the boundaries varied and it might well have been regarded as West Prussia, at least at one time. The parish church serving Catholics in that area was in Kruszwica. You might consider getting its records on loan from the LDS Family History Library and looking through them, to see if there are any Juszkowskis who match up -- it's a bit of a long shot, but better than nothing. Of course, if your Juszkowskis weren't Catholic, that may not be much help.

For further help you might want to contact the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan at this address: PGS of Michigan, c/o Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202. A lot of people with roots in Michigan have found the PGS-MI most helpful.

A long-shot that might be worth a look is the Kashubian Association of North America (KANA c/o Blanche Krbechek, 2041 Orkla Drive, Minneapolis, MN 55427-2439). They're supposed to have a name list on their Web site: http://feefhs.org/kana

I'd try them because if your folks came from West Prussia, there is a halfway decent chance they may have been members of the Kaszub ethnic group, and if they are the KANA might prove very helpful.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I am researching my paternal grandfather's surname, Fedosz. Any help would be greatly appreciated. My grandfather came to this country around the beginnng of the 1900's, from a town near Warsaw,Poland.

None of my sources mention Fedosz, but most names beginning with Fed- derive ultimately from Fedor or Fyodor, Eastern Slavic forms of the name Theodore (Teodor in standard Polish). In other words, the name probably started out as Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian. There are many Polish names that started out in other languages because the history of Poland has so much intermingling of Poles with Germans, Ukrainians, Czechs, Lithuanians, etc. The Poles, Ukrainians, etc. often formed names by taking the first syllable of a common first name and adding a suffix or two to it; so from Fedor we have Fed-, then add -osz = Fedosz. There is no exact way to translate this into English, it would basically just mean something like Teddie and probably originated as a patronymic, a way of referring to a person as son of so-and-so.

As of 1990 there were only 17 Polish citizens named Fedosz, living in the following provinces: Legnica 11, Poznan 4, Szczecin 2. None of those is very close to Warsaw, but that's not surprising, in view of the mass movements of people during the last couple of centuries.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I have not found much on Nawodylo or Gonsewski/Gonsiewski so far.

To start with, Gons- is just another way of spelling Gąs- (where ą is the Polish nasal vowel and pronounced very much like -on-). So the "correct" spelling of the name was probably Gąsiewski. Now names ending in -ewski or -owski are usually derived from place names that are similar but without the -ski. So Gąsiewski most likely means something "person who owned (if noble) or who came from Gąsiewo," or something like that; that place name, in turn, comes from the root gęś, "goose," so Gąsiewo would mean something like "Goose Village" (presumably there were a lot of geese raised there). On the map I see a Gąsewo in Płock province, that's one place this name might come from; but I'm pretty certain there are other places with similar names that were too small to show up on the map, but could also have spawned this name.

As of 1990 there were only 11 Poles named Gonsiewski, living in the provinces of Białystok (1), Gdansk (1), Piotrkow (2), Suwałki (1), and Tarnobrzeg (6). But there were 1,209 Gąsiewskis! They lived all over, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (172), Łomża (157), Olsztyn (83), Ostrołęka (166), and Suwałki (215). The habit of switching spellings on/ą is so common that I think you're probably better off regarding Gonsiewski and Gąsiewski as different spellings of the same name, rather than as two different names; and as such, it is fairly common.

Nawodylo: this is a rare name in modern-day Poland -- as of 1990 there were only 9 Poles named Nawodyło (the Polish slashed l, pronounced like a w, so that the name in Polish is pronounced something like "nah-vo-DI-woe," with the i being short as in "sit"). They lived in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (5), Katowice (1), Przemysl (2), and Szczecin (1). The numbers here are too small to draw conclusions from, but I've seen a similar pattern before with Ukrainian names -- they tend to show up along the southern borders of Poland, and many were relocated from Ukraine to western Poland after World War II. And Nawodyło sounds more Ukrainian than Polish to me. You'd expect dz, not simple d, in Polish, and the root verb nawodzić is rare in Polish; but the verb navodyty, to lead, direct, is reasonably common in Ukrainian, and in that language the -dy- is quite normal. "Nawodyło" can be regarded as simply a Polish phonetic spelling of Ukrainian "Navodylo." So while I can't be sure, I think chances are this is a Ukrainian name from a word meaning "to lead, direct." This is quite plausible, since historically much of Ukraine was under Polish rule for a long time, so you find Ukrainian names in Poland and Polish names in Ukraine. This doesn't mean your ancestors weren't Poles -- regardless of the linguistic origin of the name, they may well have considered themselves, and been considered by others, true Poles! But it's at least worth knowing they might have been ethnic Ukrainians, and that may be why it's hard finding much on them in Poland.

...The others are Frankowski (probably very common), Wykowski, and Stankiewicz.

Frankowski is quite common, as of 1990 there were 11,094 Poles by that name, living all over the country. The -owski, again, suggests an original meaning of "one who came from, owned, or often traveled to Frankow or Frankowo," and there are several villages that qualify (Franki, Frankow, Frankowo, etc.). Those place names, in turn, came ultimately from the same source as our name Frank, from an abbreviation of Franciszek, Francis, or perhaps in some cases from the term Frank, from the name of a Celtic tribe once living in what is now France (the name of which comes from the same root). So Franki/Frankow/ Frankowo was "Frank's village," and Frankowski was "person from Frank's village."

Wykowski is not so common, but still not rare; as of 1990 there were 689 Poles by that name, living all over but with the largest numbers (more than 50) in the provinces of Gdansk (52), Łomża (265), Ostrołęka (74), and Suwałki (66). By now you can probably guess: the name means "person from Wyki or Wykow or Wykowo," and there are several places with names that qualify, so we can't pinpoint any one area where this name started. I would think the place name comes from wyka, the vetch (a kind of plant); there are a couple of other possible derivations, but this strikes me as the most likely one. So the Wykowskis were "the people from the village with lots of vetch."

Stankiewicz is extremely common, borne by 19,826 Poles living all over the country. The suffix -ewicz means "son of," so this means "son of little Stan." Stanek or Stanko was a nickname for someone named Stanisław (Stanislaus), literally "little Stan," possible also "son of Stan," and when you add the suffix it becomes Stankiewicz, "son of little Stan" or "son of Stan's son." If a name is at all popular, as Stanislaw is, then the -ewicz or -owicz forms from its nicknames are also extremely common, and that's true here.

...Do you think it's helpful to contact other people with the same last name while doing this research? I found about 30 people with the last name Gonsiewski on the internet white pages, and have contacted one of them through e-mail. Is that name too common to think we might be related somewhere down the line or that they could help with information?

That's an intelligent question -- I hear all the time from researchers who think their name is rare, so if they find anyone with the same name, he/she must be a relative. That can be true, certainly, but so very often it's not. If you realize this, and don't jump to conclusions, yes, I think it is worthwhile contacting others with the same name. Even if the info you share proves not to have any connections, that right there tells you something about the name and how widespread it is. And if you keep on making contacts, odds are good sooner or later you'll run into a relative, and that can really pay off. So as long as you don't have unrealistic expectations that are easily frustrated, and you just take what you get as it comes and make the best of it, yes, I think such contact is a good idea.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Please let us know what Furgat or Furgal means, my children have projects for school that are asking for the meaning of their names...

This name could originate in other languages besides Polish, from completely different origins; but if you have reason to think it is Polish in this case, here is the most likely origin I can discover.

There is a verb furgać (accent over the c, the word is pronounced roughly "FOOR-gach"), a term used in dialect, which means "to take flight, fly away, flee." In Polish, names were often formed by taking such verbs, dropping the infinitive ending -ać, and adding the suffix -ała (the Polish l with a slash through it sounds like our w). This suffix generally means one who's always doing the action or demonstrating the quality described -- e. g., Biegała is from biegać, "to run," and means someone who's always running. In this case, Furgał or Furgała would apparently mean "one who's always taking off, one quick to flee." So that explains the name if it is Furgal or Furgala. If it's Furgat, it probably still means something similar, but -at is a much less common suffix in Polish names. (By the way, the Polish ł looks a lot like a t, and in some names people mistook it for a t so that the name changed from -ał to -at -- that could have happened in this case.)

As of 1990 there was only 1 Furgat in Poland, living in the province of Rzeszow, in far southeastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border. Furgał is very common, however; there were 1,149 Poles by that name, living all over the country but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (127), Krakow (174), and Tarnow (331) -- which suggests the name is most common in southern Poland. There were also 984 Furgała's, with half living in one province, Przemysl (466), also in southeastern Poland. The large numbers in Tarnow and Przemysl provinces suggest the name is most common, and may have originated, in southeastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border. I wish I had data for Ukraine, I bet it's a fairly common name in western Ukraine, which also used to be part of the Commonwealth of Poland.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Do you know anything on Kochowski or Gacek?

None of my sources states definitively what Gacek comes from, but it seems highly likely to derive from the word gacek, meaning bat (the animal). It might have originated as a nickname because someone somehow reminded people of a bat, or lived in an area where there were bats, something like that. It is a very common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 4,749 Polish citizens named Gacek, living all over the country. In fact, I have a letter on my desk right now from a lady in England named Gacek. I'm afraid the name offers no clues that help suggest where a family by that name might have originated.

Kochowski, like most -owski names, probably originated as a reference to a place with a name like Kochow or Kochowo with which the family was associated -- if they were noble, they may have owned it, if not noble they probably came from there or did business there or traveled there often. There are at least two places named Kochow, one in Siedlce province, the other in Tarnobrzeg province, and there is a Kochowo in Konin province. This surname is not so common, as of 1990 there were only 332 Poles named Kochowski, living in many parts of the country but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Radom (46) and Tarnobrzeg (175), which are in east central and southeastern Poland respectively. I have to suspect the majority of the Kochowskis came from that Kochow in Tarnobrzeg province, since that is the place with the largest concentration of the name; but it seems likely at least some of the families named Kochowskis came from the other villages I mentioned. The probably ultimate root of all these names is koch-, which means love in Polish.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

... in search of Glembotsky from Vilna, Poland - looking for any / all information/ people and origin, etc. ---

I have no info that will help with the family, but I might be able to give you a few insights on the name itself. First of all, you do realize that "Vilna, Poland" (or in Polish Wilno) is Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, right? I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but sometimes people don't know how much the borders of eastern Europe have changed, and how the place names changed with them, so I figure it's always best to point these things out, just in case it clears up some confusion. I can also assure you that a great many ethnic Poles lived and still live in Lithuania, especially the Vilnius area --my wife's Polish ancestors came from that general area, and she still has relatives living in Alytus (Polish Olita), Lithuania. So it's not at all incompatible to say a Polish family came from what is now Lithuania.

Glembotsky is a Germanized or Anglicized version of the name Poles usually spell Głębocki; the l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w, and the e with a tail under it, usually pronounced like en but before a b sounding more like em. So the Poles pronounce this name "gwem-BOT-skee"; if you factor in Germans' reaction to ł (Germans have no w sound in their language, so they usually just turned ł into a normal l) you can see how easily Głębocki could come to be written Glembotsky.

Głębocki is a pretty common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 2,347 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country; the 10-volume set from which I got this info (which, by the way, does not have first names or addresses or anything more than a total for Poland and a breakdown by province) had access only to data from Poland in its current boundaries, so it would not show anybody by that name still living in Lithuania. I see no real pattern to the name's distribution; it shows up in virtually every province and has the highest numbers in provinces that have greater populations. So unfortunately the name gives no real clue as to where a family by that name may have originated.

There are a couple of roots this name might come from: głąb, meaning "stalk" (e.g., of cabbage), or głęb-, "deep." Whichever is the ultimate root, the surname probably comes directly from a place name, indicating origin in any of the numerous places named Głębock, Głębocko, Głęboka, Głębokie, etc. That's how it usually works with these surnames that come from common place names: there's a lot of folks with such names, and they're spread all over because the name arose independently in many different places at different times. So it's a good bet there are many, many different families named Głębocki, not just one big one.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I had the opportunity to read about your work with Polish names. My last name is Grycki and anything that you could find for me I would appreciate.

This is a tough name, because the form of it doesn't really same quite right for Polish. I don't mean the family wasn't Poles, but there are a lot of surnames borne by Poles that aren't of Polish origin, but Ukrainian, Czech, Lithuanian, German, etc. Furthermore, the name is rare in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 24 Polish citizens named Grycki, living in the provinces of Czestochowa (1), Jelenia Gora (12), Przemysl (2), Szczecin (1), Walbrzych (6), and Zielona Gora (2). This isn't enough data to conclude much from, but I have seen similar distributions for Ukrainian names due to post-World War II displacement of Ukrainians to western Poland.

My best guess is that this name is related to the word gryka, buckwheat; Grycki could very well come from that, although names with Grycz- are more common from that root. There is another possibility that comes to mind. Sometimes in Polish dialect the vowels e and y become confused, so that would make this name = Polish Grecki, which means Greek and was often applied to Ukrainians who were Greek Catholics. In some ways that makes sense because the distribution pattern of the name suggests a possible connection with Ukrainian.

If you'd really like to get an expert opinion and don't mind spending $20 or so, contact the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I have found a new name in my family searching, it is Haszczak. Could someone look for me and tell me the origin of this name and also the numbers of people who had this name from Mr. Rymut's book. I am giving it to a man Roman Haszczak who is the only person in the US listed with this name.

The name is pretty rare -- as of 1990 there were only 22 Poles named Haszczak, living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (4), Gdansk (1), Gorzow (4), Katowice (1), Krakow (1), Rzeszow (3), Szczecin (3), Wroclaw (5). The most likely origin is that it comes from a place, since haszcza is a thicket, a place with dense undergrowth -- presumably Haszczak started as meaning a person who lived near such a place... If Mr. Haszczak wants more info, I'd recommend writing the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I'm researching my ancestors that came to the U.S. in 1914 and 1920. They came from a city named Dubiecko, Poland. The last name is Hendzel. It seems this name is German?? What's the story of such a name?

Yes, the name is probably German. Germans use the -l or -el suffix the way Poles use the suffixes -ek, -ka, -ko, etc., as diminutives, "little ..." The only question is which particular first name Hendzel came from. German expert Hans Bahlow doesn't discuss this name directly, but gives info that suggests it could be from Hans, "John," in which case it's a lot like the name Hansel; or it could come from Heintz or Hentz, short forms for Heinrich (Henry). Polish expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions Hendzel and says it could come from Hans or from Anzelm (Anselm). So it could mean "little John" or "little Henry" or "little Anselm"; diminutives are also sometimes used as patronymics, names formed from one's father's name, so that it might also mean "John's son," "Henry's son," "Anselm's son." Rymut generally seems to know his stuff, so I'm inclined to say it's most likely a German-influenced nickname from the first name "Anselm."

As of 1990 there were some 934 Polish citizens named Hendzel. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (96), Krosno (118), Przemysl (158), Rzeszow (53), and Wroclaw (58) -- so it's most common in the southern provinces, and especially in the southeastern provinces near the border with Ukraine, Przemysl and Krosno. This fits in with your info that your ancestors came from Dubiecko, which, if I'm not mistaken, is in Przemysl province.

It's not surprising that the name is German but is found in Poland. Poles and Germans mixed with each other a lot over the centuries. You find the most mixing in western Poland, near the German border, naturally -- especially after Germany seized western Poland during the partitions and began a policy of settling German colonists on the best land; but there were plenty of Germans living all over Poland, too, dating from much earlier. When plague and war devastated medieval Poland, the nobles owning lands found their estates depopulated and plunging in value. They wanted skilled craftsmen and farmers to come settle on their land and increase the value of their estates. Meanwhile, in Germany there was disease, religious persecution, political unrest, etc., so many Germans were more than ready to go elsewhere. Nobles in Poland (and Ukraine and Russia, too, for that matter) invited them to come settle on their land, giving them various incentives (land free from taxes for up to 20 years, that sort of thing). The native Poles weren't always too thrilled to see all these Germans settling among them, but it was good for the local economy, so they made the best of it. That's why we see pockets of ethnic Germans all over Poland, and that's why a name of German origin can be quite common even in far southeastern Poland.

I know it seems a little odd at first, but believe me, the more you study Polish history, language, culture, and names, the more you realize this was commonplace.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

... My father's surname is Shmegelski and my mother's is Kazczyk (I am purely polish).

Kazczyk is almost certainly a patronymic (a name formed from one's father's name), meaning "son of Kaz" where "Kaz" is a short form or nickname for the popular Polish name Kazimierz. In Polish the suffix -czyk is most often used to form patronymics, as in Janczyk (son of Jan), Adamczyk (son of Adam), etc. The kaz- root could come from the verb kazać, meaning "to order" or in older Polish "to destroy" -- but the patronymic suffix suggests it is more likely to be in this case simply a short form of the Polish first name Kazimierz (usually rendered as "Casimir" in English), an ancient pagan name formed from the verb root kaz-, "destroy" + the noun root mir, "peace." The ancient Slavs (like most Indo-Europeans) liked to give their children names that served as prophecies or good omens, and "Kazimierz" was probably given in the hope that, in the difficult and war-like times in which the ancient Poles lived, Kazimierz would excel in battle. Later Poles loved to take these long names and chop off all but the first syllable and add suffixes to that (not unlike the way English-speaking people formed "Eddie" from "Edward"). I feel certain that's how Kazczyk started, as a name referring to those who were descendants of some fellow named Kaz or Kazimierz who was locally prominent.

The surprise here is that usually patronymics formed from popular first names are very common in Poland, but the Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych [Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland, ed. Kazimierz Rymut, published 1994 in Krakow by the Instytut Jezyka Polskiego PAN, ISBN 83-85579-25-7] shows no one named Kazczyk living in Poland as of 1990! It's not unusual to find that a name died out in Poland after people by that name emigrated, I've run into that fairly often; but I certainly would have expected to see at least a few hundred people by this name. But then this field is full of surprises!

As for Shmegelski, its form proves it has been modified since the family left Poland, because Poles don't use the letter combination sh. In Polish either sz or ś (s with an accent over it) is used to represent this basic sound, so we would expect either Szmegelski or Śmegelski. However, two other spelling points arise. In proper Polish, the combination ge is not normally allowed, it must be gie, so that gives us Szmegielski or Śmegielski. Finally, the combination Śme- is rare, that accent over the s represents palatalization, which affects the whole sound cluster, and predisposes the vowel to be either i or ie: so in proper Polish spelling, one would expect either Śmigielski or Śmiegielski, with Szmegelski a possible alternative because ś and sz are sounds easily confused.

Going by name frequency, I would expect Śmigielski to be the original form; it is easy to see and hear this (pronounced "shmeeg-YELL-skee") could become modified to Shmegelski in English, and that name is fairly common in Poland. Actually the root of this name, Śmigiel is also common, with 1,940 Polish citizens by that name in 1990; but the adjectival form Śmigielski is much more common, with 5,925 Poles by that name in 1990 (there were only 30 Poles named Śmiegielski, which suggests that is just a rare spelling variant of the standard form). The Śmigielskis lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers (> 250) in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (448), Ciechanow (251), Katowice (326), Konin (436), Poznan (518), Torun (265), Warsaw (285), and Wloclawek (272). I don't see any really useful pattern to that distribution, it seems the name has the largest numbers in the provinces with the most people, which suggests the name is evenly distributed and therefore probably originated in many different places and at different times. So it's a good bet all the Śmigielskis are not related to each other!

The root of the name, the noun śmigiel, means "rail in a ladder." It requires a bit of imagination to figure out how this name came to be applied to so many people. Polish names ending in -ski often derive from a place name, and there is at least one village called Śmigiel in Poland, in Leszno province, about 10 km. southwest of the town of Kościan; but there may be many more places by that name too small to show up on the map, or perhaps the name was only used by the locals and never made it into any gazetteers or atlases. So a family Śmigielski might have gotten that name because they came from a place named Śmigiel or something similar. Or a prominent member may have made rails, or was thin as a rail -- who knows? People are very ingenious with names, and it is often impossible to figure out exactly how they got started -- folks are still arguing whether Groucho Marx got that name because he was a grouch, or because he carried what was called a "grouch bag." If we can't settle that question, imagine trying to settle the derivation of a name that started in Poland several centuries ago!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Could you please give me some insight into the origins of my family's surname, Kiszkiel? According to your database of surnames, is it a relatively rare name and from what part of the country does it stem from, if any? ...

As of 1990 there were 390 Polish citizens named Kiszkiel. Here is a listing of where they lived by province, i. e., Warsaw 18 means there were 18 Polish citizens by that name living in the province (not just the city) of Warsaw. I'm afraid more details, such as first names and addresses, are not available; what I give here is all I have:

KISZKIEL: 390; Warsaw 18, Białystok 183, Elblag 4, Gdansk 14, Gorzow 24, Jelenia Gora 13, Koszalin 36, Krakow 3, Legnica 12, Łomża 2, Lodz 9, Ostrołęka 4, Slupsk 7, Suwałki 4, Szczecin 24, Walbrzych 5, Wroclaw 4, Zielona Gora 24

If the name is Polish in origin, it almost certainly derives from the word kiszka, which has a basic meaning of gut, bowel, but is also a term used for a kind of pork pudding or liver sausage, also a term (archaic?) for sour milk. There are many Polish names derived from terms for food, indicating perhaps that a person got that name because he produced or dealt in that kind of food was always eating it, or somehow had a shape or smell that reminded people of it.

I note, however, that the largest concentration of Kiszkiel's is in the province of Białystok, which is in northeastern Poland and borders on Belarus. This is an area where Lithuania has long had influence, and a Polish name in -iel often -- not always, but often -- turns out to be Lithuanian in origin. My Lithuanian dictionary gives kiŝka (upside-down caret over the s, giving it the sound of sh, which Poles spell as sz), meaning thigh, haunch, also kiŝkis, hare. Both the Polish and Lithuanian terms probably come from the same root, originally, but you can see that that root has come to have different meanings in each language, so it does make a difference which language the name came from.

I am sending a copy of this to Dave Zincavage, who is very interested in Lithuanian names and has some sources that may let him give you some additional info.

Based on what I see, I would think names like Kiszka, Kiszko, Kiszczak are definitely from the Polish word kiszka. But with your name the Lithuanian words must be taken into account, because as a rule Poles don't add the suffix -iel to roots, whereas -iel is often seen in Polonized forms of Lithuanian names. So I would think your name is more likely Lithuanian rather than Polish. However, Dave may be able to add some facts that will shed more light on this.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...If you have time, perhaps you can provide me with some data on the surnames of Klucznik and Rydzewski. These are the families of my mother and father, respectively. Somewhere along the line, Rydzewski was mangled into Ryder.

According to Polish surname expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, Klucznik comes from the noun klucznik, which means "steward, doorkeeper, caretaker." The basic root is the term klucz, key. He adds that this name appears in documents as far back as 1489. It is a moderately common surname these days -- as of 1990 there were 1,108 Poles by this name, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Katowice (79), Suwałki (128), Tarnow (127), Torun (82), and Wroclaw (98), and smaller numbers in many other provinces. I don't see any particular pattern to that distribution, which is not too surprising; the meaning of the name is such that it could have arisen independently in many different places.

The ultimate root of Rydzewski is apparently the term rydz, a species of edible agaric according to the dictionary (?!) -- I believe that means it's a kind of mushroom or fungus. But more directly, the name almost certain started as referring to a family's connection with a place by the name of Rydzew or Rydzewo, something like that; the family might have owned the estate, if they were noble, or might have come there or often traveled there, if they were not. Looking over the map, I see there are at least 6 villages named Rydzewo, 4 of them in Łomża province, so it's not surprising that of the 4,054 Rydzewskis in Poland as of 1990, the name shows up in largest numbers in provinces near Łomża: Warsaw (309), Białystok (340), Łomża (405), Suwałki (639). There are smaller numbers (less than 300) living in many other provinces.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

... Since everyone has been asking for the origins of their surnames, I thought I would add two to the list... My great grandfather's parents were Joanna Kolos and Lukasz Wcislo. They were farmers (agricola) in the village of Szczytniki which was less than 20 km east of Krakow. The parish is located in Brzezie, which in turn belonged to the deanery of Niegowic. This is in the Diocese of Krakow.

Kołos was the name of 415 Polish citizens as of 1990. The largest numbers of people by that name lived in the provinces of Białystok (104) and Krakow (131), with smaller numbers in many other provinces. It's tough to say exactly what the name comes from: it could derive from a variant of kłos, an ear of corn, but Kołosz is a known nickname from Mikołaj (= Nicholas). It could even come from the root kol-, round, circular. Of all these, I'd say it's most likely from Mikołaj, kind of like "Nick" in English.

Wcisło is pretty common, as of 1990 there were 4,252 Polish citizens by that name. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (238), Czestochowa (305), Katowice (443), Kielce (286), Karakow (1,218), Rzeszow (151), Tarnobrzeg (187), and Tarnow (200) -- thus it's most common in southcentral and southeastern Poland. It comes from the verb root wcis- as in wcisnąć, "to press, cram, squeeze." Wcisło comes from a participial form, so I'm guessing the name generally started as referring to a small, compact, squat person, one who looked as if he'd been squeezed or compressed. I'm not certain about that, but it seems a likely explanation.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I came across your address while visiting a Polish genealogy site. I am trying to ascertain the origin of the name Krutzel. I know that it is Slavic and most likely Polish. A simple explanation of its meaning would help me immeasurably.

You say Krutzel is Slavic, and that may be right, but we can't assume that. Actually, the spelling tz is German -- Polish uses c for that same sound, so a Polish spelling would be Krucel. Another possible Polish spelling is Kruzel. Also, -l and -el are Germanic diminutives, not Slavic; Slavic uses -k as in suffixes -ek, -ka, -ko, etc. So at first glance the most likely derivation for Krutzel is as "little Krutz," where Krutz may be a first name. I can't find a German name Krutzel, however, which doesn't rule this theory out but also means it's less automatically right than I would have thought -- on first glance I'd have bet good money this name had to be German! And it still might be, I'm just a little less certain now. If it is Germanic in origin, it may have started perhaps as a nickname or variant meaning "son of Kurt" or "little cross" (Kreuz is often used as a name in German with several different meanings, including "crusader, one on a pilgrimage").

If the name is Slavic, it's interesting that there is a Polish word kruciel, a term for a peasant dance like a polka but a little fancer, common in Lithuania and Belarus and coming from the Belarusian word kruciel. Other Polish words that show kruc- come from German Kreutz, cross, so we're back to that again. There are many Polish names from the root kruk- or krucz-.

I should add that it's not strange that I keep talking about Germans and Lithuanians and Belarusians in reference to a name you think is Polish. Names of foreign origin are extremely common in Poland, due to its history. You run into thousands of Hoffmanns in Poland, for instance! Since Poland has at various times ruled much of what is now part of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, and since Germans have long ruled much of what is now western Poland, and since German farmers and craftsmen were often invited in the Middle Ages to come settle in Poland -- well, these are a few of the reasons you find so many "Polish" names that are actually of non-Polish origin. So you can be a good Pole and still have a name that isn't of Polish linguistic derivation.

According to the best data available, there were no Polish citizens named Krutzel or Krucel or Kruciel as of 1990. The only name that does show up is Kruzel, which might be related because in German -tz- and -z- have the same sound, so under German influence the name could be spelled either way. As of 1990 there were 800 Polish citizens named Kruzel, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (189), Katowice (131), Tarnobrzeg (108). In general the places where there are lots of folks by this name are places where a great many ethnic Germans settled, so it makes some sense that the name may be of German origin.

So unless your ancestors came from northeastern Poland or Lithuania or Belarus -- in which case the word for a kind of dance might be relevant -- I would still think German origin is most likely. It might mean little Krutz or son of Kurt or son of Krutz, which might be just a first name or might be a form of the word for "cross."

I wish I could have given you a nice, simple answer, but that's often impossible, especially if foreign influence comes into play. I do hope this is some help to you, however. If you'd really like to get an expert opinion and don't mind spending $20 or so, contact the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

You asked about Witkowski and Kumor. Kumor is a reasonably common name in Poland, borne by 2,283 Polish citizens as of 1990. It comes from a variant form of the word komar, which means "mosquito, gnat, midge." The name appears all over Poland, but the largest numbers live in the provinces of Ciechanow (126), Katowice (347), Kielce (527), Nowy Sacz (104), Tarnow (158), and Wroclaw (108). These are all in southern central Poland, but other than that I see no real pattern to the distribution.

As for Witkowski, it is very common -- there were at least 42,173 Witkowskis in Poland as of 1990. This name generally originated as a way of indicating a person or family came from a village named Witkow, Witkowo, Witkowa, etc., and there are a great many such places in Poland. All those names basically mean Witek's place, usually suggesting the villages or estates were founded or owned by somebody named Witek (that's a short form or nickname of several first names such as Wit, Witold, Witoslaw, etc.). This name is found in large numbers all over Poland, with no discernible pattern to the distribution.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Found your information very interesting. My daughter is trying to define what her name means: Kuzniar. Today is spelled Kuznar, but I remember my father sometimes added the i. Found what Kuz- means with your help but not -niar. Not really sure if it might have been spelled differently when they landed from Europe.

You have to be careful -- Kuz- is one thing, but Kuzniar- can be, and is, something entirely different! That's one of the tough things about Polish names; you have to figure out when you're dealing with a root that's had suffixes added and when those suffixes are an integral part of the root. It can be tricky!

Kuzniar comes from the root kuznia, forge, smithy; the term kuzniarski means "having to do with a forge or blacksmith," so I must assume at some time kuzniar was a term for a blacksmith or one who worked at a forge, though that term doesn't appear in dictionaries. Kuzniar is a pretty common name in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 2,404 Poles by this name. They lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (113), Krakow (133), Legnica (135), Przemysl (321), and Rzeszow (783) -- so the name is most common in southern Poland and especially southeastern Poland.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Would you be interested in doing a lookup for another surname: Lachut pronounced Wahoot or Wahut? I am at a brick wall again. All the Lachut people I have contacted said we are not related. Not sure what nationality it is, though on marriage license all names listed Austria/Poland as birthplace 1850 forward. HELP.....

The name Łachut (pronounced just as you said) is apparently Polish. Or at least, as of 1990 there were 659 Polish citizens with this name, which is kind of high if it isn't Polish! They were scattered all over, with the only sizable numbers living in the provinces of Katowice (49), and TARNOW (321)! Gee, Tarnow was in Galicia, i.e., the partition ruled by Austria. You don't suppose Tarnow province is where your people came from, do you? ... That's interesting; I don't often get such a decisive majority in one spot. I know it doesn't help a whole lot, Tarnow province is still a lot of ground to cover, but maybe it's a little help.

I'm not quite positive what the word meant, because Łachut is not in any of my sources. However, I see firm evidence that łach is a rag, a clout, and łacheta and łachota were kind of slang words for a guy in rags, a beggar or ragamuffin. I think chances are pretty good łachut is just another way of saying the same thing.

So your ancestor was a lousy dresser who came from Tarnow! Aren't you glad you asked?

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I just checked out your page...it is interesting...but I had hoped to find something on Laskowski. However you did explain about the -owski part.

Unfortunately I don't have room in the book or on the Web page for every Polish surname, much as I'd like to be able to do so. But you've got to realize, as of 1990 there were over 800,000 Polish surnames -- so I have to take them a little at a time! I should add that I'm cheating a little when I cite that number, a great many of those names were variants, misspellings, extremely rare, etc. But even if you count only those names borne by more than 25 Poles, that's still over 40,000 names. So I realized some time ago I'm never going to be able to say I've analyzed every Polish surname!

...My father said that his family did come from the Kielce region. Someone had once said that Lask had something to do with the forest, perhaps combining the two would mean that my father's family came from the forest? Whether this has anything to do with family history and name origin, until my grandfather was taken away by the Nazis, my grandfather and his brother worked in the woods cutting trees for lumber. Perhaps this was always a family trade?

Laskowski is an extremely common name -- as of 1990 there were some 25,425 Poles named Laskowski; 812 of them lived in modern-day Kielce province, but you find them all over Poland. There are several ways the name could get started, but in most cases it surely started out referring to some connection between a family and a place named Laskow, Laskowo, Laskowka, something like that; it might have meant the family came from there, or (if noble) had once owned one of those places, or often went there on business, hard to say exactly what the connection was (although in most cases it probably just mean the family came from there).

Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, there's about a jillion places named Laskow, Laskowo, etc., from which Laskowski might have been formed. That's usually the case when a surname can derive from several very common place names.

The next question, then, is what did those place names derive from? Here's where what you said about the connection with woods may very well hold true! The place names Laskow, Laskowo, etc. probably came either from lasek, a small forest or grove, or from laska, which these days means "walking stick" or "cane" but in older Polish could also mean "hazel-grove." Obviously a place would get such a name because it was located near a forest or grove -- so odds were good anyone who ended up being called Laskowski might well have found their livelihood working in the forest. It wouldn't be at all odd if your family's name did turn out to have some link with the meaning of forest, even if by way of a village name.

For that matter, it's also possible the Laskow- didn't come into the name indirectly, by way of a village or estate by that name, but rather came directly in reference to people who worked in a small forest (lasek). That kind of thing did apparently happen sometimes. Usually, however, names ending in -owski do turn out to refer to a place name ending in something like -ow(o/a).

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I've seen you on the GenPol list ... and I would like to request such help.

1. The name that has appeared as Pavlock, Pavalak, etc., almost certainly originated in Poland as Pawlak; all the other forms make sense as English phonetic representations of that name. Unfortunately, there are several places named Komorow in the area formerly ruled by Germany, so I can't pin down which one your ancestor came from. Even before the partitions there were parts of Poland where so many Germans lived that the Poles who did live in the area spoke German more than Polish. And after the partitions, due to the German government's policies toward the Poles, there were many Poles in the German partition who grew up speaking virtually no Polish (it was not allowed to be taught in schools or spoken in any public place). So what you said about your grandfather is not surprising or hard to believe ... Pawlak comes from the first name Paweł (Paul), and probably started as meaning son of Paul. As is usually the case with patronymics from common first names, Pawlak is a very common surname -- as of 1990 there were 43,556 Polish citizens by that name, living in huge numbers all over the country.

2. Nalaskowski is a puzzle. As of 1990 there were 340 Polish citizens by this name, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (64), Gdansk (43), and Torun (158). So the name exists, but I can find no origin for it. -owski names usually point to association with a toponym (place name); in this case I'd expect it to refer to a place named Nalaski or Nalaskow(o), something like that. But I can find no toponym that's a viable candidate. I looked in the 15-volume gazetteer Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego, and even there I found nothing. The odd thing is that in terms of structure and phonetics, it's a perfectly reasonable Polish name -- I just can't find any place by that name! However, there are jillions of tiny communities or subdivisions of villages that have names, are too insignificant to show up in any gazetteer or on a map, yet could spawn surnames. That may be the case here.

3. As for Marciewicz or Marcewicz (Marizewicz is most likely a misreading of Marczewicz, a plausible variant of the other two names; Marizewicz seems really unlikely, but Marcz- in Polish script could easily be misread as Mariz-): the -ewicz ending means "son of," and Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut lists Marcewicz among names deriving from the first name Marcin, Martin. So it's almost certain this name originated as meaning "son of Martin." There are a couple of other names that might come into play once in a while (e. g., Marta [Martha], Marek [Mark], Marzec [March]), but the link with Marcin is the most plausible. As of 1990 there were 110 Poles named Marcewicz, living in the provinces of Warsaw (8), Białystok (9), Elblag (7), Gdansk (4), Jelenia Gora (3), Koszalin (9), Legnica (5), Lublin (37), Lodz (20), Szczecin (7), and Wroclaw (1). There were listings for Marciewicz and Marczewicz, but the frequency was given as 0, which meant there was at least 1 person by that name but the data in the file was incomplete. So Marcewicz is probably the standard form. The data does not allow us to draw conclusions on where it originated -- it probably originated independently in several different places.

As for the place name Orkielniki or Olkielniki, the best match I can find there is with Olkielniki in what is now Lithuania (currently called Valkininkai). This region is in Lithuania now, but before that it was in Russian-ruled territory, and before that it was part of the Poland-Lithuanian nation. It's not unusual to find Poles living in this area -- my wife's relatives live not that far away. So personally, I think this is quite plausible.

4. Rymut says Tamulewicz comes from the noun tama, dike, dam, wier, or the adverb tam, there. I think it might also come from the name Tomasz (Thomas) -- the o and a in Polish sound very similar, Tomulewicz is a known derivative from Tomasz, and I find son of Tom easier to swallow than son of there or son of the dike. However, I'm sure you could make a case for the others, too -- sometimes the origins of names prove to be quite imaginative! Tamulewicz is not a very common name. As of 1990 there were 169 Poles with this name, living in the provinces of Elblag (12), Gdansk (17), Koszalin (39), Legnica (11), Warsaw (12), and Zielona Gora (10), with a few other provinces having fewer than 10.

5. You listed Lewandowka, I wonder if you meant Lewandowski? That is an extremely common surname in Poland, with 89,366 Polish Lewandowskis as of 1990, living all over -- the largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (7,336), Bydgoszcz (9,032), Pila (5,640), Torun (7,490) and Wloclawek (7,809). According to the best data, on the other hand, there was no one named Lewandowka. The root of either name (Lewandowski or Lewandowka) would be lawenda, the lavender bush, especially in toponyms such as Lewandów, a section of Warsaw.

6. As regards your ancestor Eulenburg, I couldn't find any place that seemed to match Ludowen, Russia. But I can say this -- much of what is now Lithuania was part of East Prussia for a long time, and many of the inhabitants, especially in the towns, spoke German. It is also true that over the centuries many Germans fled trouble in their homeland and settled in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, so what you were told by the non-family sources about Germans ending up in Russia is true. But I don't think that's relevant here. The key is that East Prussia had large numbers of Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians living in it, but much of the surrounding territory was ruled by Russia, and later the Soviet Union grabbed it all. So German-speaking people from Lithuania born in Russia actually is not be that big a puzzle -- people from the areas in or near East Prussia up until World War I could fit that description, especially if they were even the tiniest bit less than precise when it came to geographical designations!

...Other family lore, unable to validate but stated by relative someone met in Germany years ago, indicates that there could be a relationship to the German aristocrats by this name: We had a Graf in the family...

Could be. I'll warn you that virtually every family you talk to has a family legend about how they used to be nobility -- an awful lot of the time it proves fallacious. But Poland and Lithuania did have unusually high percentages of nobility vs. peasants; the key was that most of the nobility were so-called petty nobility, not really much better off than the peasants, except they had a sword and a name. And since Germany used to include much of Poland, the same statement can sometimes be made about noble Germans, too. I wouldn't pay too much attention to this family lore unless and until you get proof -- but it's not a ridiculous notion, by any means!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

I am trying to research the surnames "Tylinski" and "Zielinski" - I believe that my Tylinski Grandfather came from the Wielkopolska region - I believe from a town called "Kolo". I think the spelling is reasonably true, as he came to the U.S. sometime after 1900. I am unable to find anything on the Tylinski name (except for a few references, but nothing of substance). I have just begun searching on"Zielinski", but I know even less about my grandmother's history.

Well, ZIELINSKI is spelled with an accent over the N and pronounced roughly "zheh-LEEN-skee." It's one of many Polish names that are so common and so widespread that there is no one derivation. As of 1990 there were 85,988 Polish citizens named Zielinski, living in large numbers all over Poland. There isn't one big Zielinski family that got the name one way, there are many families who all got the name independently in different ways; if you were in a big room full of Zielinskis, you would probably find this Zielinski family got their name one way, that one another, and that one yet another. The most we can say is that the basic root of the name is ziel-, which means "green," as seen in words such as ziolo, "herb" (a "green"), zielen, "the color green," and so on. So ZIELINSKI may have started in some cases as referring to the kin of a fellow who raised or sold herbs, or a fellow who always wore green, or some other perceived association between a person or family and something green.

In most cases, however, it probably started as a reference to the name of a place the person or family came from. There are many towns, villages, estates, etc. with names like Zielen or Zielin or Zielina, all from the root meaning "green," and Zielinski could refer to any of them; it can just as easily mean "one from Zielen," "one from Zielin," "one from Zielina," etc. So there's no way to learn from the name itself anything about a given Zielinski family. Only successful genealogical research may uncover facts about which particular place the name refers to, if it refers to a place, or what the family's connection to "green" originally was, if it doesn't.

TYLINSKI is spelled with an accent over the N also, and is pronounced roughly "till-EEN-skee." Theoretically it can refer to a place name, something like Tyla or Tylin or Tylina or Tylno; but I can't find any places with names that fit. That doesn't necessarily mean much -- surnames developed centuries ago, and often the places they referred to have since disappeared, changed names, become too small to show up on most maps, etc. Often surnames came from the names locals used for a particular field or hill or other feature of the land, names that would never show up on any but the most detailed maps, or in local guides. So it is quite plausible the name means "one from Tyla" or any of the other possibilities I mentioned.

But TYLINSKI literally means "of, from, connected with the of Tyl," so it might also mean "kin of Tyl." That is a name that can come from a number of different roots, including tyl, "rear, back, behind," or tyle, "how much," or the German first name Thill, or even from a nickname from "Bartlomiej," the Polish form of "Bartholomew." So without detailed information on a specific family's background there's no way even to make a reasonable guess exactly which meaning is relevant. All I can do is list the possibilities, in hopes that one day your research will uncover some fact that will shed light on exactly how the name developed.

As of 1990, according to the best data available (the Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych, "Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland," which covers about 94% of the population of Poland), there were 739 Polish citizens named Tylinski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 103, Leszno 111, Lodz 82, and Poznan 116. So there is no one area with which this name is particularly associated; a Tylinski could come from almost anywhere in Poland, especially western Poland. I'm afraid the place name Kolo isn't necessarily much help because there are at least 3 places by that name in Poland. The one you want is probably the one east of Konin and northwest of Lodz, since as of 1999 that is in the far eastern part of modern Wielkopolska province; but it's unwise to rule out the others until you're certain. In 1990 Kolo was in Konin province, and the Slownik nazwisk directory shows no Polish citizens named Tylinski living in Konin province.

Copyright © 2000 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

I found your site, and perhaps you can help me. I am attempting to find a section of my mother's family that did not manage to escape Poland before the Nazi occupation. The family name is Zatorski or Zatorsky. I am curious as to the origins of this name.

ZATORSKI is adjectival in form, and comes from the noun zator, "blockage, especially of a river's course; ice jam," or from place names derived from that noun. There are at least three villages or settlements called Zator (at least 2, one near Bielsko-Biala and one near Skierniewice) and Zatory (near Ostrołęka). As of 1990 there were 4,287 Polish citizens named Zatorski, living all over Poland. So like the vast majority of Polish surnames, this one doesn't provide a researcher a whole lot to work with.

Copyright © 2000 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I was wondering if you could look in your dictionary for the names Szudarek and Mondrowski. These are my husband's grandmother's maiden name and her mother's maiden name.

There were 45 Poles named Mondrowski, in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 28, Pila 3, Piotrkow 1, Szczecin 1, Wloclawek 8, Zielona Gora 4. However, this is just another way of spelling Mądrowski (the Polish nasal a, written as an a with a tail and pronounced much like on, so that many names are often spelled either way). Mądrowski is a more common name, borne by 516 Poles in 1990. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (99), Pila (77), Poznan (49), and Szczecin (66) -- so it seems most common in northwestern and western Poland in the area, formerly ruled by the Germans.

The root is the word mądry, wise, although in many cases Mądrowski probably started out meaning "person from Mądre or Mądrowo." There is at least one place on the map I can find that qualifies, Mądre, a village in Poznan province, southeast of the city, but there may be other, smaller places that don't show up on my maps yet could be connected to this name.

As of 1990 there were 88 Poles named Szudarek. They lived in the following provinces: Gorzow 4, Katowice 8, Pila 54, Poznan 13, Szczecin 9. So the largest numbers are in northwestern Poland. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, the name comes from the root szudrać, meaning "to scrape, scratch."

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
 

... Hello, I am a bride to be of a Polish man with the surname Lichorobiec. I didn't see it on the surname list and wondered if you had any information on this name.

Lichorobiec, that's an interesting name, I've never run into it before. As of 1990 there were 164 Polish citizens with this name, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (1), Biala Podlaska (1), Bielsko-Biala (4), Gorzow (9), Katowice (2), Kielce (1), Krakow (7), Krosno (1), Lublin (2), Opole (3), Slupsk (1), Tarnow (120), Walbrzych (6), Zamosc (6). (I'm afraid I have no details, such as first names or addresses). Obviously the area around the city of Tarnow in southeastern Poland is where this name is most common, one would suspect it originated there and shows up in other areas because people moved from the Tarnow region. However, that's a guess, and could be wrong.

The meaning of the name is perhaps not too flattering. The root licho in Polish means "bad, miserable," and robi- comes from a root meaning "to make, do." Just looking at the name, it would appear to mean "one who makes lousy things" or "one who does not do well." But maybe it's not such a bad name: in Ukrainian the same root seems connected more with "misfortune, trouble," and since Radom is not far from Ukraine, there might be a Ukrainian influence on the name. In other words, instead of "ne'er-do-well, guy who always messes up," it may mean something more like "poor devil, one things just don't go right for."

Frankly, I'm guessing here, and it's entirely possible Lichorobiec has a specific meaning that I can't find (although it's not in my 8-volumePolish language dictionary, so that would make it a pretty rare word). But just going by what the word appears to say, that's what it would mean.

If you'd like more info, I recommend contacting the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

...I think I have a very rare last name. It is Ludwiczak. On My grandfather pass port He put down Karaze Poland. I have tried other people with the same name and all say the same thing. They just know that their families came here from Poland. Could you help Me to know more about the Ludwiczak name?

Ludwiczak may be rare in this country, but in Poland it's quite common. As of 1990 there were 4,579 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country but with the largest numbers (over 200) in the provinces of Kalisz (479), Leszno (241), Lodz (383), Płock (303), Poznan (964). This is basically a strip running from Poznan and Leszno and Kalisz provinces in west central Poland up to Płock and Lodz provinces in central Poland. That's where the name is most common -- but you find decent numbers of Ludwiczaks living in every province.

The reason for this is the meaning of the name: "son of Ludwik." So this name could start anywhere they spoke Polish and had guys named Ludwik, that is, anywhere in Poland. Surnames formed from popular first names usually are common all over the country -- which makes sense, but is unfortunate in that it provides no helpful clues for those trying to find out where their family came from.

The form Karaze is suspect, it doesn't sound Polish and I can find no place by that name. I wonder if it might be Karcze? Very often these names did get misread or misspelled when immigrants filled out papers, and for that matter a c can look very much like an a. There are a several villages this might refer to, but the most likely one is Karcze in Siedlce province -- it was served by the parish church in Zbuczyn, which is where vital records would have been kept. There was another Karcze in Lithuania, near Dzisna, but the one in Siedlce province is the one I'd start with. You might do a little investigating and see if that place works out as correct. I can't guarantee it is, but from what you've told me that seems the best guess.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

...I travelled to the city of Debica, studied the history of the word Miazga in Polish, and done a great deal of genealogical information. If you would be interested in corresponding or mentioning if you have even stumbled upon the name, please e-mail me.

Miazga is not a name I could find any expert comment on. In my book on Polish surnames I noted a possible derivation, from the noun miazga, meaning "pulp, chyle." It's a little tough figuring exactly how such a name came to be applied to a person, but we see so many examples of this in Polish that we have to accept it: sometimes a surname comes from a nickname, and it's tough to know how nicknames get started (people are still arguing over the exact origin of Groucho Marx's name!).

This is a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 2,905 Poles named Miazga. The largest numbers lived in these provinces: Warsaw 232, Lublin 356, Radom 138, Rzeszow 324, Tarnobrzeg 147, Tarnow 125, Zamosc 191. Clearly it's most common in southeastern Poland, although there are smaller numbers living in virtually every province.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.
 

...I am trying to find the origins of my family name Mojsiewicz [from the region of Nowogrodek] and to determine whether the Jewish connotations of this name would indicate that the family converted at some time to Catholicism. It has been suggested to me that the name has its roots further eastwards towards Armenia but I'm not sure of the thinking behind this.

Mojsiewicz is probably from Ukraine or Belarus, since "Mojsiej" is the form of the name "Moses" in the East Slavic languages, while "Mojzesz" is the Polish form. So it's probably of Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian origin. What's most likely is that the family came from one of the East Slavic countries, and the name was probably written in Cyrillic, but at some point it came to be written by Poles and thus the Polish spelling -ewicz added to the not-so-Polish first part ... Mojsiewicz was the name of some 281 Poles as of 1990, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Gdansk (25), Koszalin (31), Olsztyn (25), Slupsk (33), Szczecin and (48). That's a long way from Ukraine, but we can probably thank World War II and all the forced relocations after it for that -- I'll bet before the war these names showed up mostly in eastern Poland... In the last century or two names from forms of "Moses" tend to be associated primarily with Jews, so one would expect the family to have been Jewish at one point, although from what you say it sounds as if your family must have converted to Christianity. But since Jews in Eastern Europe generally did not take surnames until the 1800's, this would suggest the family must have converted within the last 150 years.

As for place of origin, Armenia seems unlikely. The suffix -ewicz (Polish spelling) or -evich (Russian, Belarusian spelling) or -evych (Ukrainian spelling) is Slavic, and the Armenians aren't Slavs. That doesn't mean a family by that name might not have been in Armenia for a while; but I think we're fairly safe saying the name is not of Armenian linguistic origin.

...Secondly I am interested in the name Onychimowicz [from the same region] - some genpollers thought the origins may be Greek Orthodox.

Onychimowicz and Onichimowicz don't appear in the surname directory, but we do see Onichimiuk (that -iuk ending is very much East Slavic!) borne by 183 Poles, and Onichimowski (142), and numerous names from the Onisk- root, e. g. Onisk (393), Oniszczuk (1,222), Oniszko (204), Onyszczuk (259), Onyszko (473), etc. So this particular form is rare in Poland these days, but you can probably find something very similar in Ukraine.

This name means "son of Onychim" (for our purposes -owicz and -ewicz may be regarded as identical) and the Greek Orthodox theory is probably right. There's a Ukrainian name Onysim (from a Greek term meaning "useful, advantageous"), and I'm fairly certain Onychim is a variant of it (the guttural sound of ch often gets switched around with other sounds). So this is almost certainly a name of Ukrainian origin (if it were Belarusian the o would probably have become an a, Anychim). I can't seem to find any source that confirms this, but I've run into this name often enough to feel fairly certain I'm right.

... I have read in Rymut that the surnames Mojsiewicz and Mosiewicz are of a different root - do you think this is absolute or are there any circumstances under which the two names may have been confused or amalgamated [i.e. by Russian officials]?

You never say "never" with surnames, and certainly names with Mos- sometimes derive from various forms of the name "Moses," just as they can come from other sources. I will say this: it's dangerous placing too much emphasis on a single letter in any name, but that j in Mojsiewicz really does increase the odds that that name is from "Moses." It's not absolute, and certainly the names could have been confused.

The problem is, however, that you can only put so much weight on linguistic analysis before it snaps. One solid fact is enough to topple the most sophisticated analysis, and accidents happen -- one tired clerk writing a J when he didn't mean to can confuse even the best onomastics expert! If you trace the family back by the difficult and tiresome process of genealogical research, analysis of the name can often help confirm ideas about its origin; but analysis of the name seldom gives you anything solid enough to take you where you want to go without research.

Having said all that, however, in most cases I've found that if a letter like that J persists, it usually is a reliable indicator.

In a later note Kristin gave some additional info:

...as we have a photo of a document from 1680 naming a Danilo Mojsiewicz Onychimowicz, but the crest of arms on this document have been identified as the Mosiewicz emblem (Topacz herbu). Which leads me to all this confusion....

This additional info definitely changes things! It is very hard for me to imagine that this Danilo (a Ukrainian form of the name "Daniel") could have been a noble in 1680 if he were a Jew! Jews were ennobled sometimes, mainly if they provided major financial support for kings or other big-wigs in money trouble -- but such cases were rare. Also, I can't imagine Onychimowicz as a Jewish name -- it almost certainly means he was Greek Catholic or Orthodox. So Mojsiewicz, there, is highly unlikely to be Jewish; it may still mean "son of Moses" but dating from a time before the name Mojsiej became so strongly associated with Jews. I found one source that says before the 18th century Mojzesz (or Mojsiej) was a name used by Christians and Jews, only after then did it come to be almost exclusively associated with Jews. I also found a source that cites legal records from 1437, 1472, and 1493 which mention farmers named Mojsiej living in Ukraine and Lithuania. In that time and place it would be pretty unusual to find a Jew who owned land in Ukraine and farmed it -- it's not impossible, but it would be rare!!!

So if we're talking that kind of time frame, Mojsiewicz could mean "son of Moses" and refer to a Christian. "Danilo" could be Christian or Jewish, but Onychimowicz is almost certainly Ukrainian Christian, perhaps Orthodox, perhaps Greek Catholic. (I don't often deal with people who have records back to 1680, which is why I generally view things from a time-frame of 18th century on unless something tells me otherwise.)

But that still leaves the question of the Mosiewicz emblem and the Mojsiewicz name. There just isn't enough info to justify a conclusion. There are other, non-Jewish names Mojsiewicz or Mosiewicz could come from, including the old pagan compound name Mojslaw (literally "my fame") -- as I believe you noted, Rymut specifically mentions that names in Mosi- and Mosz- could have arisen as short forms or nicknames from that name, and if so Mojsiewicz and Mosiewicz may merely be variant of the same name, "son of Mojslaw." It is not all uncommon to see different spellings of the same name, in that context the presence or absence of that J would not necessarily mean much. So that theory is tenable; but so is the "Mojsiej" = Moses theory.

In any case, I think the added info you cited makes it extremely unlikely that Danilo was Jewish. That info strongly suggests the name derived either from one of those ancient Slavic compound names, such as Mojmir or Mojslaw, or from the East Slavic form of "Moses" dating from a time when that name was still widely used by Christians.

Thanks for telling me more, it certainly made a difference!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I thought I would inquire about these names. Sanocki I can find nowhere. The Nowakowski name was changed to Novak. Could you tell me a little something about these names.

Nowakowski is an extremely common name, as of 1990 there were 54,178 Polish citizens by that name. It comes from several places with names such as Nowaki, Nowakowo; those place names come from the word nowak, new fellow, new guy in town, from the root now-, new. Nowak also sometimes was applied to converts to Christianity, who were new men, so to speak. The same name is very common in other Slavic languages, especially Czech, where it is spelled Novak (but is pronounced virtually the same as Polish Nowak, NO-vahk).

Sanocki would have originated as meaning coming from or otherwise connected with Sanok -- Sanok is the name of a good-sized town in Krosno province in far southeastern Poland ("Sanok" in turn comes from the name of the San River). This is a fairly common name, as of 1990 there were 1,006 Polish citizens named Sanocki. They lived all over Poland, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Gorzow (80), Katowice (71), Krosno (172), Pila (94), and Przemysl (118) -- the highest concentrations are, as one would expect, in southeast Poland, near Sanok.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I have just recently read a text version of chapter one of your book Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings. I found this information very interesting and found myself wanting to find out more seeing as I am in the process of researching my roots... Through my investigative process I have found that my maiden surname, Okrzynski, is not very common, but should prove to be very interesting in its source, and it is that reason that I am writing to you today.

Okrzyński is, indeed, a pretty rare name. As of 1990 there were only 95 Polish citizens by this name, living in the provinces of Jelenia Gora (31), Katowice (2), Legnica (2), Lodz (1), Opole (7), Rzeszow (1), Szczecin (16), Tarnobrzeg (10), Walbrzych (8), and Wroclaw (16). (I'm afraid I have no further data, no first names or addresses, just this). It's hard to see much of a pattern to that distribution, except the name is mainly to be found in western Poland.

Surnames ending in -yński are usually from toponyms (place names), and in this case I would expect the place to be named something like Okra -- but I could find only two in my sources. One is the name of a river, the Okra, a tributary of the Dniepr in Ukraine. The other was the Polish name of a village near what is now Daugavpils, Latvia -- which means it might now be in Latvia, in Lithuania, or in Belarus, and God only knows what its name is, if it still exists. (The village was served by the Catholic parish in Birzagol and was in the rural district of Kapino, just in case you care to look into this more). There may be a place or places in Poland named Okra that are too small to show up on the maps or in gazetteers, or have changed names, or vanished, yet gave rise to the surname centuries ago. But I was unable to find any of them.

[Note: Alice later wrote me as follows:]

...During my research I came across a national park named Swietokrzyski, as well as a plant name Okrzyn jeleni (Laserpitium archangelica). The plant is found only in the Babiogorski Park. Could this possibly be connected in any way??

[I congratulated her on her research, and agreed that it might very well come from the name of this or a similar plant. But the following advice is still good:]

If you'd like to learn more, I recommend contacting the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Have ordered your book but my surname, Orlicki, may not be in it since my paternal forebears were/are in Galicia (sort of a grey area now, methinks).

Anyone who orders my book is welcome to whatever help I can give. I will tell you that Orlicki is in the book because it's a fairly common surname in Poland -- so even though the eastern half of Galicia is now in the independent country of Ukraine, there were enough Orlickis left within Poland's current boundaries that the name obviously needed to be in my book. But here I can go into a little more detail than I did in the book (although obviously the book gives a whole lot more background -- I hope you won't regret buying it, and if reaction from others is any guide, I believe you won't).

...Dad and one of his brothers came to the US about 1905 and the surname somehow came out as Orlitzky. When he applied for Soc. Sec. the records had to reflect the Orlitzky name. I think probably that was the phonetic spelling of Orlicki. At that time of course he spoke no English so the mistake was not corrected. The phonetic spelling of immigrant names was not uncommon as I understand.

Yes, Orlitzky is a German or English phonetic spelling of Orlicki, which is pronounced sort of like oar-LEET-skee. And phonetic spelling of immigrant names was exceedingly common. You're kind of lucky the name wasn't mangled a lot worse than this!

...I have no documented family history, but oral history has the family origin at the time of one of the Mongol invasions during the 13th century and that the surname Orlicki derives from the Polish root word for eagle. Dad was not one to live in the past, so what little family history I can recall came from my mother's recollection of what he told her. (Dad was not one to exaggerate either). As you know each generation rewrites history and oral history probably has little resemblance to the facts.

This could well be true. You're right, of course, family oral history can be notoriously unreliable -- and yet every so often it turns out to be right on the button. Obviously I have no resources to say anything about your family at the time of the Mongol invasions, but it is absolutely true that Orlicki derives from the Polish word orzeł, eagle (when endings are added the z and e both drop out, leaving the root orl-). The surname might have been formed from a nickname like Orlicz (son of the eagle) or Orlik (little eagle), or it may derive from a place name such as Orlik or Orlicze, referring to a family connection to a place with such a name (if they were noble, they may once have owned an estate with such a name; if they were peasants, they may have worked on or come from such a place). There are several ways one could end up with the name -- but the bottom line is, somewhere along the line eagle had something to do with it. A person's bravery may have reminded folks of an eagle, he might have followed the standard of the eagle in battle, etc.

As of 1990 there were 1,085 Polish citizens named Orlicki. They lived all over the country, with the highest numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (226), Katowice (100), Krakow (77), Olsztyn (65), Poznan (78), and Radom (83). I don't see any particular pattern in that distribution, except that the highest concentration appears in provinces in southcentral Poland (Bielsko-Biala, Katowice, and Krakow). I don't see any useful conclusion to be drawn from that, but it's worth remarking on -- you never know what fact might prove relevant down the line.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I am wondering what my name means, I am in the process of writing a simple family history. I have family in Canada, U.S.A., Poland, and Ukraine. In Poland the spelling is Pankiewicz, in Canada there are variations, like Pankewycz (which is my name). I don't have a font that will do Ukrainian lettering. My father was born in Dobra Sljachetska, and my Grandfather was from Bryzawa and Lypa. I have been told that the family was originally from Tarnopol.

As I think you realize, the different spellings are all of the same name, but there are slight phonetic differences between Polish and Ukrainian, and the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets have different ways of rendering them. So basically Pankiewicz and Pankevych are the spellings a Pole and a Ukrainian, respectively, would write the name down when they heard it spoken; Pankewycz would be a kind of hybrid form, and such forms are very common.

As of 1990 there were some 3,157 Poles with the name Pankiewicz. They lived pretty much all over Poland, with no apparent pattern to the distribution -- the name could and did arise in many different places. This makes sense, it means "son of panek," a name that could get started almost anywhere Polish or Ukrainian (perhaps also Belarusian) are spoken -- I'm sure there are plenty of Pankevych's in Ukraine, though I have no way of checking... In any case, the real question is, what does panek mean in this case?

It could have several derivations. The most obvious is as a diminutive of pan, "lord, master," also "bridegroom"; as best I can tell, this term was and still is used much the same way in Ukrainian as well as Polish. So panek could mean "little master, little lord," but could also mean "son of the master, son of the lord" -- often -ek used as a diminutive did have a patronymic sense to it. Panek was also used in its own right as a term meaning "minor noble," one who owned some land but not enough to be considered a real big-wig. So in Pankiewicz/Pankevych we might possibly have a name that was meant to be insulting, applied to the son of a fellow who acted like he was a lord; or it might come from an affectionate way of referring to a popular lord, "little master's son"; or it might be a straightforward name meaning simply "son of the minor noble."

The other very real possibility is that Pankiewicz might be patronymic for the son of a fellow named Panek or Panko, nicknames derived from such first names as Pankrac, Pantelejmon, Opanas, etc. -- this is especially likely in view of the Ukrainian connection, since those last two names were more common in Ukraine than in Poland. This is not unlike the way English-speakers took the name "Edward," chopped off the last syllable, and added the diminutive suffix to make "Eddie" -- the same process could produce Panek or Panko from one of those longer names. Then the son of such a fellow would be called Pankiewicz. This could certainly happen with a Polish family, but I suspect it would be even more likely with a Ukrainian family.

We don't have enough data to determine which of these plausible derivations is right in your family's case. Probably the only way to find that out would be to do detailed research on your family, and you'd be rather lucky if documents still exist that go back far enough to settle the matter. But it seems pretty certain the name either means basically "son of the little lord" or "son of Panek," with Panek being a nickname for a fellow with one of those other names I mentioned. The connection with Dobra Szlachecka (literally "noble's estate") might add just a little more weight on the side of the "lord's son" theory.

By the way, since this name could get started several different ways, it's not surprising it is so common. And the fact it is common suggests it did get started several different ways; some Pankiewiczes are "little lord's sons" and some are "Panek's/Panko's sons." That is circular reasoning, I know, but things often do seem to work that way in the world of name derivations.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...Do you have any info on the origin or meaning of Tomaschewski or Pettkus? These were my grandparents' last names. Their birth records show that they were born in Sonnenborn and Tawelleningken, Germany, in 1888. Supposedly these were parts of Prussia..... I have traced Sonnenborn to now being Stoneczik, Poland...any help with the names would be appreciated.........thank you

Pettkus is an interesting name, because I would expect it to show up in Poland, yet a 1990 Polish government database shows no one by that name in the country! I looked under all the spelling variants I could think of, especially Petkus (Polish rarely uses double letters), and none of them showed up. The closest I got was Pettke, of which there were 372, living in the provinces of Elblag (19), Gdansk (342!), Slupsk (7), and Torun (4) -- all in northwestern Poland, in the areas ruled by the Germans. I have run into many cases before where a name undoubtedly existed in Poland at one time but has since died out, and this may be another such case. The linguistic origin of the name is almost certainly a German-influenced form of a Polish nickname for Piotr, Peter -- the original Polish nickname may have been something like Pietka, Pietko, Pietek, and under German influence it was modified to Pettke or Pettkus. I have no sources that document this, so I'm not 100% certain about it, but this explanation is very plausible and I'm confident it is, in fact, correct.

Tomaschewski is simply a spelling by German phonetic values of the common Polish surname Tomaszewski (the sh sound is spelled sch by Germans and sz by Poles). This name comes ultimately from the first name Tomasz, Thomas. The -ewski ending usually indicates an origin with a place that has a name ending in -ew or -ewo or -ewa or -ow or -owo or -owa (also sometimes -e or -y). You'd expect Tomaszewski to mean person coming from or formerly owning or somehow connected with a place called Tomaszew, Tomaszewo, Tomaszow. Unfortunately, there are quite a few places with these names, so without further information you can't tell which of those places is the one your ancestors got their name from.

Since there are several places with names that could yield Tomaszewski, you'd expect the surname to be pretty common and spread all over the country -- and that is the case. As of 1990 there were 38,139 Polish citizens with this name, and there's no real pattern to their distribution -- the largest numbers of them tend to show up in the provinces with the largest populations.

A gazetteer of German place names says Tawellningken was also called Tawellenbruch, and was in Kreis Niederung in East Prussia; a separate source says that there were two places by this name, apparently very close to each other; one had civil and Protestant records kept in Seckenburg, the other had Protestant records kept in Seckenburg, Catholic records kept in Schillgallen, civil records in Inse. Trying to find what these places are now called is not easy. I found Seckenburg -- it used to be in East Prussia, but now it's called Zapovednoye, and it's 69 km. northeast of Kaliningrad, in that little separate section of Russia that sits on the Baltic, just north of Poland and west of Lithuania. I was not able to find anything on the other places, but at least this will give you a notion where to look for more info.

By the way, the Polish name for Sonnenborn is Słonecznik, with a slashed l, not Stonecznik. This is an easy mistake to make, the l with a slash through it looks like a t, but it's not -- it's what the Poles consider a hard l and is pronounced like our w. Anyway, Słonecznik is a few km. south of Morag in the northern part of Elblag province in modern Poland. This area, too, was part of East Prussia back when the region was under German rule. If you look on a map you'll see that Elblag province is just south of the area where Seckenburg/Zapovednoye is located. So far northern Elblag province, that little separate section of Russia around Kaliningrad, and perhaps some of the adjacent portions of Lithuania are where you need to look for your ancestors.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

... I was wondering if you have any information regarding the surnames of Pilarski and Sytek. I believe the Sytek name came from the area of Posen, Poland.

Pilarski comes from the word pilarz, "sawyer," that is, one who saws. Actually pilarski is the adjectival form, meaning "of, belonging to, relating to a sawyer"; when used as a surname, it would mean little more than "kin of the sawyer." Often these -ski names also derive from place names which in turn derive from other names or terms, but I can find no places that seem to qualify. So I think basically you could just say it's the equivalent of the name Sawyer in English. It is a very common name, as of 1990 there were 8,544 Poles by this name. They lived all over the country, in every province, with especially large numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (954), Katowice (737), and Poznan (610) -- I see no real pattern to the distribution, just that the most Pilarskis live in the provinces that have the largest populations.

Sytek is much less common, as of 1990 there were only 251 Poles by this name, spread out all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (68), Kielce (24), and Poznan (55). The derivation, according to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, is from the adjective syty, meaning "well fed, sated." The -ek suffix is a diminutive, meaning "little ..." and often used to mean "son of," so this name would mean either "a little guy who's well fed" or "son of the well-fed guy." I should mention that the dictionary also shows syta as mead or syrup for feeding bees, which might be relevant -- in both cases we see the common meaning of "food, nourishment." But it seems to me most likely the surname started out as a nickname for the son of a fellow who obviously hadn't missed too many meals!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...I would appreciate any information you may have on the name Pochopien (my father's) or Litko (my mother's). Both are of Polish ancestry having grown up in Chicago.

Pochopień is a name I'm not positive about. In Polish this root appears in the adjective pochopny, hasty, inconsiderate (i.e., a fellow who's quick to grab whatever he wants and slow to let go), and in the verb pochopić, to catch, grasp, to understand. This is a reasonable interpretation, and grammatically Pochopień makes sense coming from pochopny, so this explanation is probably correct; but I couldn't find any source in which Polish scholars confirmed this, so I like to let folks know there's a question mark beside it.

I note that in Czech there's a term pochopeni that means "understanding," and citove pochopeni means "sympathy." I guess in Czech that same meaning of "grasp" is associated more with "ability to grasp the situation and understand it," whereas in Polish it sometimes means that but can also refer to someone who's grasping, hasty, inconsiderate.

I've also wondered in the past if this name might be a variant of some other names that sound kind of similar, based on the root półchłop-, literally "half man, half peasant." This term was sometimes applied to a man who'd been castrated, but more often to a peasant who owned half a full-sized farm. The ł is pronounced like our w and is often barely pronounced, so it's not stretching things to note that "Półchłop-" could often sound like "Pochop-," and thus there might be a connection. I doubt it, but it's worth mentioning as a possibility, I guess. But I'd need really good evidence before I'd take this for Gospel -- the other explanations seem quite a bit more likely.

As of 1990 there were 1,095 Polish citizens by this name, so it's not a rare name. It shows up all over Poland, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (497), Katowice (254), Krakow (107); in other words the name is most common in far south-central Poland, very near the border with the Czech Republic. That's why I wonder whether the first Polish meaning (grasping) or the Czech meaning (understanding) is more relevant -- if a given family with this name came from the southern part, near the Czech border, it might have started more as a compliment, Pochopień = "fellow quick to grasp the situation" as opposed to "guy hastily grabbing everything in sight." I'm really not sure which is relevant in this case, so I thought I'd mention both.

Litko is a little easier. The -ko is a diminutive suffix ("little ..."), which strongly suggests this started as a nickname for a fellow with a name like Lutobor, Lutogniew, Lutoslaw, etc. Those are all ancient pagan compound names with the root lut-, "strong, ferocious," so that Lutogniew was a name of good omen meaning "may his anger be ferocious," Lutoslaw meant "may his fame be strong," etc. The same root shows up in modern Polish in such terms as litować się, "to have mercy." Poles loved to take names, chop off all but the first few sounds, then add suffixes, sort of the same way we turned "Edward" into "Eddie." So basically Litko started out as a nickname of a man with such a name, or perhaps a name for his son ("little Lutobor" -> Litko).

The funny thing is, many names from this root are rather common -- there were 468 Poles named Litka in 1990, 474 named Litke, 586 named Litkowski - but only 27 named Litko! That surprised me a little, I would have expected the name to be more common. The 27 Litko's lived in the provinces of Gdansk (2), Katowice (8), Konin (12), Lublin (2), and Walbrzych (3). I'm afraid I don't have addresses or any more info on them, what I've given is all I have.

If you'd like to get more expert input on the Pochopień name, you could write the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

 

...We're going to Poland in April - unable to learn where my ancestors where born, but would love to know anything about my mother's maiden name Jarmulowicz and my father's name Rutkowski.

As regards the name Jarmułowicz (the ł stands for the Polish slashed l, pronounced like our w), the -owicz suffix means "son of," so it means "son of Jarmul(a/o)." Jarmul/Jarmula/Jarmulo could come from the root jarm- meaning "yoke" or "noise," but I strongly suspect in this case it comes from an Eastern Slavic (Ukrainian, Russian, or Belarusian) name we'd spell as "Yermolai" or "Yarmolai" (from a Greek name meaning "clan of Hermes"). The one thing we're sure of is that the name started as a patronymic, a name formed from one's father's name, and the father was called something like Jarmul, Jarmula, Jarmulo; that may have been a Polish name from the root meaning "yoke" or "noise," or it may have been the fairly common Eastern Slavic first name Yermolai. As of 1990 there were 281 Polish citizens with this name, scattered all over Poland but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (34), Katowice (23), Łomża (20), Suwałki (52), and Wroclaw (26) -- I see no useful pattern there, the Jarmułowiczes basically live all over Poland. (Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names, addresses, etc.).

The one thing I do see that might be a little helpful is that if Jarmulowicz does come from that East Slavic name, it probably is from the Belarusian form, rather than Ukrainian or Russian -- in those languages it's usually Yermolai, in Belarusian it is Yarmolai. In other words, that Jar- beginning (which is pronounced like Yar- anyway) suggests the name more likely originated in Belarus than in Russia or Ukraine. And I notice a lot of the Jarmułowiczes live in Suwałki and Łomża provinces, up in northeastern Poland, near the border with Belarus. So while it isn't certain, there is some evidence to suggest your family probably came from northeastern Poland or western Belarus.

Rutkowski is a much more common name, as of 1990 there were 41,363 Poles by this name. They lived all over the country, here are the provinces with more than 1,500: Warsaw (4123), Białystok (2048), Gdansk (1841), Katowice (1815), Lodz (1622), Płock (1596), Torun (1928), and Wloclawek (1567). Names ending in -owski usually originated as references to a place name, and we would expect Rutkowski to refer to villages name Rutka, Rutki, Rutkowo, etc. There are at least 9 such places in Poland, so without a lot more detailed info there's no way to make an informed guess as to which one your ancestors came from. Sadly, that's the way it is with most Polish surnames based on place names: the only way to know which place your people came from is if you have so much info on them that you probably already know exactly where they came from! Once in a while a surname will give you a useful clue, but not often.

Anyway, I hope this info is a little help to you, and I hope your trip to Poland is wonderful!

Copyright © 1998 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

LUTY

… If you could help me with a quick note on the origin of the Luty name. I have run into a stonewall, my Luty side of the family has been deceased for over twenty years, and all the info I have sent away for has not been very helpful. I truly appreciate this, and will contact you again when I have further my geneologic research.

Polish name experts agree that Luty can come from the Polish word luty, which is the Polish name for the month of February. It's not unusual to see names of months used as surnames; perhaps such names began as a way to commemorate when a person was born, or a time of year when he performed some special service... Luty can also come from the root that gives February its Polish name, luty, "severe, bleak" (in other words, it's the "bleak" month); this root also appears in ancient Slavic pagan names such as Lutobor ("one severe in battle"), and sometimes the surname could have begun as a short form or nickname for such names beginning with the root Lut-. So it's hard to pin down exactly what the meaning of the name was originally; but since this form matches that of the month's name exactly, I lean toward thinking the name Luty (as opposed to others beginning with Lut-) probably did start as a reference to the month.

It is not an uncommon name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 2,033 Polish citizens named Luty. They were not concentrated in any one part of the country, you run into the name pretty much everywhere.

GORZKIEWICZ

… Im hoping you can help me. My wife and I have been trying to research her family but cant seem to get any where with her family name. Can you tell me anything about the name " Gorzkiewicz"

Names starting with Gor- are a challenge in Polish, because that root has several different meanings, and it can be terribly difficult to straighten the tangle out and figure which one is applicable to a particular name. The root can refer to góra, "mountain, elevation," or it can refer to gorzeć, "to burn," or it can refer to gorzki, "bitter"; it can also appear in old Slavic pagan compound names such as Gorzysław ("one who burns for glory," or "one of burning glory"), because such names were often abbreviated, so that Gorzek or Gorzko could easily have started as a short form or nickname for a fellow with one of those names. So about the best I can do is make an educated guess.

The suffix -ewicz is easy, at least, it means "son of." So we're dealing with a name "son of Gorzk-." I would think this would be the first name Gorzko (or possibly Gorzek), so the name was probably first applied to sons or kin of a man named Gorzko. He might have gotten that name because he had a bitter disposition, but I think it's more likely he had one of those names from the ancient pagan names such as Gorzysław; that's usually the way it works out in these cases, according to the experts. So I believe the surname means "son of Gorzko," with Gorzko being a kind of nickname for Gorzysław or a similar name. If so, the surname is probably pretty old -- a 1394 entry in a legal record mentions a fellow named either Gorzek or Gorzko (the name is Latinized, so it's hard to say for sure which form was meant in Polish).

As of 1990 there were 1,173 Polish citizens named Gorzkiewicz; they lived all over the country, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (81), Kalisz (138), Lodz (351), which are all roughly in central and west central Poland. However, significant numbers people by this name appeared in the other provinces, so we can't really point with any certainty to any particular area and say "Here's where the Gorzkiewicz'es come from." Most likely the name developed independently in many different parts of the country.

DEPUT

… Have you any record of the surname Deput in your listings?

The 10-volume set of surnames used by Polish citizens as of 1990 does have a listing for Deput. There were 125 Poles by that name, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 70, Elblag 7, Gdansk 4, Lublin 1, Olsztyn 28, Pila 2, Przemysl 4, Rzeszow 4, Torun 4, Wroclaw 1. Unfortunately I do not have access to any further data such as first names or addresses.

The name presumably comes from a shortening of the term deputat, "envoy, delegate," which is of Latin origin.

WĄDOŁOWSKI

[This is a response to some materials he sent in Polish that shed light on the origin of the surname Wądołowski in the case of his particular family. I’m including it here because others with this name may find the information useful, or at least interesting. – WFH]

The material Lucjan Wądołowski sent you consists of excerpts from a Polish armorial by Ignacy Kapica Milewski, citations from old records that mention Wądołowskis of Odrowąż arms and of Grabiec arms. The Polish is archaic and would take me quite a while to translate, and I am on deadline right now for several publications, so I can't translate the whole thing. But I can spare a few minutes to summarize some of the entries.

The first section is on Wądołowski's of Odrowąż arms. The first notation comes from an entry in 1421, the records of Opoczynsko in Sandomierz district, mentioning a Jan Koniecki, squire of Konskie, who was apparently an ancestor of the next fellow mentioned. The second entry is from 1470 and quotes entries in legal records for the Commonwealth Chancellory, saying a Maciej Koniecki acquired 20 wlokas of the forest called "Wandały" and later called "Wądoły," in Wizna district, and founded the village Koniecki Wądołowo, from which his heirs took the name Wądołowski, of Odrowąż arms. The 1577 entry is from Łomża city records, and the 1580 from Wizna city records, etc., telling of routine matters where so and so "signed off" [pisze sie] on something.

The second section is a text entry telling some of the history of the Wądołowski's of Odrowąż arms, who appear to be the same family, in the same areas, as mentioned above. The last entry -- the one most likely to tell you whether these people are any connection to you -- comes from 1792, and mentions Stanisław z Koniecki-Wądołowa Wądołowski, the son of the married couple Wojciech Wądołowski and his wife Jean nee Karwowski, grandson of Mateusz Wądołowski, City Burgrave of Wizna, swore loyalty to the Wizna district regency.

The final section cites mentions of another Wądołowski group, bearing Grabiec arms. It mentions that in 1413 the Prince of Mazovia confirms a charter whereby Scibor of Sanchocin, whose lands included a section of 10 wloka's lying below Strumkowska Gora [the name of a góra, a hill or mountain] near Łomża called Wandałowo or Wądołowo, transferred those lands and others to Michal, Andrzej, Stanisław and Chlewietka Drażewski, and they settled there and founded the village of Wądołowo, from which they took the name Wądołowski. The subsequent entries mention these people and the heirs of Chlewietka in 1423, 1479, and 1503.

This tells you there were apparently two different noble families named Wądołowski, one named for land near Opoczno in what is now Piotrkow province in central Poland, the other for lands near Łomża in northeastern Poland. You'll have to determine whether either is likely to be any relation to you. If not, this information won't do you any good. But if you find traces of your family near Łomża or Opoczno, this just might help you.

There is a gentleman named David Zincavage <jdz@inr.net > who has a pretty good armorial library, he might be able to tell you more about this family -- if you haven't talked to him (I may have referred you to him earlier). He usually answers questions fairly quickly, so it might be worth your while to get in touch with him and see if he can add anything to this from other armorials.

I hope this is some use to you, and have a great time in Poland!

POLEK

… I found out that there were 1227 people as of 1990 in Poland with the name Polek, and was referred to you to inquire where in Poland they live according to their region.

As of 1990 people by this name lived in virtually every province of Poland, so there is no way to point to any specific area and say "That's where your Polek's came from." The distribution does show a definite concentration in southcentral and southeastern Poland, however, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (105), Krakow (129), Rzeszow (71), Tarnobrzeg (224), and Tarnow (301).

That's about the only conclusion we can draw from the data available: Polek's live all over the country, but the largest numbers live in southcentral and especially southeastern Poland (the last three provinces mentioned).

SPYCHALSKI

… I was wondering if you have ever came across the surname of Spychalski. I not been able to find any information on this surname except that the Head of State of Poland the late 60s was Marion Spychalski. Hopefully knowing the origins of the name can help.

Probably not, because it's a rather common name. As of 1990 there were 3,511 Poles with this name, living all over the country. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of: Bydgoszcz 559, Gdansk 264, Kalisz 243, Lodz 224, Pila 223, Poznan 241, and Wloclawek 358, with smaller numbers in virtually every province. From that data about the most you can say is that the name tends to be more common in central and western Poland, in the areas formerly ruled by the Germans. Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut says it derives from the term spychać, "to push, thrust, drive"; the name Spychala is very common (4,747 Poles as of 1990) -- it would mean "one always pushing, driving," and Spychalski would be an adjectival form of that name. This would suggest the surname Spychalski started out meaning something like "kin of Spychala," with that presumably originating as a nickname for someone who was always pushing or trying to get people moving.

I'm sorry I can't give you more detailed information, but for what it's worth, I'd say at least 90% of Polish surnames don't provide any useful clue as to exactly where they originated. Once in a while I can dig up something that proves helpful, but usually the names are too common, or too ambiguous, to really tell us anything useful.

ZAKRZEWSKI

… Zakrzewski is my maternal grandfathers name. I know he immigrated the the US alone at the age of 15 and was later joined by other family members. I know he was born in Poland prior to 1900 unfortunately my mother cannot remember a town or city. My mother pronounces her maiden name Zachevski. Any help on the origin/translation would be helpful.

This is a very common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 26,210 Poles named Zakrzewski, living all over the country. In Polish it is pronounced roughly "zok-SHEF-skee," and it comes from the roots za-, "past, beyond, on the other side of," + krzew, "bush." So you could interpret it as "the one who lived past the bushes," but in practice it usually refers to a specific village or town named Zakrzew or Zakrzewo, which, in turn, got those names because they were located in a bushy area. The problem is, there's a whole bunch of those, all over Poland -- way too many to allow us to point at any one and say "That's where you came from."

I'm sorry I can't give you more detailed information, but for what it's worth, I'd say at least 90% of Polish surnames don't provide any useful clue as to exactly where they originated. Once in a while I can dig up something that proves helpful, but usually the names are too common, or too ambiguous, to really tell us anything useful.

STYPA -- WOLCZEWSKI

… I was looking for information on the Polish surnames of Stypa and Wolcheski. I am sure the spelling has changed greatly over the years. If there is any information you can pass on to me i would appreciate it.

According to Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, Stypa comes from the noun stypa, "funeral banquet," the term for the banquet usually given for mourners after a funeral. Offhand it's unclear exactly how that would come to be a surname -- perhaps it originally was a nickname for someone who always seemed to be giving such banquets, or who gave particularly good ones, or maybe even someone who was always showing up for them (kind of like a professional mourner, or someone always looking to mooch a free meal?). Those are just guesses -- all these centuries after the name started, about all we can be sure of is that it referred to some connection between a person or family and funeral banquets.

As of 1990 there 1,058 Polish citizens named Stypa; they lived all over Poland, but nearly half lived in the province of Katowice (420) in south central Poland -- the rest were scattered all over, with no other province having even 100. I can't imagine why they would be so concentrated in Katowice province, and of course there's no guarantee that's where the family you're interested in came from. But the numbers suggest that might be an area to look at more closely.

Wolcheski is harder because it's unlikely that was the original spelling -- it doesn't look or sound right, and there was no one by that name in Poland as of 1990. Most likely the spelling has been changed to fit English phonetics. If so, I'd guess the original spelling was Wolczewski, except that name is also virtually unheard of in Poland; there were 4 Wolczewski's, all living in Krakow province, and 5 who spelled it with the L with a slash through it, living in the provinces of Gdansk (2), Gorzow (1), Olsztyn (1), and Ostrołęka (1). It's possible those are the people you're looking for (unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses). However, it's also possible the original form of the name was something else, not obvious. So if your research turns up any other spellings -- perhaps Wloczewski or Wlochowski, there are several possibilities -- get back to me and I'll see if I can tell you anything about them.

DRAŻBA

… I am looking for information on the name Drazba. I would appreciate any information you could give me.

I've never run into this name before, but it's not all that rare: as of 1990 there were 386 Polish citizens named Drażba (I'm using ż to stand for the Polish z with a dot over it, pronounced like the "s" in "pleasure"). The vast majority, 267, lived in the province of Suwałki in northeastern Poland, with tiny numbers scattered in numerous other provinces. That makes me wonder if the name might be of either Lithuanian or Belarusian origin -- but I have a pretty good source on Lithuanian names, and while it says there are a few people by this name in Lithuania, it offers no meaning. So this suggests the name may be Belarusian, and unfortunately I have very little on names in that language.

A massive 8-volume Polish-language dictionary does mention drażba as a dialect variant of the word draszka, "threshing, payment for threshing" (ultimately from German dreschen, "to thresh"). So this probably started as a name for an agricultural laborer who did threshing for a living. I can't be positive, because none of my name sources specifically mentions this; but it does seem pretty likely, and it makes sense.

So I think we're on fairly safe ground if we say this name comes from northeastern Poland, possibly also Lithuania and what is now Belarus (all of which used to be part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), and was an occupational name for a thresher.

GÓRALEWICZ

… My problem is that I cannot find any history on my surname (my grandfather, Alexander (Alexius on his Baptismal Certificate) Goralewicz, may have been an only child and an orphan. His Birth Certificate says he was born on March 28, 1877 in Zalczoiwie, District of Rohetyn, in Galicia, and was baptized at St. Michael Greek Catholic Church. His father's name was Onaphren Goralewicz, and his mother was Maria Langorski

The Polish form of your surname would be Góralewicz, pronounced roughly "goo-raw-LAY-vich." The -ewicz suffix means "son of," and góral is a Polish word meaning "mountain men," so the surname means "son of the mountain man." Specifically, the góral usually refers to people living in the Carpathian mountains in southeastern Poland, western Ukraine, and eastern Slovakia -- they are thought of as colorful people with their own customs, dances, clothes, and dialect. So your grandfather's name suggests origins somewhere in that area, much as you thought. There are various sources of info on the górale -- you might find some at the Website www.infoukes.com, and I remember seeing mention of a book on góral customs somewhere, though I can't find it right now -- maybe a Web search would find it for you. You might also want to look for info at the Culture/Customs on this site.... In any case, the name Góralewicz is not all that common in Poland these days, as of 1990 there were only 185, scattered all over the country but with a slight concentration in the provinces of Przemysl (57) in southeastern Poland and Wroclaw (30) in southwestern Poland. The numbers in Przemysl and Wroclaw provinces make sense geographically, as both areas are rather mountainous; also, the Wroclaw numbers might be influenced by post-World War II forced relocations of millions of Ukrainians from southeastern Poland and western Ukraine to the territories taken from Germany and incorporated into Western Poland... I don't have data for Ukraine, it may be that Góralewicz'es are fairly common there; also, I don't have access to further details on where the Góralewicz'es lived in Poland, such as first names and addresses, I only have a breakdown by province.

By the way, to be strictly accurate, your grandfather's original name was not Alexander but Alexy = Alexius in Latin. The names come from the same Greek root, and are often confused, but they aren't really the same name. I don't know what "Zalczoiwie" is, that's clearly misspelled, but the district name was Rohatyn. His father's name was probably Onufry (in Latin Onuphrius), a first name more common in Galicia than in Poland proper.

Langorski is a problem -- as of 1990 there was no one in Poland by that name, I have never run across it before, and it's in none of my sources. It might be a name more common among Ukrainians than Poles, but I can't help wondering if it's been misspelled. For instance, in some records r and w can be hard to distinguish, and Langowski is a common name. Or we might be dealing with Polish nasal vowels that can end up being spelled several ways. The bottom line is, I don't have anything on it -- but if you ever run across records where it's spelled differently, let me know and I'll see if I can find anything on it.

… My grandfather married Maria Ilcewicz (or Milewicz) in NYC in 1906, and it was supposedly a family joke that they were from two different "classes", and could never have married in Poland. I think her family was wealthy landowners and lived in an area that today is part of Russia, while my grandfather lived in the far south (near the Goral Mountains?), and had served in Franz Joseph's army before coming to the US in 1902.

All that is plausible enough, but it's tough analyzing names if you're not sure what the correct form was. Milewicz is a moderately common name (1,334 Poles by that name in 1990), meaning "son of Mil-," where the latter is probably a short form of a longer first name in which the first part is the root mil-, "dear, loved, nice." As of 1990 there were 223 Poles named Ilcewicz (no particular concentration in any one part of Poland), and 157 named Ilewicz. Both would mean "son of" something, but again, the question is, was the name Ilcewicz or Ilewicz? In either case, the name probably means "son of Ilya" -- that's a Ukrainian form of the name Elijah or Elias.

I hope you can find further records that will clear up the spellings of some of these names of people and places, because some of them are clearly distorted (Zalczoiwie, for instance, is definitely not correct for Polish or Ukrainian). It will help a lot if you have correct spellings to deal with. Unfortunately, with Eastern European research, getting the right spelling can be half the battle! These names were often mutilated unintentionally when folks emigrated.

I only charge for name analysis if I do the most thorough job I can, checking every source I can think of. When I do a "quick and dirty" analysis, as in this case, the research only takes a few minutes and I don't see any need to charge for it. In most cases I wouldn't come up with more even if I spent several hours on it, and I think this is such a case. So there's no charge for this info.

CZERNIEJEWSKI -- LAMCZYK

… My father's full name was Raymond C. Lamczyk, and he lived his life in the town of Radom, in the southern part of Illinois. . . my mother's maiden name is Czerniejewski, her full name being Florence L. Czerniejewski. . .Ii know absolutely nothing about if and when the Lamczyk name was shortened, changed, etc.

This name is hard to pin down, none of my sources mention it specifically, and there are a couple of different ways it could have developed, theoretically. I will say this, there is no reason to assume it was changed or shortened -- the name Lamczyk was borne by 508 Polish citizens as of the year 1990, so it's a perfectly good name. The Lamczyk's lived all over Poland, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (87), Gdansk (59), Katowice (81), Kielce (98), and smaller numbers scattered in numerous other provinces (unfortunately, I have no access to further details such as first names or addresses). It's interesting that the name is more common in areas once ruled by the Germans, where German language and names tend to show up often, so we can't rule out some German connection.

The suffix -czyk in surnames usually means "son of," so the question is, what does Lam- or Lamc- mean? There are several possibilities. The name Lamm exists among Germans, from the German word for "lamb," and we can't rule out the possibility that this meant "son of Lamm," perhaps referring to a shepherd or a man who had that name because he reminded people of a lamb or was somehow associated with lambs. It could also derive from a shortened version of a first name, perhaps Lambert; Poles often formed short names or nicknames from first names by taking the first few sounds, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes, so that "son of Lam[bert]" is plausible. The root lam- also shows up in a verb lamować, "to trim," that is, "edge, pipe, add a border"; it seems somewhat unlikely that this surname might refer to the son of a fellow who added borders or piping to clothes, etc., but it's not out of the question.

If the name was originally Łamczyk -- I'm using ł to stand for the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w, but often left simply as l when Poles emigrated -- it could mean "son of a łamacz," a person who broke or crushed stone for a living. The problem with that is, the named Łamczyk is virtually unknown in Poland these days, so the odds are we're dealing with Lamczyk, which is a moderately common name.

On the whole, with no firm data to base my analysis on, I would tend to think either "son of Lamm" or "son of Lambert" is the most likely derivation. But I can't be certain.

If you'd really like to know, you might contact the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow. They don't do genealogical research, only research on the origins of names. They charge US$10-20 for analysis of a name, and they can correspond in English. If you're interested, read more and get the address from this Webpage: http://www.polishroots.org/surnames_index.htm

Czerniejewski is a name meaning "person from Czerniejew or Czerniejewo or Czerniejow," and there are several Polish villages by those names, so without further info on the family we can't say which of those villages the name originally referred to in your family's case. It's a fairly common surname, as of 1990 there were 1,616 Poles named Czerniejewski, living all over the country.

BOGDAŃSKI

… I was wondering if you could give me any information on my surname, it is "Bogdanski"? I know some history behind the name, but not much any help would be appreciated.

I'm afraid I can't give you much detailed information, because this is one of many Polish surnames that derive from popular first names, and such surnames tend to be very common and distributed all over Poland, since by their very nature they could develop almost anywhere. Thus in 1990 there were 5,543 Polish citizens named Bogdański (ń stands for the accented n). The surname comes from the first name Bogdan, which is a Slavic compound name meaning literally "God-given" (a Slavic equivalent to Hebrew Nathaniel, Greek Theodoros, etc.). Bogdański means literally "of, pertaining to Bogdan," and thus might have originated as a term for "kin of Bogdan," or "person from Bogdanka or Bogdanki [Bogdan's place]," etc. There are several villages by those names, so even if we assume the surname referred to a place rather than just meaning "Bogdan's kin" -- and that's probably not a justifiable assumption, in most cases "Bogdan's kin" probably was the original meaning -- it still doesn't narrow things down much.

With that many Bogdański's, it seems likely the name developed independently in many different places at different times, so there isn't one big Bogdański family, but rather many different ones, and they could have come from anywhere in Poland.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, but if it's any help, that's the way it is with, oh, at least 90% of Polish surnames. They just aren't unique enough to offer any really useful leads. Folks often hope I can give them some info based on the name that will help lead them to the place of origin in Poland; I wish it worked that way, but it seldom does.

BAZIŃSKI -- HEJZA -- KOŁTON

… I am the only person in my family that knows how to use the Internet. I am the first generation that was born in the United States. I am 17 years old from troy michigan and want to desperately find my ancestors and family tree. I cannot use a program from the store since my mom and Dad are born in Poland and I am afraid that a lot of the records were lost in the War.

First off, I don't do research; I have all I can do translating records and editing and typesetting various publications. But I can suggest some organizations that might be able to help you quite a bit with your questions.

I would strongly advise you to visit the Website of the Polish Genealogical Society of America at . There's a lot of free info on there that can help beginners. The PGSA also has a handout on genealogy software -- I'm not sure whether it's on the Website, but you could look. If it's not, I'm sure you could buy a copy for a few dollars; I believe it's also included in the packet of info people get for free when they join the PGSA.

Another organization that might be able to help you a lot is the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan. They're not really on the Internet yet, but you can write them at this address:

PGS-MI
c/o Burton Historical Collection
Detroit Public Library
5201 Woodward Ave.
Detroit, MI 48202-4007

With your family's Michigan roots, PGS-MI might really be able to help you find some excellent leads; you might want to consider joining -- I think their dues are either $15 or $20 a year -- and since they specialize in Poles who settled in Michigan, they're probably your best bet for making valuable connections.

There is also a book you might want to look for at a library or bookstore. It's by Rosemary Chorzempa, and it's called "Polish Roots," 1993, Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore MD, ISBN 0-8063-1378-1. Many, many people have told me it helped them enormously when they were getting started, and it's relatively easy to find -- the Barnes & Noble just up the road from my house sells it. I believe it's $20 or less, and lots of folks swear by it.

The reason I'm giving you this info is because surnames, in themselves, very rarely offer any real help with tracing a family. They're just too common. Thus as of 1990 there were 1,012 Polish citizens named Kołton, and another 2,689 used the variant Kołtun. It comes from a root kołton meaning "twisted hair, shaggy hair." Obviously this is a name that could develop independently in many different places all over Poland. Knowing what it means is nice, but doesn't do a thing in terms of helping you find your ancestors.

Other names, such as Baziński, are not so common, but don't really help a lot either. As of 1990 there were 113 Polish citizens named Baziński, but they were scattered all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsk-Biala (25) in southcentral Poland, and Tarnobrzeg (37) in southeastern Poland, and a few here and there in many other provinces. (I don't have access to further data such as first names and addresses, what I've given here is all I have). Polish name experts believe the name comes from the first name Bazyli = English Basil; Poles often formed names by taking the first part of a popular first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes, thus Baz- + -in- + -ski. This means nothing more than "kin of Basil," or "person from Basil's place."

Hejza is not listed in any of my sources, so I don't know what it comes from. As of 1990 there were 123 Polish citizens by that name, again scattered all over, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (32), Slupsk (20), and Wloclawek (23) -- which means it appears mainly in northcentral and northwestern Poland. That suggests it might be of German origin, since a great many Germans have lived in that part of Poland, and if so, it probably comes from German Heise, which originated as a nickname for "Heinrich" = English "Henry."

As I say, this is how it goes with the vast majority of Polish surnames -- it's nice to know what they mean, but they don't provide much in the way of real help. And that's why I think the information you can get from the sources I mentioned is your best bet. Or, if you can afford it, you might hire a researcher who specializes in Poland; but that gets expensive, and you can do a lot of that yourself, with a little assistance from the PGSA, the PGS-MI, and Chorzempa's book.

SKARPIAK -- SZKARPIAK

… After reading your response & explanation of "Jankowski", I am hopful that you will be kind & help me with my maternal surnames. In searching Skarpiak I have come to a dead end. The brothers Skarpiak appeared to all have daughters & I am only aware of two decendants still living (which again are females), Would you be able to provide additional info re family name(s)?

Skarpiak appears to be a very rare name. None of my sources mention it, and as of 1990 there was no one in Poland by that name, or named Szkarpiak (Polish names beginning with S- often have variants beginning with Sz-, and vice versa). It might possibly come from the term skarpa, "buttress, escarpment" -- if so, it probably means something like "one who lived near the buttress, one who worked on the buttress," or else the son of such a person.

The only mention I could find of such a name anywhere was in the Index to Obituaries in the Polish-language Chicago daily Dziennik Chicagoski. There was an obit for a Walenty (Valentine) Szkarpiak who died 30 Apr 1928 in the Chicago area, in the 3 May 1928 issue of that paper. Also, a Franciszek (Francis or Frank) Szkarpiak was mentioned in two other obits for people named Szymanska. If this sounds like a possible lead, I'd suggest going to the Website of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, www.pgsa.org, and searching their Chicagoski and other databases for Skarpiak or Szkarpiak. If the name is all that rare, there is a chance these folks might be related to you, and searching those databases might turn up some leads (if these aren't people you already know about).

If you don't mind spending $10-20 to learn more, you might try writing the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Insitute in Krakow -- they don't do genealogical research, only research on name origins, and they can correspond in English. For more details, see the introduction to Polish surnames at http://www.polishroots.org/surnames/surnames_index.htm.

KREJPCIO

… As far as I know, it was Boleslaw Krcipczio, altho his immigration papers showed it as Krejpcio, The latter is what I used when I was in grade school. It is now spelled Krepshaw. The passenger list indicates he was from Biala Wala, Russia. I guess that is/was a Polish province taken over by Russia. He immigrated to Phila., PA.

Well, there are so many Polish surnames that it's tough to say anything definitive about them if you don't have a correct spelling -- and Krcipczio makes no sense phonetically or linguistically, it's surely a misreading or misspelling somewhere along the line. However, there is a name Krejpcio which might fit -- it's close to some of the variant spellings you gave, and would be pronounced roughly "CRAPE-cho" (rhymes with "scrape-snow"), which could easily become Krepshaw in America. I can't be certain that's the right name, but it's close enough to be worth mentioning.

As of 1990 there were 172 Polish citizens by that name, of whom the vast majority (141) lived in the province of Suwałki, in northeastern Poland, on the border with Lithuania. And Krejpcio is almost certainly Lithuanian in terms of linguistic origin. It appears to come from the Lithuanian word kreipti, "to turn, make crooked." I would suppose the name might have referred originally to someone who had something crooked about him -- not meaning he was a crook, but rather that he had a crooked leg or back or something like that. We see a lot of Polonized forms of Lithuanian names near the border, so that makes sense in terms of what you said. The area was originally Polish, but was taken over by Russia in the 1800's. And vast numbers of Polish-Lithuanian immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, so that fits too.

… His papers also had last spelled as ....Krepcio, Krepshio. I cannot find Biala, Wala anywhere on a map that I have. Can you help me??? This info. is necessary, as I want to find his birth certificate so I can find out who his parents were.

Place names with bial- in them are very common -- the root just means "white." Biala Wala doesn't seem right, but Biala Wola could well work. There could be quite a few little villages or communities by that name, but I notice there is at least one on the map, a little village called Biała Wola (the ł stands for the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w) in the extreme northern part of what is now the province of Olsztyn. This is some distance west of Suwałki province, but not so far as to be implausible -- and it is still quite near the border with Lithuania. So geographically speaking, it fits -- it was in the Russian partition, and it's close to Lithuania. I can't guarantee it's right, but I think the chances are good enough to make it worth a look... If it doesn't pan out, I'd try "Biala Woda" (literally "white water"), but I'd try Biala Wola, Olsztyn province, first. The only problem is, my sources list no Krejpcio's in Olsztyn province, so if they did live there once, they seem to have moved or died out. But some of the Krejpcio's in Suwałki province may well be relatives.

To find birth certificates, you need the parish church that served the community in question. I can't find anything that says for sure which parish serves Biała Wola, but on the map it appears Lubomino is the closest -- it's only a few kilometers away, that probably is where folks in Biała Wola would go to register births, deaths, and marriages. I don't know if the LDS Family History Library has microfilmed the records for Lubomino parish, but I'd suggest going to the nearest Mormon Family History Center and seeing if those records are on file. If they are, you can have them loaned from Salt Lake City to your FHC and can look through them there -- much faster and cheaper than writing to Poland. If it turns out the records you need aren't available through the FHL, then you may have to write the parish in Poland, or the Polish National Archives.

As I say, there are too many variables here for me to be sure I'm right. But if I were you, I'd try looking for a family named Krejpcio living in or near Biała Wola, Olsztyn province, probably served by Lubomino Catholic parish.

[Addendum: Mr. Krepshaw later wrote back to ... inform us that these suggestions turned out to be exactly right! Hurray! That's one for the good guys!]

BRYK

… is the name Bryk covered in your book? I'm interested in its etymology. In your opinion, is it common for a surname, such as Bryk, to be found in Jewish as well as Catholic families (predominantly the latter, I think)?

Bryk is mentioned in the book, although with 30,000 names in 400 pages, you can imagine I don't have room to give a whole lot of detail on any one them... Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut says Bryk can come from two roots: from the old Latin first name Brictius, which was used more often in Poland centuries ago (it's almost unheard of today) in forms such as Brykcy and Brykcjusz; or from the verb root brykać, "to frisk, gambol." The form Bryka shows up in documents as early as 1397. Personally, I suspect Bryk derives in most cases from the first name -- surnames derived from first names are very common in Polish, and the Poles often took the first part of a name, dropped the rest, and used that first part as a new name or nickname, often adding suffixes.

Now what I just said applies mainly to Polish Christians. Alexander Beider's book on surnames of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland (the part under Russian rule roughly 1772-1918) does mention Bryk as a surname borne by Jews, especially in the areas of Makow, Zamosc, Bilgoraj, Stopnica, and Warsaw. He says this name, when used by Jews, usually comes either from Yiddish brik, "bridge" (compare German Bruecke) or from an acronym of Ben Rabiy Yaqoyv Qopl, "the son of Rabbi Jacob Koppel"... By the way, it is not at all unusual to find that Christians and Jews have names that look exactly the same but had different derivations. So among Christians the derivation would probably be from the first name Brykcy/Brictius or the verb meaning "frisk, gambol." But for Jews it would come from the usages I just described.

As of 1990 there were 3,278 Polish citizens named Bryk, so it's a moderately common surname. The bryk's were distributed fairly evenly over the country, with a slight concentration in southeastern Poland.

I imagine most of those Bryk's are Christians, simply because the Jewish community was utterly devastated by the Nazis, and you find very tiny numbers for most distinctively Jewish names. But when dealing with families who emigrated before World War II, the name could easily be either Christian or Jewish.

RADZISZEWSKI

… I have long wondered on the meaning of my family name: Radziszewski. Would you have any information on its origins & meaning ?

Names ending in -owski and -ewski usually began as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name, generally ending in -ow/-owo or -ew/ewo. So we'd expect Radziszewski to have started out meaning simply "one from Radiszew/o or Radiszow/o." There are at least two places this surname could have derived from, and perhaps more, too small to show up in my sources (or they may have changed their names over the centuries since the surname was established). There is a Radziszow in Krakow province, maybe about 20 km. south-southeast of Krakow; and there are villages named Radziszewo-Krole and Radziszewo-Sienczuch in southeastern Łomża province. People from any of these places (and, as I say, possibly more) could have ended up with the name Radziszewski... The names of these places mean, in effect, "the [place] of Radzisz" -- Radzisz is an old Polish first name appearing in documents as early as 1414, coming either from a root meaning "joy" or from a root meaning "advise." Most likely it started as a nickname or short form for a longer compound name such as Radomir ("glad of peace") or Radosław "glad of fame"), or it could have meant "the adviser" or "the joyful one." At any rate, somewhere along the line a little settlement or village founded or owned by a guy named Radzisz could easily end up being called Radziszów or Radziszewo, both meaning "Radzisz's place"; then later a person connected to that place could be called Radziszewski = "one from Radziszewo" = "one from the place of Radzisz."

This is a fairly common surname, as of 1990 there were 4,982 Polish citizens named Radziszewski. They lived all over the country, with especially large numbers in the provinces of Białystok (1,087) in the northeast; Katowice (228) in southcentral Poland; Łomża (208) in northeastern Poland; and Warsaw (462) in east central Poland. It's conceivable all these Radziszewski's might have gotten their names from the three villages I mentioned above, but it seems just a little far-fetched, which is why I think there may once have been more places with names that could generate this surname.

For what it's worth, this is how it goes with the vast majority of Polish surnames -- very few offer really helpful clues with exactly where a given family came from. Usually about the most you can hope for is a reasonable idea of what the name meant when it originated; I'd say about 90-95% there is no link with any specific area, at least nothing precise enough to give you a good lead.

TOŁODZIECKI – TUŁODZIECKI

… My new cousin and i are looking for surname of Tolodziecki, or Tulodziecki. She found it on the wall of honor. my name has changed from what my dad's was on birth and his father's birth. so we are having fun looking to see how it all comes together

The first question is the original form of the name. I have a 10-volume set that lists all the surnames of Polish citizens as of 1990 and tells how many lived in each province (but unfortunately does not give further data such as first names or addresses), so I looked up both spellings and got these results (ł stands for the Polish l; with a slash through it, pronounced like our w):

Tołodziecki, total 121; provinces with 10 or more: Koszalin 18, Legnica 10, Torun 48; there were a few other provinces with fewer than 10.

Tułodziecki, total 747; provinces with 50+: Warsaw 57, Bydgoszcz 57, Ciechanow 101, Olsztyn 71, Torun 141, Wloclawek 108; numerous other provinces with smaller numbers.

So this suggests both forms are "correct," but Tułodziecki is probably the standard form, and Tołodziecki a variant spelling of that, based perhaps on regional variation in pronunciation. Also, the names are most common in northern and northwestern Poland, in areas formerly ruled by the Germans, mainly East and West Prussia.

Names ending in -cki or -ski, more often than not, referred originally to a connection between a person or family and the name of a place -- we'd expect the place or places to be something like Tułodziad. And in fact there is a village and former estate by that exact name, Tułodziad, called "Taulensee" by the Germans, in what used to be Ostróda county, but now in Olsztyn province; it's located roughly 20 km. east of Lubawa and 25 km. south of Ostróda. It is a few km. west of Grunwald, the site of a very important battle in 1410 between Polish and Lithuanian forces and the Teutonic Knights; the Knights were defeated, a major turning point in Polish history.

The name of the village is a puzzle, it appears to be a combination of roots tul- meaning "wander, be exiled" or "hug" + dziad, "old man, grandfather"; I have no more information on the name's meaning, but it looks as if it might originally have been named for some old man who was exiled (?), or perhaps for a man with a compound name meaning "affectionate grandfather." Those are just guesses, until Polish scholars finish a large 10-volume dictionary of Polish place names they're working on (they've only gotten up to the D's so far), I'll have no way of knowing for sure, but that's what the name appears to mean.

None of my sources mention the surname Tułodziecki directly, but odds are it originally meant just "one from Tułodziad." If the family was noble, this may mean they owned it; if non-noble, they were probably peasants who worked on the estate there, or came from there and moved elsewhere.

DZIURA -- JAROCH -- KIEŁTYKA -- KOCHANOWICZ

… You printed a letter and your reply, to someone re: the name "Kielton", and your response included reference to the name "Kieltyka". That is my mother's maiden name... If I understand correctly, that you are able to provide the derivation of the name, and location where it originated, I would be very interested.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions Kiełtyka in his book on Polish surname (on-line we use ł to stand for the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w but usually just rendered as plain old l in other languages). He says it comes from the root kiełtać, "to cut with a dull knife." I'm not sure how this got to be a person's name, and apparently that root is either quite archaic or else used only in dialect, because it doesn't appear in any of my other sources -- but I've found Rymut usually knows his stuff, so I'm inclined to believe him on this one... This name shows up in Krakow legal records as far back as 1382. It's odd that this root kiełt- generated only this one, rather ancient surname, and otherwise has left no trace in the language; but that's the kind of odd quirk that makes name origins so interesting!

As of 1990 there were 1,518 Polish citizens named Kiełtyka, living in virtually every province of Poland (there may well be more by that name living in Ukraine, but I have no data on that). The provinces with the largest numbers were: Katowice 233, Krakow 155, Krosno 133, and Tarnow 118 -- all in southcentral or southeastern Poland. Przemysl province, which is where Wyszatyce is located, had 46. However, the database from which this info was compiled was lacking complete data for some provinces, including Przemysl, so the actual number might be somewhat higher... The source of this data is a government database, but the book I got it from only has totals for all of Poland, then for each province. In other words, I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses; the Polish government agency that runs that database won't allow researchers access to such info. So what I've given you here is all I can get.

… Other names in the tree that I would like to know more about, if you have the information are: "Kochonowicz" or "Kochonowich"; "Jaroch"; "Dzuira."

Kochonowicz is probably a misreading of Kochanowicz; the -owicz means "son of," and the root kochan- means "beloved," so the name means roughly "son of the beloved one"; or it may have started more often as just meaning "son of Kochan" where that was a first name in itself, deriving from the root meaning "beloved." As of 1990 there were 1,106 Poles named Kochanowicz, none named Kochonowicz, which is why I think the first form is probably right. The Kochanowicz'es lived all over Poland, but the largest single number for any province was Przemysl, with 208. "Kochonowich" is surely a spelling affected by English phonetic values, since the -cz is pronounced like our "ch." The name would be pronounced by Poles something like "ko-hah-NO-vich."

Jaroch may have started as a nickname of older pagan compound names such as Jaromir, where the first part is an ancient root meaning "harsh, severe," or in some cases "robust, young." But some scholars think the specific names Jaroch and Jarosz came from a variant of the Slavic version of "Jerome." So the name probably meant originally something like "kin of Jerome." As of 1990 there were 1,092 Poles by this surname, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (250) in northwestern Poland and Przemysl (137) in southeastern Poland. The name is pronounced roughly "YAH-rok."

Dziura is probably the right spelling of "Dzuira." This is a very common name, with 6,017 Poles named Dziura as of 1990. It comes from the term dziura, meaning "hole." Perhaps it referred to a person with holes in their clothes, or a person who lived in a hole -- after all these centuries it's hard to say. But that's the basic meaning of the name, there must have been some kind of connection between the person and holes. The name is pronounced something like "jura" (like English "jury" with an -uh sound on the end, instead of an -ee).

ORTHNER

… Recently, I have been making genealogical links to the Germanic family Orthner. Would you happen to known the meaning and origin of this surname?

Hans Bahlow's Deutsches Namenlexikon (available in English translation as Dictionary of German Names) mentions Ortner as coming from a root meaning "end," so that names such as Orthmann, Orth, Ohrt, and Ortner usually referred to where a family lived, i. e., "at the end of the village, end of the street." (Orth- and Ort- are the same, older German spelling often put a silent H after T, as in the name of the writer Goethe, more modern spelling drops the H). I'm afraid I don't have any data on how common the name is in Germany (although I'm sure some book must exist that gives that info), but as of 1990 there were 8 Ortner's in Poland, 1 living in Gdansk province, and 7 living in Opole province, which is in southwestern Poland, in that part of Silesia included in Polish territory after World War II.

SIDOROWICZ

… If time allows please respond. father’s surname: Sidorowicz

Ah, an easy one! I love easy ones!

In Sidorowicz the suffix -owicz means "son of," and Sidor started as a short form or nickname of the first name Izydor, in English "Isidore." That's a fairly rare name in this country, but over the centuries it's been moderately popular in Poland -- as of 1994 there were 4,054 Poles named Izydor, and a century or two ago it was probably more common. It comes from a Greek name meaning "gift of Isis."

As for Sidorowicz, in 1990 there were some 2,343 Poles with that surname, so it's a moderately common name. Sidorowicz'es lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers (100+) in the provinces of Warsaw (173), Białystok (345), Gdansk (136), Gorzow (122), Suwałki (173), and Wroclaw (108). This means there's a particular concentration of people by this name in northeastern Poland (Suwałki and Białystok provinces) -- but you can't really assume that's where a given Sidorowicz family came from, as there's practically no part of Poland that doesn't have at least a few.

By the way, there are several other common surnames that also mean "son of Isidore," including Sidorczuk (1,128) and Sidoruk (1,208). I haven't yet discovered any particular rule or pattern as to why some folks would say the same thing with -owicz, some with -czuk, some with -uk. Maybe one day I'll find out if there is any pattern to it, or if it's just a matter of what people liked the sound of.

BIEDROŃ

… Can you tell me about the surname of Biedron?

According to Polish name experts, names beginning with Biedr- can come from the noun biedroń, which means "ox with mottled coloring, of many colors" (I'm using ń to stand for the Polish n with an accent over it), or from the noun biedro (also spelled biodro), "hip, haunch." Since Biedroń is an exact match with the word for ox, it seems likely that's what that particular name derives from, rather than from the "hip" root. It's difficult to say exactly how such names got started, because they originated centuries ago, often from nicknames, and it can be very difficult to figure out exactly what the original connection was. A Biedroń might have gotten that nickname because he wore clothes that reminded people of the coloring of a certain ox; or maybe he owned such an ox. About all we can know for sure is that there was something about the first person to bear this name that people somehow connected with an ox.

As of 1990 there were 1,636 Polish citizens named Biedroń. The name could be found all over the country, but was particularly common in the provinces of Czestochowa (277), Katowice (171), Krakow (102), Nowy Sacz (203), and Tarnow (189) -- all in southcentral or southeastern Poland. Unfortunately, there's nothing about the name that helps us pin it down to a more specific area.

LUDWA

… Earlier this year you provided me information about my surname. I was wondering, if you have the time, could you please provide information concerning the name Ludwa.

As of 1990 there were 340 Polish citizens with this name, of whom by far the largest number (181) lived in the province of Tarnow in southeastern Poland; there were much smaller numbers scattered all over the rest of the country.

None of my sources mention this name, but it seems most likely this started as a short form or nickname of Ludwik, the Polish form of the name Louis (in German, Ludwig). I can find no native Polish root with ludw-, and the connection with Ludwik seems too obvious to ignore. There is a basic Slavic root lud- meaning "entice, allure, deceive," and ludwa or ludva could possibly have derived from that. But it seems much more likely to me it's just a short form or nickname for Ludwik. Poles often took the first part of popular first names, dropped the rest, and added suffixes, so Ludwik -> Ludwa is not at all implausible.

KRÓL -- ŚNIEŻEK

… I am trying to find the orgins of two surnames listed as Austria/Pol on documents. Krol and Sniezek.

Król comes from the Polish word for "king," which is król (the Polish ó is pronounced like the "oo" in "good"). It could have started as a nickname, perhaps calling somebody the king of a little group; it also sometimes was applied to someone who was a servant of the king. It's a very common surname, as of 1990 there were 46,458 Poles named Król, living all over the country in huge numbers.

Śnieżek would be spelled in Polish with an accent over the S and a dot over the Z, pronounced something like "SHNYEH-zek." That doesn't sound very pretty to our ears, yet it's actually kind of a pretty name, because it comes from śnieg, "snow." The -ek is a diminutive, so śnieżek (as we write it on-line, trying to compensate for not being able to reproduce the Polish characters) means something like "little snow." As of 1990 there were 1,315 Poles with this name; it is found all over the country, but the largest numbers are in the provinces of Katowice (136), Krakow (94), Krosno (282), Opole (110), Rzeszow (86), and Wroclaw (91) -- all in southcentral to southeastern Poland, and therefore mainly in Galicia, that part of Poland ruled by Austria from the late 1700's till after World War I.

KORNASIEWICZ

… The surname that I am interested in is Kornasiewicz. My grandfather was born in the town of Besko in Austrian Galitzia around 1880. I have located a town of this name about 20 miles west of the city of Sanok in southeastern Poland...

The suffix -ewicz or -owicz means "son of" (making the name a so-called "patronymic," a name derived from one's father's name), so Kornasiewicz means "son of Kornaś," where ś stands for the Polish accented s, written si when followed by a vowel. So the real question is, what does the name Kornaś or Kornas come from? Polish scholars have come up with a couple of different possible derivations, but no way to be certain which one is right in a given instance. The name can come from the root korn-, "humble, submissive, obedient," or from kórnik, "bark beetle," or from the first name Kornel (the Polish version of Latin Cornelius). The bark beetle connection seems least likely in this case, because the -ik suffix is integral to that meaning and that suffix does not appear in this name. So we're left with Kornaś as either a nickname for "Cornelius" -- which is quite plausible -- or perhaps as an old first name in its own right, given to someone in hope that he will be humble... By the way, among Slavs this basic notion of korn- is not an insult, Poles and Russians etc. admire someone who's simple, honest, and humble; so whereas "humble, submissive, obedient" may not sound like virtues to us, a name from the root korn- could be thought of as having a positive connotation, the perfect name for a fellow who's good-hearted and not too full of himself.

It's interesting that as of 1990 there were 1,266 Polish citizens named Kornas (no accent over the s), another 1,631 named Kornaś (with the accent) -- but only 100 named Kornasiewicz. That's kind of unusual, as surnames patronymics are generally as common as the names they came from, if not more so. But there are exceptions, and this is one. The 100 Kornasiewicz'es lived in the provinces of: Warsaw (22), Bielsko-Biala (3), Katowice (5), Kielce (3), Krosno (56), Opole (1), Rzeszow (1), Skierniewice (3), Szczecin (1), and Wroclaw (5) -- unfortunately I have no access to further details, such as first names or addresses. This data fits well with your information, since Besko is in the province of Krosno in southeastern Poland, and that area has the largest concentration of Kornasiewicz'es in Poland. Southeastern Poland and western Ukraine comprised the "crownland" of Galicia in the Austrian Empire, and Krosno was right in the heart of it. So this data suggests you are looking in exactly the right place.

DULĘBA -- DULEMBA

… If I may bother you for just one more surname origin - it was my grandmother's maiden name: Dulemba.

This name can be spelled either Dulemba or Dulęba (with ę standing for the Polish nasal vowel written as E with a tail under it and pronounced like en, but before b or p like em) because both spellings sound like "doo-LEM-bah." There are many Polish surnames ultimately from the root dul-, "swelling, thickening," and this may be one of them. But although I can't find any confirmation of this in works by the experts, I suspect the name derives more directly from dulęba, a dialect term for an awkward, uncouth fellow. As of 1990 there were 2,199 Polish citizens who spelled the name Dulęba and another 618 who spelled it Dulemba, so it's a pretty common name (I don't know why it is, but there seem to be jillions of common Polish names from insulting terms, and only a few from complimentary ones!?). You can find Dulęba's or Dulemba's all over Poland, but the largest numbers of Dulęba's are in the provinces of Kielce (780) and Bydgoszcz (136), whereas Dulemba's are most common in the provinces of Katowice (136), Kielce (96), and Rzeszow (71).

BALKIEWICZ -- BOBROWSKI -- GRUNWALSKI

… Thank you for posting your interesting, informative information on Polish surnames. I'm trying to find more about mine--Balkiewicz, and also those of my maternal grandparents--Grunwalski and Bobrowski.

The suffix -ewicz means "son of," so Balkiewicz means "son of Balek, Balka, or Balko." This first name could develop in several ways, as a short form of Baltazar (by tradition the name of one of the Three Kings or Magi), from the Hungarian first name Bal, or from the Polish root bal- meaning "to tell tales." As of 1990 there were some 270 Polish citizens named Balkiewicz, scattered in many different provinces, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Elblag (60), Gdansk (25), Lodz (20), Olsztyn (20), and Ostrołęka (26) -- all in northern Poland, in what used to be Prussia. (I'm afraid I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses).

Names ending in -owski usually refer to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name; we'd expect Bobrowski to have started out meaning "person from Bobrow, Bobrowo, Bobry," etc. Those places, in tern, got their names from the root bóbr, "beaver." In effect, Bobrowski means "one from the place of the beavers." There are quite a few villages named Bobra, Bobry, Bobrowo, etc., so the name itself doesn't tell us which a given Bobrowski family was connected with. As of 1990 there were 5,874 Polish citizens named Bobrowski, so it's a pretty common name and probably developed independently in many different areas.

Grunwalski is surely an adjective meaning "of, from Grunwald." This is a German name meaning "green forest," and there are several places in Poland that are or have been called by that name (especially when western and northern Poland was ruled by Germany). The most famous Grunwald was the site of a battle in 1410 in which Polish and Lithuanian forces defeated the Teutonic Knights, a major event in the history of Poland. As of 1990 there were only 7 Grunwalski's in Poland, 6 in Katowice province and 1 in Opole province, so it's a pretty rare name -- but 1,269 Poles were named Grunwald! 

Copyright © 2000 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.   

 Copyright © 2000 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.