To: Eric Walentowicz, ericw@psinet.com, who wrote:

… I am attempting to determine the meaning of the name Walentowicz? And also, if the name denotes a reference to any particular region in Poland. I've been told by relatives that we are Prussian Poles. I have already read that the suffix -owicz means son of, so I guess the key would be to determine what walent means. My humble guess is that is is a patronmic name of St. Valentine, or possibly some reference to Walter. I'm sure my limited knowledge will be apparent.

Don't sell your "limited knowledge" short, because you're on target; some Polish names are not so tough, and this is one of them. As you say, -owicz means "son of," and the Walent- part comes from the first name Walenty, which is the Polish version of "Valentine" (originally from Latin Valentinus from valens, "strong, mighty"). So the name means "son of Valentine."

Unfortunately, by the nature of things, patronymics formed from popular names are quite common, and are seldom concentrated in any one area. As of 1990 there were 504 Polish citizens named Walentowicz (compare 994 Walentynowicz's); the largest numbers (more than 20) lived in the provinces of Bialystok (31), Bydgoszcz (135), Ostroleka (35), Szczecin (24), Torun (62), and Warsaw (40), with much smaller numbers scattered in most other provinces all over the country. It's fair to say there is some concentration of Walentowicz's in the areas formerly part of Prussia and Pomerania of the German Empire -- Bydgoszcz, Szczecin, and Torun provinces fall roughly into that area, and they have a pretty good share of the people by this name, 221 of 504. But that's still not half of the total, so I don't think we can say the name is all that closely identified with Prussia. Still, if you have family information that your folks were Prussian Poles, I'd say the numbers I've quoted do nothing to discredit the idea... I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, I'm afraid what I've given is all I have.

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To: Pat Wielgopolski, budda@epix.net, who wrote:

… Could you please give me any information on the name "Wielgopolski" or "Wielopolski"? Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

There are two separate names that might be involved here, Wielkopolski (sometimes also seen as Wielgopolski, because both forms sound similar) and Wielopolski. The name Wielkopolski comes from a combination of the root wielki (also sometimes wielgi) meaning "great" and the root pol-, "field," or polski, "Polish," which ultimately comes from that root. In most cases this name probably refers to Wielkopolska, "Great Poland," a division of the country running basically from northwestern Poland down toward Krakow in the south, covering perhaps a quarter of Poland (there's also a Malopolska, a "Little Poland," which is basically the southeastern part of the country). The surname Wielkopolski probably started in most cases as a name for a person from that area or somehow identified with that area. Unfortunately, it's a rather large area, so the name itself doesn't provide anything very helpful in terms of tracing ancestors. As of 1990 there were only 4 Poles named Wielgopolski, all living in the province of Konin; and there were 120 Wielkopolski, scattered all over the country.

Wielopolski is different, it derives from places named Wielopole or something similar -- that's all it means, "one from Wielopole." There are several places by that name, so this surname, too, offers nothing very helpful in terms of tracing ancestors. As of 1990 there were 252 Polish citizens by this name, and they, too, were not concentrated in any one place -- you find small numbers of folks by that name all over the country.

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To: PACCARBO@aol.com, who wrote:

… I read your invitation and hereby submit the surname Pincoski.

As of 1990 there was no one in Poland with the name Pincoski. It's possible this is a misreading or misspelling of some other name, or it may be a dialect form of a name that appears in standard Polish as Pinczewski (there were 301 Poles by that name as of 1990). When we see -oski it's almost always a dialect form of -owski, so spelled because in some areas the w isn't pronounced; and in some areas of Poland the -cz- (pronounced like our "ch") is pronounced, and therefore often spelled, as -ts-, which Poles spell with the letter -c-. So Pincoski probably = Pin~czowski (n~ stands for the Polish accented n). Names ending in -ewski or -owski usually started as references to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name, so Pin~czowski meant "one from Pin~czów" -- there's a village called Pin~czów in Kielce province and another in Nowy Sacz province. The surname Pin~czowski appears to have died out these days in Poland -- but as I say, Pinczewski might be the standard form these days. In any case, we know Pin~czowski it used to exist, and it meant "one from Pin~czów." I'm often surprised at how many surnames have died out after families emigrated, so that you have an odd situation where a good old Polish surname is no longer to be found in Poland, but only in other countries such as the U.S.A.!

So to sum up, I can't be positive about any of this, but from a linguistic point of view, Pincoski is probably a dialect version or misreading of Pin~czowski, "one from Pin~czów." The name appears to have died out in Poland, or else has been standardized as Pinczewski.

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To: tedw@netaccess.co.nz, who wrote:

… My surname is Witwicki, which I took from my family from Poland... He was born in a village called "Rawa" that is now not in Poland.

A surname ending in -icki usually got started as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name ending in -ica, -ice, -iki, something like that. In this case I can find only one likely match, and that is Witwica, which is now Vytvytsa in Ukraine. The Rawa you're referring to may be Rava Ruska, which is in Ukraine, just across the border from Tomaszow Lubelski in Zamosc province, Poland -- although there may well be other places named Rava that don't show up in my sources, this is probably the "Rawa" you're referring to (in Polish the v sound is spelled with a w). Witwica and Rawa are some distance apart, but they are both in far western Ukraine, not too far from the current borders of Poland; for centuries this area was ruled by Poland, and many Poles lived there (and still do).

The probable root of the place name and surname is witwa, the basket willow (Salex viminalis), so that Witwica was "the place of the basket willow," and the Witwicki was "the one from Witwica." Here is some information on Witwica I got from a late 19th-century gazetteer:

"Witwica, village in Dolina county, 14 km. NW of Dolina, 10 km. south of the county court and post office in Bolechów. Greek Catholic church in Witwica, Roman Catholic church in Bolechów... This village is the ancestral home of the Witwicki's. From there came Stanisl~aw, Bishop of Kiev and later of Poznan~ (died 1697); also from this family was the poet Stefan Witwicki, born in Janów in Podolia…"

Dolina is now Dolyna, and Bolechów is now Bolekhiv; my maps confirm that Witwica/Vytvytsa is about 14 km. northwest of Dolyna. Most of the inhabitants of this village were Greek Catholics, and would have gone to the church in the village to register births, deaths, and marriages, whereas the Roman Catholic minority would have gone to the church in Bolechów/Bolekhiv.

As of 1990 there were 955 Polish citizens named Witwicki, living all over the country, but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (89), Katowice (97), Wloclawek (72), Wroclaw (138). There may well be many more in Ukraine, but I have no access to such data; nor do I have access to further details such as first names or addresses for the Witwicki's in Poland.

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To: Sue Myers , Bucki4u@aol.com, who wrote:

. I am researching my family tree. I need information, on the names Figlewski and Galus, if available.

Figlewski is not a very common name, as of 1990 there were only 173 Polish citizens with this name. The largest numbers (10 or more) lived in the provinces of Jelenia Gora 12, Poznan 15, Torun 57, Warsaw 11, Wloclawek 15, so the people by this name are scattered all over the country, but with some concentration in central to northwest-central Poland. Usually names ending in -ewski originated as references to a place; in this case we'd expect the name to mean something like "person from Figlewo," except I can't find any mention in any of my sources of any place with a name remotely similar. It could be there was such a place centuries ago, when the surname originated, but it has since disappeared, been renamed, been absorbed into another community, etc. The probable root of the name is figiel, "trick, prank," and Figlewski appears to mean "of, from, pertaining to the __ of the tricks"; most often that blank is filled in with "place," so that "Figlewo" would be "the place of the tricks," but sometimes "kin" is the understood word that fills in that blank. So it could be this name could be an exception and never referred to a place at all, but to the kin of a prankster. That, at least, is the best guess I can make on the basis of the information available to me.

Galus is easier, it's a moderately common name -- there were 2,665 Poles named Galus as of 1990, living all over the country but significantly more common in southcentral and southeastern Poland. It comes from the Latin first name Gallus, which is thought to derive either from Latin gallus, "cock," or from Celtic ghas-los, "foreigner, newcomer." A 7th-century Irish hermit, St. Gall (in Latin Gallus) settled at St. Gallen, Switzerland, and after his death his cell grew into the nucleus of a major monastery of the Benedictine Order. The Order spread this name throughout Europe (although it's not very well known among English-speakers), and among Poles it also developed the form Gawel~, just as in Czech it became Havel (the surname of the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel). Galus developed from the original Latin form.

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To: Rich Grabowicz, grabow@banet.net, who wrote:

… I'd like to know if the name Grabowicz is listed in your book.

It is. However, I think it's silly to make a person buy the whole book if all he wants is one name. Let me tell you a bit about this name, and you can buy the book only if you want info on more names, or background info on how such names developed. -- By the way, the book doesn't go into much detail on individual names; it deals with some 30,000 surnames, so there wasn't room. Instead, the index of names gives brief indications of what roots specific ones came from, and the 12 chapters of text that precede the index provide background on how names of that sort originated. The book is long on general info, short on details for specific names; on-line I have to be short on general info, but can give more details on a specific name. So I think the book and my Website complement each other.

The suffix -owicz means "son of," so Grabowicz means "son of Grab." It appears that in ancient times Grab was sometimes used as a first name, though it's unheard of these days. There are several roots it might come from: grab, "the hornbeam tree," grabie, "rake," or grabic~, "to rob." So a name like Grabowicz might refer to a person who lived near a grove of hornbeams, or who somehow reminded people of a rake -- but in most cases it probably referred to the son of a man named Grab, and that name was given to someone in hopes he would be quick to "grab" and hold onto property, wealth, whatever (I'm not sure, but I don't think it's totally coincidence that English "grab" and this Polish root are similar; they may well both trace back to some Indo-European root). Other names beginning with Grab- such as Grabowski would more likely refer to a place named for hornbeams, but I think "son of the hornbeam" or "son of the rake" doesn't make that much sense for this name.

As of 1990 there were 1,193 Polish citizens named Grabowicz. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (106), Lodz (177), and Skierniewice (349). So the name is most common in central Poland, but I don't have access to any details that would let me get more specific than that. The name itself is little help in tracking down a particular Grabowicz family -- you'd have to have data from some other source. Incidentally, this is true of probably 95% of Polish names; comparatively few offer any real lead as to where the families bearing them came from.

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To: baga@flash.net, who wrote:

… Maybe you can help me with another name, when you have a chance, that's not a '-ski' or a '-wicz', or anything common like that? The name is Kwaczeniuk.

The suffix -uk or -iuk is a diminutive generally used to form patronymics, and it tends to appear more often in eastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. So usually you can take off -uk or -iuk and render the name "son of _," and usually the first part of the surname is clearly a first name or occupation, e. g., Martyniuk = son of Martyn, Tkaczuk = son of the weaver. Kwaczen-, however, is a bit unusual because it doesn't appear to be a first name or an occupation.

Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut says names beginning with Kwacz- come from the root kwacz-, "to emit a sound like a duck," that is, "to quack"! So this surname would appear to mean "son of the quacker." (You see, you can't make this stuff up; reality is always stranger than fiction!).

Since this name is likely to have originated in eastern Poland, I was curious to see if my Ukrainian dictionary suggested any possible roots. I should mention that Poles use w for the sound we write v and cz for the sound we write ch; Kwaczeniuk is pronounced roughly "kvah-CHEN-yook" -- so what I was looking for was a Ukrainian root (written in Cyrillic) which we'd write phonetically as kvach. All I could find was the noun kvach, "clout; brush for greasing wheels; shaving brush; weak-willed (yielding) person." I don't normally disagree with Rymut, he's damned good, but since this particular name seems likely to originate from the eastern areas where Ukrainian has a lot of influence on names, I'd consider it at least possible Kwaczeniuk means "son of the kvach," perhaps referring to a person who was a bit of a push-over or wimp.

Hard to tell for sure which derivation is correct. I could imagine a person ending up with a nickname because he made a quacking sound; but the "weak-willed" connection also seems plausible. So objectively I can't be sure which one you should go with. If you find your Kwaczeniuk ancestors seem to have come from the eastern parts of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, I'd think the "son of a wimp" derivation is more likely. But if they seem to be ethnic Poles, "quacker's son" is more likely.

As of 1990 there were only 29 Polish citizens named Kwaczeniuk, living in the provinces of Warsaw (3), Bialystok (5), Gdansk (1), Gorzow (15), Legnica (4), and Poznan (1). Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, what I give here is all I have... It's odd that the largest number live in Gorzow province in western Poland, but I strongly suspect that's due to post-World War II forced relocations; I'd bet almost anything if we had pre-1945 data we'd find most of the Kwaczeniuk's living in eastern Poland or what is now Belarus and Ukraine.

If you'd like to see if Polish name experts can come up with anything more definitive, you should go to the introduction to my Surname and read in the introduction about the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow. They can correspond in English, they seldom charge more than $10-20 per name, and they're the best experts I know of regarding Polish and Slavic names; they might be able to tell you more. If so, I'd be very interested in hearing what they have to say...

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To: Penny Currier penny@iw1.net, who wrote:

… Hello Fred, do you have any information on the origin and meaning of my Grandparents surnames: Grandfather: Karoscik, Grandmother: Traczewska.

The name Karos~cik is quite rare; as of 1990 there were only 6 Polish citizens by that name, 4 living in the provinces of Gdansk and 2 in Lodz province; unfortunately I don't have access to first names or addresses, but perhaps you can contact the Polish Genealogical Society of America at www.pgsa.org or the PGS-Northeast http://members.aol.com/pgsne2/ to see if they could search Polish provincial phone directories for people by this name... I'm not sure what the name comes from, it might be from a diminutive of karas~, "crucian carp," or it might come from the root kar-, "punishment; the color black when referring to horses." None of my sources mention this surname, so I don't have any Polish experts' research to rely on, but I'd say one of those is the probable origin.

Traczewska is easier. First of all, names ending in -ska are feminine forms of names given in standard form with the ending -ski, so we're looking for Traczewski. Literally the name breaks down as "of, from, pertaining to the __ of the tracz," where you fill in with the blank with some understood word, usually either "place" or "kin." In names Tracz- usually comes from the noun tracz, "sawyer, one who cuts wood" (although I wonder if sometimes it might also refer to tracz, "the merganser duck"?), so Traczewski probably started either meaning "kin of the sawyer" or "one from Traczew or Traczewo or Traczewa = the place of the sawyer." I can't find any mention in my sources of a place named Traczew/o/a, but that isn't conclusive because such a place may have existed centuries ago when the surname developed but has since disappeared, been renamed, etc. So I can't say for certain whether the surname means "sawyer's kin" or "one from Traczew/a/o," but one of those two is probably right. In either case, there's some sort of connection to a guy who sawed wood for a living (or, just possibly, to mergansers?).

As of 1990 there were 458 Polish citizens named Traczewski, and they were scattered all over the country, with no real concentration. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (81), Ostroleka (53), and Radom (57), thus in east central Poland, but that's not a lot of help, I know.

If you'd like to see if Polish name experts can come up with anything more definitive on Karos~cik, you might visit the introduction to my Surname page and read in the introduction about the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow. They can correspond in English, they seldom charge more than $10-20 per name, and they're the best experts I know of regarding Polish and Slavic names; they might be able to tell you more. If so, I'd be very interested in hearing what they have to say.

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To: Isaac Taylor, itaylor@mediaone.net, who wrote:

… Having recently found, and greatly enjoyed enjoyed your website(s) on Polish history and genealogy I am writing to inquire as to the roots and significance of the surname Konopka. Any assistance would be appreciated.

According to Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut and others, Konopka comes from the root konopie, "hemp," and this name appears in Polish legal records as early as 1393. It is quite common in Poland, as of 1990 there were 11,121 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (1,278), Katowice (935), and Lomza (1,622)... When giving people nicknames based on the names of animals or objects, Poles often added a diminutive suffix such as -ek or -ka to help distinguish the person from the animal or object; and that's probably how the name Konopka, literally "little hemp," got started, as a nickname that eventually stuck as a surname. It might have referred to a person who grew hemp, sold it, used it a lot, etc. -- now, centuries after surnames were established, it's sometimes difficult to recreate exactly what the link was. But something about a person named Konopka seemed associated with hemp, we can be fairly sure of that.

I'm going strictly by memory here, and thus might be wrong, but I believe Wl~adysl~aw Konopka was the original name of actor Ted Knight, who played "Ted Baxter" on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. He is perhaps the best-known person named Konopka, although the name is common enough that there probably have been other prominent figures by that name.

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To: TaubySue@aol.com, who wrote:

… I ran across your book information on the PGSA web page. If possible, could you find any information on two names: Hodas and Majczyk. Through my limited reseach found nothing about these names.

I'm not surprised you could find nothing on Hodas; none of my sources mention it, and as of 1990 there were only 8 Poles by that name, all living in Krakow prov. Unfortunately I don't have access to first names or addresses, but the PGSA can often search telephone directories for specific parts of Poland; perhaps you could contact them and see if they have the one for Krakow. Phones in private homes are rarer in Poland than here, there are no guarantees, but maybe one of those Hodas's will be listed... As for the origins of the name, the H and Ch are pronounced the same in Polish, so we might be dealing with a variant spelling of Chodas (as of 1990 there were 33 of them, with 28 living in Warsaw province), which presumably comes from the root chod-, "go, walk." But if the family's roots lie in southern or southeastern Poland, the name could come from Ukrainian hoda, "difficult, hard," or from Czech hod, "feast, festival," or hodit, "to throw, cast." Or if the family was Jewish, it's possible the name comes from Hebrew hadas, "holy" (cmp. the original name of the Biblical figure Esther, Esther 2:7).

I know that's a lot of if's, but without more info it's hard to say anything with much confidence. If the family has no Jewish blood and comes from an area where Czech or Ukrainian aren't likely to have much influence, then the link with chod-, "walk, go," seems the most likely derivation. But you can see how the place of origin could affect which source is the most likely.

If you'd like to ask the best experts and don't mind spending $10-20 for an answer, look at the Introduction to the Surname webpage and get the address of the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow. They have the best sources, if there's anyone who can give you a reliable answer, it's them. (If you do write them and they give you a good reply, I'd love to hear what they have to say!).

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut includes Majczyk with a number of other names from the root maj, "May." In names -czyk usually means "son of," so the name literally means "son of May." A name like this might originate because a child was born in May, or something about that time of year was associated with him. All these centuries later it can be tough trying to figure out exactly what the connection was, the most we can do is say there was a connection. As of 1990 there were 258 Poles named Majczyk, scattered all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (25), Kalisz (38), Lodz (33), Sieradz (33). These provinces are all in central Poland, so the name seems to be most common in that region; unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, and I'm afraid this probably isn't specific enough to help you much.

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To: Kathy Schulberger, GARYSHAY@aol.com, who wrote:

… The name I am looking for is Sebzda. Both my grandparents came from Galicia, Austria, I think. My grandmother could not write so she phonetically spelled her name. It is Anna Puktah.

I'm afraid I can't help you much with these names. I've been trying for some time to figure out what Sebzda comes from, because the name intrigues me -- at times I wonder if it might be a mangled name from Sebastian, but I haven't found any info on this anywhere. It's not all that rare a name: as of 1990 there were 381 Poles named Sebzda, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Katowice (29), Przemysl (68), Rzeszow (29), and Wroclaw (107). Przemysl and Rzeszow are in that part of southeastern Poland seized by Austria and ruled as "Galicia," Wroclaw and Katowice are just a little west of there, so the name is most common in southcentral and southeastern Poland. But as I said, none of my books mention it, and I haven't been able to come up with even an intelligent guess, other than that very tenuous notion about "Sebastian." Such a connection is not outrageous, given the changes names can undergo; but such guesses are also worthless without some evidence, and I have none.

As for Puktah, I'm afraid I've come up empty there, too. There was one Pole named Pukto in Katowice province in 1990 (I'm afraid I have no access to further details such as names and addresses), and I could find no mention of any other name remotely like this. Neither Puktah nor Sebzda really sounds Polish, and it's not rare to see names of many other origins in Galicia -- Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Slovak, etc. I strongly suspect these names originated elsewhere and came to Poland with people who immigrated there over the centuries.

If you'd like to ask the best experts and don't mind spending $10-20 for an answer, look at my Introduction to the Surname webpage and get the address of the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow. They have the best sources, if there's anyone who can give you a reliable answer, it's them... If you do write them and they give you a good reply, I'd love to hear what they have to say, especially about Sebzda!

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To: UZI LADY@aol.com, who wrote:

… Trying to find the roots of the Kordalewski family please, can you try to guide me in the right direction.

Generally names with the pattern X-ewski can be interpreted literally as "of, from, pertaining to the kin/place of X," so that we'd expect this to mean either "one from Kordalew/Kordalewo/Kordalewa" [which means "place of Kordal"] or "one of the kin of Kordal." I can't find mention in any of my sources of any place with a name beginning Kordal-, but that doesn't necessarily mean much -- surnames developed centuries ago, and sometimes the place they referred to has since disappeared, changed its name, etc. So it's still kind of up in the air whether this name referred originally to a village or settlement named something like Kordalew or Kordali, or whether it simply meant "kin of Kordal or Kordala." Those are names known to have been used in the past, coming either from the roots kord, "saber," or korda, the cord used by monks or nuns instead of belts, or (just maybe) from the Latin name Cordula.

As of 1990 there were 259 Polish citizens named Kordalewski, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (57), Ciechanow (23), Lodz (35), Plock (75), and Skierniewice (18), with only a few others scattered in various other provinces. So the name seems to be most common in central Poland. Unfortunately I don't have access to first names or addresses for any of those people, and "central Poland" is still too large an area to help you very much. I'm afraid that's the way it is with most Polish surnames -- they just don't offer much in the way of helpful clues.

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To: Jess Piszczor, crashe@iwaynet.net, who wrote:

… My surname, Piszczor, traces from the Zakopane/NowyTarg region back before 1620 (based on reports of a baptismal certificate supposedly in the civil Nowy Targ records). Now the root of our name piszcz I have found to be difined as either a large rodent/high-pitched voice; or as being a claimant, making a claim. (What type of claim has always been a item of wonderment for me. Just a big whiner?)

Since I last revised my book on Polish surnames, I've got hold of a couple of books on names in that general area, especially Cieszyn and Nowy Sacz, and they shed a little more light on this name (and since as of 1990 fully 45 of the 75 Piszczor's lived in Nowy Sacz province, this seems relevant). Apparently most of the names beginning with piszcz- are thought to have referred to piszczec~, "to play a pipe, flute, pan-pipe"; so while the link with the basic root's meaning of "squeal, high-pitched sound" is clear, Wladyslaw Milerski's Nazwiszka Cieszyn~skie specifically mentions Piszczor, Piszczo~r, and Piszczur among the names that probably began as meaning "piper." I know I'd prefer that to being a whiner or rodent!

… Anyway, I have found that region was not begun to be settled until the years 1590-1610. Now I have found on some old 1943 U.S. Army maps a village about 2km or so east of Zakopane by the name of Piszczora! Guess what I'm asking here is, can we begin to draw some conclusions from this?

Out of curiosity I looked in the Slownik Geograficzny gazetteer -- it mentions a "Piszczory, a wólka belonging to Skrzypne, Nowy Targ county, on the stream Rogoznik, in the northern part of Skrzypne, with 7 houses and 35 inhabitants." [A wólka was a "new" agricultural settlement (probably less than 500 years old, as opposed to a really old place like Gdan~sk or Poznan~) established with settlers from some older village; it was typically established with a 10 or 20-year exemption from rents and taxes, so the settlement could get on its feet before it started paying its noble landowner dividends.] I doubt this is the same place you're talking about, as this one would be maybe 10-20 km. north of Zakopane; but it's not unusual to see two or more places with similar names in the same general region. What I found interesting about this is that Piszczory was a subdivision of Skrzypne, and that name comes from the root skrzyp-, "creak, grind, squeak," used especially in skrzypki, "fiddle," and skrzypce, "violin." Apparently they had a kind of musical theme going in that area, with lots of pipers and fiddlers!

Anyway, I would think a place called Piszczora would have come from the genitive-case form piszczora, "[place] of the piper." In other words, the place probably took its name from people, rather than the other way around. It's risky making general statements like this, there are so many exceptions. But I think the places named Piszczora and Piszczory got those names because there were a lot of pipers around, or else from a person whose name was Piszczor because he or an ancestor had been a piper. That's how I see it, anyway.

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To: baga@flash.net, who wrote:

… Laskowski was my maternal grandmothers' maiden name, and when I showed my mother your (very NICE, thank you very much) e-mail and your web site, she also became interested. Her maiden name was Lozinski, and again, is one of those names that I couldn't find any info on on your site.

Well, the 1990 compilation I quote for data on name frequency lists some 800,000+ Polish surnames (only 44,723 of which are borne by more than 100 Poles), so there are one or two I haven't gotten to yet on my Website. Even my book only had room for 30,000 of the most common ones...

As of 1990 there were 3,095 L~ozin~ski's in Poland -- I'm using l~ to stand for the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w, and n~ for the accented n; the name is pronounced roughly "woe-ZHEEN-skee." The provinces with the largest numbers were: Gorzow 169, Katowice 163, Krakow 183, Warsaw 258, Wroclaw 366, Zielona Gora 179. Those are the provinces with the most people, so basically that just means the name is rather evenly distributed all over Poland.

A name ending in -in~ski usually (not always) refers to a similar place name. I'd expect L~ozin~ski to have started as meaning "one from L~ozin, one from L~ozy," something like that. There are several villages with names that qualify, including L~ozina in Wroclaw province, L~oza in Elblag province, and at least three L~ozy's (in Przemysl, Siedlce, and Zielona Gora provinces); a L~ozin~ski could come from any of those places. The root of all these place names is probably the term l~oza, "osier, wicker," so that these place names all meant basically "place with lots of wicker" and the surname meant "one from L~ozina, L~ozy, etc." = "one from the wicker place." Viewed this way, it's not surprising the name is moderately common, that's a name that could (and surely did) get started independently in many different places.

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To: jonguede@jps.net, who wrote:

… I found your web page through a search. I have been trying to find even just basic info. on the Polish surname, Domeracki. I've visited a lot of Polish genealogy sites but no info. Was wondering, if it is at all possibly, for you to send me any info., such as etymology etc., that you might have on this surname.

The probable origin of Domeracki is from an old Slavic pagan first name, Domarad, literally "glad at home." The ancient Poles and other Slavs gave their children names that were meant to be good omens, so giving a child a name like that was to express hope he would have a happy home. There are several villages in Poland with names that come from this name, probably because someone named Domarad founded them or owned them at some point; they include a village called Domarady in Olsztyn province, and villages called Domaradz in Krosno, Opole, and Slupsk provinces. There may be others that don't show up on my maps, but this shows there are at least four different places this surname could come from.

There are several reasonably common surnames formed either directly from the name Domarad, or else from places such as those I just mentioned, which in turn got their name from Domarad.

As of 1990 there were 1,129 Polish citizens named Domeracki, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (302), Olsztyn (117), and Torun (139), and smaller numbers scattered all over the country. There were another 755 who spelled it Domeradzki, which would be pronounced exactly the same, roughly as "dome-air-OTT-skee," and for all practical purposes they could be considered the same name; the Domeradzki's were most common in the provinces of Warsaw 107, Plock 91, Radom 98, and Wloclawek 74. However, neither name is associated with any one area to such a degree that we can say "Here's where the name came from" ... Besides Domeracki and Domeradzki we also have the "standard" or most common form Domaradzki (there were 3,409 Poles by that name as of 1990), as well as Domaracki (317) and Domarecki (603). All of these are just variants of the same basic name with slight differences due to regional pronunciations, errors, etc. The data strongly suggests there isn't just one big family that shares this name, but rather the name got started independently in different places at different times.

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To: Suzanne Whalen, whalenct@bunt.com, who wrote:

… Horonzevicz (or Horonzewicz) and Szablak are the names I'm interested in

Szablak comes from the word szabla, "saber, sword." The -ak is a diminutive ending, so the name means literally "little sword." Often when Poles formed a name for a person from the name of an object they added a suffix to help distinguish the two; that may be the case here, so that the name means "swordsman." Or the -ak may imply "son of the swordsman," either interpretation is plausible. As of 1990 there were 408 Polish citizens with this name, with the largest numbers in the northeastern provinces of Ostroleka (138) and Lomza (73) and smaller numbers scattered all over the country. The name is pronounced much like "SHAW-block" would be in English.

Horonzewicz is a variant of the name which appears as Chora~z*ewicz in standard form; the ch and h are pronounced exactly the same in Polish, and a~ stands for a a nasal vowel written like a normal a with a tail under it and pronounced much like "own."N. Z* stands for Z with a dot over it, so that it sounds like zh in "Zhivago." Both spellings sound the same -- much like "hoe-ron-ZHE-vich" -- and it's not unusual in such cases to see more than one spelling, especially in past centuries. As of 1990 there were 740 Poles named Chora~z*ewicz, with particularly large numbers living in the provinces of Olsztyn (203) and Ostroleka (215), both in northeastern Poland, and smaller numbers in many other provinces. There was no one in Poland who spelled it Horonzewicz, probably because with the advent of mass literacy in this century the spellings of many names have been standardized. The name means comes from the term chora~z*y, "standard-bearer" (tail under the a, dot over the z) plus the suffix -ewicz, "son of," so it means "son of the standard-bearer."

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To: Anthony Bielejewski, TonyBo50@aol.com, who wrote:

… Hello, I've already ordered your book, but in the meantime I was wondering if you could provide any information on the subject surname (Orszak) which was my mothers maiden name.

I'm glad you contacted me -- I don't want people who order the book to be disappointed, and Orszak is not in there! I was a little surprised to see I hadn't included it, but generally I didn't include names borne by fewer than 300 Poles as of 1990, and as of that year there were only 183 Poles named Orszak. About half lived in the provinces of Rzeszow (58) and Tarnobrzeg (38) in southeastern Poland, the rest were scattered in small numbers all over the country; so this tells us that at least these days the name is most common in southeastern Poland, sometimes called Malopolska or "Little Poland," and "Galicia" after the Austrians took it over during the partitions. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses of those Orszak's, the info comes from a Polish government agency database, and they won't allow us access to anything other than info on how many people have a particular name and where they live by province. But it might be a little helpful to know the Orszak's are most common in that region.

Polish names can fool us, but it certainly appears that this name comes from the term orszak, "retinue, staff, group of persons accompanying someone or something," in archaic times meaning "a mass of people." My 8-volume dictionary of Polish says it comes from Turkish urszak, "group of people assembled for a specific purpose." It used to be pretty much mandatory for any important noble or clergymen to be attended by a retinue (kind of like the way people use the term "posse" in modern slang), and I suppose this name could come to be associated with a person who had or served in such a retinue. One source, Alexander Beider's Dictionary of Jewish Surnames in the Kingdom of Poland, says this term is what the name probably comes from, and speculates perhaps it referred to a rabbi's train or retinue"; so I'm not the only one who thinks that's the derivation of it the name. However, there is no reason to assume this name was borne only by Jews; I'm sure it's one of many names used by people of any religion; the only difference is, among Jews it might refer to a rabbi's retinue, among Christians it would probably refer to the retinue of a noble or high clergyman.

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To: Marilyn Blimline, M082718@aol.com, who wrote:

…Is Kurzin a Polish name and if so, what does it mean? I have an ancestor with that name who came from Poznan.

The spelling Kurzin is not used these days -- as of 1990 there was no one in Poland by that name. But there were 16 named Kurzyn and 892 named Kurzyna, and Kurzin could very well be a variant dating back to the days when spelling rules weren't quite so strict or well-known. The 892 Kurzyna's lived all over Poland, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bialystok (112), Lomza (150), Lublin (162), and Tarnobrzeg (180); the 16 Kurzyn's lived in the provinces of Warsaw (1), Lodz (1), Suwalki (8), and Zamosc (8). Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses... The root of either name is kur, "chicken"; kurzyna can mean "chicken meat," or "a bad hen, one of poor quality," plus several other things.

2. What is the difference between Walinski and Wolinski, or are they the same name with the same meaning?

They can be the same name -- in Polish a and o sound very similar, and we often see them confused in spelling. But in a perfect world, the two names are distinct, referring usually to the names of places the families came from, such as Wola, Wolin, Wolina vs. Waliny. The basic root of wola has to do with "(free) will," but people named Wolin~ski were connected with agricultural settlements called Wola's, because they were settled by people from other villages who were given 10-20 years of exemption from taxes and rents while they got the new settlements on their feet. Names beginning with Wal- typically came from short forms of first names such as Walenty (Valentine) or Walerian (Valerian), or from the verb root walic~, "to overturn, overthrow, upset." Poles typically form nicknames or new names by taking the first syllable of a name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes (sort of like English "Teddy" from "Theodore"), and that explains how names like Walin came from Walenty or Walerian. Then -ski is an adjective ending, so that Walin~ski means literally "of, from, pertaining to Walin." So in practice Walin~ski would end up meaning something like "kin of Val, one from the place of Val." As of 1990 there were 874 Walinski's in Poland, as opposed to 6,584 Wolinski's.

3. What does the name Niedbalski mean?

This comes from the term niedbala, "negligent, sloppy fellow." The -ski is adjectival, so that the name means literally "of, from, pertaining to the sloppy guy" -- most often in names it would mean basically "kin of the sloppy guy, son of the sloppy guy," something like that. As of 1990 there were 1,446 Poles named Niedbalski.

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To: Christine Pereira, christinepereira@yahoo.com, who wrote:

… I am beginning to look into my heritage. I don't even really know where to start. My father's name is Stephan Lewkowicz......his father is Bronislav Lewkowicz....I was told that my grandparents came from Poland. Do you have any information on Lewkowicz?

The -owicz suffix means "son of," so this surname means "son of Lewko." Lewko is a name used by Christians and Jews, and the origin can be different, depending on religion. But the names you cite, Stephan and Bronislav, are Christian, so I will assume the family was Christian and not Jewish. In that case the name can come either from the term lewy, "left," or the first name Lew, which comes from the common Slavic root for "lion" and is basically the Slavic equivalent of our names Leon and Leo. So Lewkowicz is basically a Slavic name meaning "son of Leo." As of 1990 there were 2,943 Polish citizens named Lewkowicz, living all over the country. So I'm afraid -- like most Polish surnames -- this one doesn't provide us with any useful clues about where the family might have come from. I would think it more likely to have originated in eastern Poland or Belarus or Ukraine than western Poland, but even then it's more a matter of probability -- there are and have been plenty of people named Lewkowicz in western Poland.

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To: Alcap85@aol.com, who wrote:

… looking for the Polish surname closest to Panikowski can't seem to find one.

Well, how about Panikowski? As of 1990 there were 139 Poles by this name, scattered all over Poland -- the largest single numbers live in the provinces of Gdansk (27) and Krakow (24), with much smaller numbers living in many other provinces, so there's no one part of the country where this name is concentrated... If you want a common name close to Panikowski, I'd suggest Pankowski, there were 3,696 Polish citizens by that name in 1990. But if Panikowski is the form you have, I see no reason to look for anything else -- Panikowski is a perfetly good Polish name.

Both Panikowski and Pankowski probably derive ultimately from the root pan, "master, lord," or from short forms of several first names, such as Pankrac, Pantelejmon, Opanas, etc. Pankowski probably comes in most cases from a name of a village such as Panków or Panki, and would mean basically "one coming from Panków, Panki, etc," and those place names mean basically "place of the pan" or "place of Pan-." There are several villages in Poland named Panki and Panków, so I can't tell you which one the name would refer to in a specific family's case.

Panikowski would probably originated as meaning "one from Paników, Panikowo, Paniki, " or some other place with a similar name. I can't find any such place on my maps, but that doesn't mean anything -- these surnames typically developed centuries ago, and the places they referred to have often disappeared, changed their names, etc. Here again, the name of the place, if there was such a place, would mean something like "place of panik," where panik might be a diminutive of pan, meaning "little master," or might be a nickname from one of those first names I mentioned earlier.

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To: Nathaniel Thomas, nat874@hotmail.com, who wrote:

… I have read your renderings of Polish surnames online and wonder if you might be able to assist me...I have only one name for you to look at! My great-great-grandmother's maiden name is Olishefskie, and I have been unable to find anything which divulges its meaning.

Well, this is probably just a phonetic spelling of Polish Oliszewski -- pronounced out loud, that name does sound very much to us like "oh-li-SHEF-skee," so that spelling makes sense. As of 1990 there were 331 Polish citizens named Oliszewski, with the largest concentration (128) in the province of Warsaw and much smaller numbers scattered in many other provinces all over the country. The name probably comes from Olisz, a sort of nickname of Aleksander -- in many parts of Poland this name takes the form Oleksander, with O instead of A, and Poles formed many nicknames from it. Oliszewski literally breaks down as "of, from, pertaining to the __ of Olisz," where the blank is filled in with something not expressed because it was obvious -- usually either "kin" or "place." So this surname probably meant something like "Al's kin," or else "one from Al's place." I can find only one place on my maps with a name that qualifies, Oliszki in Bialystok province, and a family from there could have ended up with a name like Oliszewski. Or there may once have been a place somewhere called Oliszew or Oliszewo, but it has changed names or disappeared in the centuries since the surname was established. Or it may still exist and is just too small to show up in my sources.

Oliszewski is a perfectly good Polish name, but there is one other possibility I really should mention. There is a very common Polish name Olszewski (44,638 Poles bore that name as of 1990), meaning basically "one from the place of the alder trees" (thus "one from Olszewo/Olszewa/Olszew, etc."). This name is so common, and so close to what you mention, that I figured I'd better point it out, just in case it turns out that was the original form, and the first -I- in Olishefskie was inserted by mistake.

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To: Edward Dindinger, dindinger@msn.com, who wrote:

… Would you please give me info on the names Strzelecki, Pracki, Makomaski, and Ochylski? My grandfather wrote a book on our family, and I am completing his research.

I'm afraid Strzelecki is the only name I can find much on -- it generally meant a family came from one of numerous villages called Strzelce. That name, in turn, comes from strzelec, "shooter, marksman." As of 1990 there were 11,467 Poles named Strzelecki, and the name is common all over the country.

I could find no info on the derivations of the other names. I do have a source that gives the total number of Poles by specific names as of 1990, with a breakdown of where they lived by province (but I have no access to further details, such as first names or addresses). Here's what that source shows

Makomaski: 95, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (30), Plock (12), less than 10 in 11 other provinces.

Ochylski: 12, living in the provinces of Koszalin (3), Lodz (5), Poznan (4)

Pracki: 428, scattered all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Plock (76), Wloclawek (69), and smaller numbers in many other provinces.

If you would like more information and don't spending $30 or so, I recommend contacting the Anthroponymic Workshop I mentioned on the introductory page.

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To: Marilyn Novak, TwoRPhs@aol.com, who wrote:

… I have searched for possible root words of the 3 names in which I am interested, in my Polish/English dictionary, but, probably because I have only the slightest understanding of the language, I have had no luck in figuring out whether my names have ANY meaning at all. They are: Plotkowski (with a crossbar on the l), Zaworski, and Kapczynski. (The 1st & 3rd families are from the rural area northwest of Warsaw, if this helps any.)

Kapczyn~ski is a moderately common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 1,552 Poles named Kapczyn~ski (by the way, I'm using ~ to mark Polish diacriticals, so that n~ is the n with an accent over it, l~ is the slashed l, etc.). The largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (205), Bydgsozcz (169), Ciechanow (148), Lodz (106), and Pila (126), with smaller numbers scattered in many other provinces. The root of this name would seem to be kapac~, to drip, but I can't seem to find Kapczyn~ski listed in any of my sources; I would expect this surname to be connected with a place name, something like Kapcza or Kapczyn. I can't find any such places listed in my sources, but that doesn't necessarily mean much -- surnames developed centuries ago, and it's not unusual for the places they referred to then to have since disappeared, changed names, etc. Still, I can't help wondering if this is a variant of the name Kopczyn~ski, which was borne by 8,474 Poles in 1990. In Polish the a and o are pronounced very similarly, and we often see them switch back and forth in names -- I can't help but wonder if that's happened here? The name Kopczyn~ski appears to come from the root kopczyna, "pile, mound," especially a pile of harvest grain gathered by landless farmers.

Pl~otkowski was the name of 314 Poles in 1990, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (51), Gdansk (28), Szczecin (60), Torun (55), and Wloclawek (26); there were only 11 in the province of Warsaw. The name almost certainly derives from the roots seen in pl~ot "fence, enclosure," or pl~otka, pl~oc~, "roach (a kind of fish)." I would expect this name to have started in most cases as a connection with a village or place named something like Pl~otki, Pl~otkowo, so that the name would mean basically "person from Pl~otki, Pl~otkowo, etc." Those places, in turn, probably got their names because of some association with either enclosures or the kind of fish we call (rather disgustingly) "roach." As with Kapczyn~ski, however, I couldn't find mention of any places with names that qualify, so I can't be positive.

1,884 Poles bore the name Zaworski in 1990, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Gdansk (222) and Poznan (317). It appears to derive from the term zawora, "bolt, latch," or from places named Zawory in Gdansk and Poznan provinces. I would think the link with the villages would be likely for a surname, thus meaning "one from Zawory"; the large numbers of Zaworski's in Gdansk and Poznan provinces tends to support that notion, since that's where we actually find villages named Zawory.

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To: Alfred Redisch, ROZ4ALFIE@webtv.net, who wrote:

… My grandfather, Peter Redisch, left Poland and his parents in 1864.All I know is from his death certificate that the family lived in Galicia at that time.

REDISCH is hard to pin down, because that spelling of the name is clearly influenced by German -- Polish seldom uses the combination -sch, that's a German way of spelling the sound we write as -sh, which the Poles write -sz. So the question arises whether this name is actually German or Polish in origin. None of my sources mentions this name, and a look at surnames used in modern Poland shows no one named Redisch; if we look for the Polish way of spelling this name, there were 11 Poles named Redisz as of 1990, living in the provinces of Katowice (5), Krakow (4), Ostroleka (2). I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, so about all we can say is that these days the name appears mainly in southcentral Poland, which before 1918 was roughly the extreme western edge of Galicia.

If the name is German in origin, it might come from the root red-, "swamp," or from Reddich, an old variant meaning "radish." These seem unlikely, though, the suffix -isch or -isz in surnames is usually Slavic rather than German. So it's more likely this is Polish. Polish names beginning with Red- are usually northern Polish (Pomeranian) variants of names with Rad- in standard Polish. That root means either "joy" or "advise." Generally names with Rad- started as a nicknames or short forms for a longer compound name such as Radomir ("glad of peace") or Radoslaw "glad of fame"), or it could have meant "the adviser" or "the joyful one." The name Radzisz shows up as a first name in old records, and Redisz could be a variant of that. But without more information it's really very hard to say. Of course the problem with this is that the name is showing up in southcentral Poland, rather far from where Red- variants of Rad- would be expected to originate. Still, people did move around in the old days, it's hardly impossible that a family might have come from northwestern Poland and moved to Galicia. We do know from records that some people with German-influenced names settled in Galicia, often as colonists settling new communities or as prisoners of war.

So I can't be certain, but the most likely explanation, from the info I have, is that this is a German-influenced variant of an old Polish first name such as Radzisz, which started as a short form or nickname for someone named Radolf or Radomir or Radoslaw, and later came to be used as a surname. And at some point in, say, the 15th or 16th century, the family came to live in Galicia. This is, at least, consistent with the facts as we know them, and is fairly plausible.

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To: JACOBTAUF@aol.com, who wrote:

… Any info on my last name Aufschauer. My Father grew up in Lvov (Lemberg) Galicia.

This name is pure German, and almost certainly comes from the verb aufschauen, "to look up" -- Aufschauer would mean literally "one who looks up." It might seem odd that such a German name shows up in Lvov, but there were large numbers of Germans, as well as German- or Yiddish-speaking Jews, who lived in that area, so it used to be quite common to run across Germanic names there. There is no one in Poland today with this name, but that's hardly surprising, since I only have data for Poland in its modern boundaries, and Lvov is now in Ukraine, so names appearing in the Lvov area would not be included in my sources. It's questionable whether anyone with this name would still live in the Lvov region -- after World War II many of the people with German names and blood left what used to be Poland and resettled in Eastern Germany, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not.

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To: Kerry.Jestrimski@CASRDH.HEALTH.nt.gov.au, who wrote:

… I have spent some time searching for information on my family name & was wondering if you per chance had any references to Jestrimski or maybe Jestrimsky

The problem with this name is that Jestrimski or Jestrimsky is almost certainly an Anglicized form of the name, not the original Polish form; and without the original Polish form, there's not much I can do. I'm pretty sure this isn't the original form because 1) there was no one in Poland with this name as of 1990, 2) I've never seen this before, and 3) the spelling is inconsistent with Polish linguistic preferences. So until we know what the name was before it was changed, it's hard to analyze it.

I'll say this, I suspect this is a phonetic spelling of the Polish name Jastrze~bski -- the e~ is a way of indicating on-line the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it, pronounced normally like en but before a b or p like em, so that the name would sound to us like "yahs-CHEMP-skee." This is a very common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 19,156 Polish citizens by that name, living all over the country. It comes from the root jastrza~b, "goshawk" (a~ is another nasal vowel, written as an a with a tail under it, pronounced like om before b or p); the surname typically originated either as a nickname for an individual whose manner or voice or clothes reminded people of a goshawk, or from a place name, "person from Jastrze~bie [the place of the goshawks]" or other places with similar names and meanings. There are quite a few places by that name in Poland, so it's difficult to tell which one a given family might have come from.

I have seen this name Jastrze~bski mangled into many different forms in English – there was a famous American baseball player named Carl Yastrzemski, for instance -- and Jestrimski could very well be a rather inaccurate phonetic spelling of it. I can't be sure, but that would be my guess.