To: U.Leo@01019freenet.de who wrote:

I`m looking for some information about the grandmother of my grandfather "Pelagja Prebendow (or Prewendow) Przebendowski (or Przewendowski) from Poznan. Did you ever hear that surname? 

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 no Polish citizens listed with the names Prebendow or Prewendow. There were 16 named PREBENDOWSKI, all living in western Poland. There were 90 named PREWENDOWSKI, scattered all over Poland. There were none named Przebendowski or Przewendowski.

Names ending in -owski usually come from the name of a place with which the family was associated at some point. Thus I would expect Przebendowski or Przewendowski to mean "one from Przebendowo" or something similar. There are several places in Poland with names that qualify, including Przebendow in Tarnów province, and 4 places named Przebe~dowo (where I'm using e~ to stand for the Polish nasal vowel written as an E with a tail under it and pronounced much like "en"). In most cases I would expect Przebendowski to mean "one from Przebendow" or "one from Przebe~dowo."

PREBENDOW may come from the noun _prebenda_, "prebend, benefice" (auf Deutsch "Praebende, Pfruende"), perhaps referring to one who lived on property associated with a prebend or benefice, or kin of such a person.

That is all I can tell you. If you would like to get an opinion from the real experts and don't mind spending some money, you can write the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow. The staff consists of Polish scholars specializing in name origins, with access to large collections of material on the subject; there is surely no one else in the world better qualified to answer questions on Polish names. They can correspond in English (and probably German, too), and the charge for researching a single name is seldom more than US$20. You write to them with your request, and the individual who does the research will reply, and will tell you how much he/she is charging and how best to send payment. It is usually quite painless, and most people I hear from are very satisfied with the results; but the staff has been a bit slow lately in answering letters -- they have lots of other work to do, after all -- so patience is advisable. If you'd like to give this a try, here's the address:

Instytut Polskiego Jezyka
Pracownia Antroponimiczna
ul. Straszewskiego 27
31-113 KRAKÓW
POLAND

============

To: Randy Williams <randy.m.williams@worldnet.att.net> who wrote: 

Do you have any information on the following name: Doneygier.

Alexander Beider mentions this name in his book "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland." Of course he lists it in the standard Polish spelling DONEJGIER, but since Y and J were often used interchangeably, that difference is not necessarily significant. He simply says the name was found among Jews living in the Suwalki area (in northeastern Poland, near the modern border with Lithuania) and that it appears to refer to the name of a place, Donejki, in Nowoaleksandrowsk district of Kowno province of the Russian Empire.

Beider's book only deals with Jews living in the territory of the
Kingdom of Poland, whereas it sounds as if your ancestors came from Galicia, in the Austrian partition. So his book wouldn't cover the area where your ancestors lived. But the derivation of the name may well be the same. Presumably at some point your family took its name from that place and later moved southward. Unfortunately, with names it's not smart to jump to conclusions without lots and lots of detailed info on a family's background, so I can't say for sure; but it seems plausible.

By the way, I looked at the JewishGen FamilyFinder database at this address:

http://www.jewishgen.org/jgff/jgffweb.htm

There are a number of people looking for what may be variants of this name such as Donniger, Doneger, Donaiger, etc. Go to that address, scroll down to the search form, type in the surname, and under "Search type" click on D-M Soundex, then "Search." This will give you names and in some cases addresses of other folks researching similar names -- you might make a connection that will help.

It does seem likely that the name changed from Jankiel to Ankiel. Your listing of the generations of Doneygier seems plausible to me, using the -owicz forms to trace them back. Of course, as I said, it's risky drawing conclusions only from name info. The only way to be sure is to get hold of dates and other data and match them up to confirm what the name data tells you. But I could find no flaw in your logic.

============

LABA

To: Daniel Stephen <quin@nbnet.nb.ca> who wrote: 

Do you by chance have any general information on the surname Laba. My grandfather came from a small German village in the north mountains of Lebanon called Beit Menzer. Laba was his surname. I have had several people tell me that the surname was Polish in origin. Any information or direction that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Without a great deal of detailed information on a family's background, it's difficult to say for sure what nationality a particular name may be, especially a short one like LABA. Certainly this combination of sounds can occur in any number of languages. But it is true that there is a Polish name LABA, and this name seems more likely to be of Polish origin than German.

In Polish the name would be L~ABA -- I'm using L~ to stand for the
Polish L with a slash through it, which is pronounced like our W but
usually was rendered as plain L by non-Poles. L~ABA is pronounced roughly "WAH-bah." 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 1,370 Polish citizens by this name; they lived all over Poland, although the name is somewhat more common in the southern part of the country.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it comes from the noun l~aba, a variant of l~apa, which means "paw." So it probably originated as a nickname for one who had large, paw-like hands, or one who had a dog with big paws, or some other perceived association with paws.

I have sometimes wondered if the name might be associated, in some cases, with people who lived along the Elbe River, because in Polish the name of that river is also L~aba. But the Polish experts who've done research into name origins seem pretty confident that in most cases the name did originate from the word for "paw," as explained above.

============

SZYPERSKI

To: Laura A Hine <laura.ann.hine@juno.com> who wrote: 

Big breakthrough today on the Szrparski name. Although that is what
it looks like on the death certificate of the son, I found the son's
birth record in church records for Rzadkwin, Poland today, as well as the birth records for his brothers and sisters.
The spelling of the name appears as:
 SZYPERSKA
 SRYPERSKA
 SRYPIERSKA
I also found the mother's death record and her father is listed as  Antonios SRYPERSKI. Do these make a little more sense, as far as Polish spelling goes?

This is why I no longer waste time wracking my brains trying to figure out odd-looking names -- they almost always turn out to be misspelled!  SZYPERSKA is the correct spelling -- this is a feminine form of the name SZYPERSKI. The Polish lower-case script z is very easy for us to misread as an r, but it's 99.9% certain the name in question is SZYPERSKI, or, when applied to a female, SZYPERSKA.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it comes from the noun szyper, "skipper, boat crewman." In other words, it comes ultimately from German and from the same basic source as our word "skipper." Certain crafts and professions were dominated by Germans, and that's how a lot of terms came from German into Polish, often changing slightly along the way. Eventually they could become surnames, and that's almost certainly what happened here. So SZYPERSKI, pronounced roughly "ship-AIR-skee," means "kin of the skipper, kin of the boatman."
The ancestor to whom this name originally referred might have been a German named something like Schiffer or Schipper, or he might have been a Pole who worked on a boat as a szyper and thus came to be referred to in terms of his profession. This is especially likely in areas where there was a strong German element to the population, which is probably true of the area your ancestors came from.

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 676 Polish citizens named Szyperski. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (93) and Bydgoszcz (244) -- so it seems fairly likely at least some of those in Bydgoszcz might be related to you. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

That's about all I can tell you, but I hope it will prove useful. It
seems to me you now have a pretty decent amount of info to work with, and I hope it helps you make many breakthroughs!

============

NARBUT - NORBUT

To: Genial m@aol.com who wrote: 

My great grandfather arrived in 1873 from Russia but on checking a death certificate for one of his children, the country of birth was listed as Poland. Can you tell me anything about the name Narbutt. Thank you. 

Much of what is now central and eastern Poland was under Russian rule from the early 1800's till World War I, and for much of that period there was, officially speaking, no such place as "Poland," only "German Poland," "Austrian Poland," and "Russian Poland." Often these designations were abbreviated simply as "Germany," "Austria," and "Poland." It would be worth your while to read an encyclopedia article on the history of Poland to learn a little about all this, because it has enormous effects on research. For instance, if he was born in Russia or Poland, he may well have been born in what is now Lithuania or Belarus -- without more detail, there's no way to know.

NARBUT is a Polonized form of a Lithuanian name, NARBUTAS or NORBUTAS. It comes from two Lithuanian roots joined together to form a name, which is the way many old names were formed by Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, etc. The Lithuanian roots were nor-, "to want, desire," and but-, "to be." The interpretation of the name is debatable; literally it means "want to be," but obviously meant more than that. It probably expressed the parents' desire to give the child a name of good omen that would help him become glorious and make him want to be important, something like that. But even Lithuanian scholars have trouble deciding what these ancient two-part names actually meant.

I believe there was a noble family named Narbutas or Norbutas, and when Lithuania and Poland joined forces centuries ago to form the Commonwealth of Two Nations, many prominent Lithuanian families allowed their names to be Polonized and even spoke Polish. So we see a number of scholars and leaders named Narbut or Norbut. 

A gentleman who can tell you much more is David Zincavage, E-mail jdz@inr.net. He had Narbuts among his ancestors, so he can fill in a lot of info I know nothing about.

============

SLIWINSKI

To: Krystyna Slivinski <canuck66@worldnet.att.net> who wrote:

my niece is doing a school project on surnames....we have found no information on our family name...Sliwinski. 
We have very little information about our father who lost his family during WWII so we don't even know what part of Poland he comes from and whether that town still remains in Poland. We would very much like her to know more about her roots and where her grandparents came from... 

I'm afraid I can't help you much with that, because this name is too common and widespread in Poland; a Sliwinski could come from anywhere. Without specific info on a family's background, there's no way to know which particular area that family came from. This Sliwinski might come from here, that one from there, and so on.

What I can tell you is this. The name in Polish is written with accents over the first S and the N, which I render on-line as S~ and N~; so it would be S~LIWIN~SKI, and it's pronounced roughly "shlee-VEEN-skee." It refers to the name of a place the family was connected with at some point; if they were noble, they owned it, and if not, they lived and worked there. The problem is, there are quite a few places this surname might refer to, places named S~liwin or S~liwiny or S~liwna or S~liwno. They all come from the noun s~liwa, "plum tree." So the place names mean more or less "place of the plum trees," and S~LIWIN~SKI means "of, from the place of the plum trees." 

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 16,815 Polish citizens by this name. As I said, they lived all over Poland, with no significant concentration in any one area.

============

TOMPOROWSKI

To: Teri Popp <teriepopp@uswest.net> who wrote: 

I'm hitting a major stumbling block on my Tomporowskis who allegedly came from Szczytno, Mazury, Poland. Do you have a suggestion for a site that might be able to give me some insight into the meaning of the name Tomporowski? 

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 399 Polish citizens named TOMPOROWSKI. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Gdansk 28, Katowice 27, Ciechanow 63, Olsztyn 53, Szczecin 26, Tarnobrzeg 104. The rest were scattered in small numbers all over Poland. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses. This data suggests that the name is most common in the southeastern part of the country, but is found all over Poland.

It is pronounced roughly "tome-pore-OFF-skee," and probably refers to the name of a place named something like Tomporów or Tomporowo. Names in the form X-owski usually means "one from X-owo," so we would expect the place to have a name fairly close to Tomporów or Tomporowo. However, I notice that _tompor_ is a variant form of the noun usually seen as _topór_, " which means "battle-ax," and was also the name of a coat of arms. So it's possible the place from which the surname comes was once called Tomporów or Tomporowo, but the name later changed to Toporów or Toporowo. Unfortunately, there are several places by those names, in the former provinces of Bialystok, Rzeszow, Sieradz, and Zielona Gora. So without much more detailed info on a specific family, it's impossible to say which of these places, or some other place with a similar name, the surname referred to originally.

Actually, TOMPOROWSKI can be interpreted "of the _ of the battle-ax," where the blank is filled in with something so obvious it didn't have to be spelled out -- usually either "kin" or "place." So the surname means either "kin of the Battle-ax," perhaps referring to one who bore Tompor/Topór as a nickname, or else "place of the battle-ax," which brings us back to Tomporowo, etc. As I say, derivation from the place names is more likely, but "kin of the battle-ax" is also possible.

As to exactly how a given family came to have this name, I'm afraid only genealogical research may provide an answer to that question, by uncovering information on the historical and linguistic context in which the name developed and "stuck" in a given case. That kind of detailed research into a single family, however, is beyond the scope of what I can do; I can only provide general, "off-the-rack" derivations, and have to leave "custom fits" to individual researchers. There are over 800,000 Polish surnames -- there's no way I'll ever live long enough to do really exhaustive, detailed studies of even a few hundred of them.

============

GDOWIK

To: Joe Gdowik <Gdowik@aol.com> who wrote: 

I ran across your web page and was wondering if you could tell me anything you might know about my last name of Gdowik. As far as my family history goes it is from the south of Poland but I am not sure what it means nor its exact origin. Can you help me?

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 141 Polish citizens named GDOWIK. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Elblag 30, Katowice 19, and Rzeszow 46. The rest were scattered in tiny numbers all over the country. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have... This data suggests the name is most common in southeastern Poland, near Rzeszow. Elblag is in northcentral Poland, and Katowice is in southcentral Poland; it's hard to say whether the name really developed in places so far apart, or if it originally came from southeastern Poland but was scattered in other areas during the course of all the post-World War II forced relocations of millions. I suspect it was, and that the name originally comes from southeastern Poland. But I can't prove it.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it comes from gdowa, which is a dialect form of the word seen in standard Polish as wdowa, "widow." So Gdowik would mean basically "son of the widow," and that's about all we can say about it.

============

KRZTON

To: Artur Krzton <ARTON55@aol.com> who wrote: 

Hello my name is artur krzton. im doing a project for searching the meaning of my last name. I'm not sure if it originated from Poland or not but both of my parents are 100% polish and as far back as to their grandparents. I  looked everywhere and I can't find anything. I think that krz-
means cris, but I don't know what -ton means.

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 517 Polish citizens named KRZTON. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Krakow (131) and Rzeszow (235), with the rest scattered in much smaller numbers all over the country. So this name is found mainly in southcentral and southeastern Poland, especially in the area around those two cities. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have...
With this distribution it seems likely there's not just one big Krzton family, but probably several who came to bear this name independently -- although of course it's impossible for me to say without detailed research into the history of all families involved.

In Polish the N has an accent over it; it is rather hard for non-Poles to pronounced, sounding somewhat like "ksh-TOIN." Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it derives from the noun krzta, which means "fragment, bit." The -on suffix does not have a specific meaning that can be defined in a few words; the name Krzton would mean something like "the guy with a fragment, with a little bit." It presumably began as a nickname, possibly for one who so poor that all he owned was a tiny piece of something. Like nicknames in any language, this one can be hard to make sense of unless you're there at the right time and place; but apparently at the time it struck people as a good name, because it stuck and eventually came to be used as a surname for his descendants.

============

JUROSZEK

To: Suzanne Moreau <smoreau@wslc.org> who wrote: 

I would like to know the origin of my great-grandfather's surname which is Yuroszek. Please let me know if you have any information or links to this name.

In Polish this name would begin with J, not Y -- the letter Y does not occur initially in Polish, but Polish J is pronounced the way we pronounce Y. When Poles with names beginning with J left Europe for English-speaking countries, their names were often modified by replacing the J with Y, to make it a bit easier for their new neighbors to pronounce. So within Poland the name you're looking for is JUROSZEK, pronounced roughly "your-OSH-ek."

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 732 Polish citizens named JUROSZEK. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (583) and Katowice (103), so this name is found primarily in southcentral Poland, right by where the Polish border meets the eastern border of the Czech Republic.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it comes from a variation of the name "George." In Polish the standard form of that name is Jerzy (pronounced "YEAH-zhee"), but in many parts of Poland other
forms, influenced by other languages such as Czech and Ukrainian, were historically quite common. Thus Jura or Juri is often seen in southern and eastern Poland. JUROSZ was a kind of nickname formed from those names, and -ek is a diminutive suffix, so that Juroszek means roughly "little George" or "son of little George." As such it is one of the many, many Polish surnames that started out as a reference to the name of a family's father or prominent ancestor.

============

MARCHLEWICZ

To: Kwikbit@aol.com who wrote: 

My son has a homework assignment to find the meaning of his last name. I searched several websites with no luck. Hope you can help me with the last name of Marchlewicz.

In Polish the name is pronounced roughly "mark-LAY-vich," except the -ch doesn't really sound like a K but more like the
guttural sound in German "Bach." Still, "mark-LAY-vich" is pretty close.

In Polish names the suffix -ewicz or -owicz means "son of," so this name means "son of Marchel." Marchel is a variation of the first name better known as "Melchior," which comes from Hebrew melki-or, "the King [God] is my light." Catholic tradition in the Middle Ages said this was the name of one of the Three Wise Men or Magi who visited the infant Jesus (the others were called Balthazar and Casper). This legend was popular in the Middle Ages, and it helped make these three names moderately popular name in Poland at that time, although these days they are pretty rare. In Poland "Melchior" came to be used in several different forms, due to spelling variations and dialect influences; those forms included Majcher, Malcher, and Marchel, and surnames developed from all these different versions of the name. To summarize, the surname Marchlewicz means "son of Melchior," based on an old Polish variation of that name.

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 872 Polish citizens
named Marchlewicz. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 170, Gdansk 81 and Torun 168. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have. This data shows that the name is found all over Poland, but it is most common today in an area just north and west of the center of the country.

============

SIENKOWSKI

To: Bruce Sienkowski <studio2b@iserv.net> who wrote: 

I am interested in finding the origin of our family name. I am aware of a town from a 1923 map of Poland that shows a town east of the Polish border at the time named "Sienkowo".

My name is Bruce Sienkowski.
 
Please forward any information or search methods that you can recommend.

It would help a lot to have some idea of where your family came from, because names in the form X-owski usually refer to the names of places beginning X with which the family was associated at one time. So SIENKOWSKI probably just means "one from Sienki, Sienków, Sienkowo," or a similar name. Unfortunately, there are a number of places in Poland and Belarus and Ukraine (which used to be part of the Polish Commonwealth) that could give rise to this name. The Sienkowo you mentioned might well be the very one from which your family took its name; without detailed info on a specific family's background, however, there is no way to say anything definitive about which of the various possible places the surname referred to originally . 

I have one source that mentions a SIENKOWSKI family (accent over the N, pronounced roughly "shen-KOFF-skee") that was apparently noble and took its name from its estate of Sienków near Belz in southeastern Poland. Again, this family might or might not be connected with you, but at least it does give a concrete example of how the surname is connected with a place name. 

The one thing I can say is that it's likely the family and place both came from the eastern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (what are now eastern Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine), because that's where names beginning Sienk- tended to originate. Usually they both derive from Eastern Slavic nicknames for either "Simon" or "Zenon," Sienko or Zienko or something similar. Sienków or Sienkowo usually means "[place] of Sienko/Zienko," and SIENKOWSKI means "of, from [the place] of Sienko/Zienko."

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 325 Polish citizens named SIENKOWSKI, and another 1,059 who spelled it SIEN~KOWSKI (i. e., with an accent over the N). The former is scattered in small numbers all over Poland. The version with the accented N is also found all over Poland, but is somewhat concentrated in the provinces of Ciechanow (110), Ostroleka (178), Suwalki (305) and Warsaw (133).

Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have. Of course my data does not include people by this name living in what are now Belarus and Ukraine, and it's quite possible the name is moderately common in those countries, too.

============

BARA

To: Tom Bara <Prntloonit@aol.com> who wrote:

Thank you for your interesting web page. I'm interested in the meaning of my surname... Bara.  I've had many people tell me it must have been shortened at Ellis Island, but my Father claims there were 4 other families with the name on his block in the "Back-of-the-Yards" neighborhood of Chicago. He has no info on meaning.

Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

Don't listen to people who don't know what they're talking about. There's a misconception that Polish names all are 15 syllables long and end in -ski -- it's utter nonsense. There are many Polish names that are 4 or 5 letters long, and BARA is one of them. Of course, it's possible in your family's case the name was shortened somewhere along the line (probably not at Ellis Island, but that's beside the point). Only good research will prove the matter one way or the other. But BARA is a documented Polish name.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions it in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says names beginning with BAR- usually derive from German Baer, "bear." This isn't as odd as it may sound; many, many Germans came to live in Poland, and we see a lot of mixing of Polish and German names. Rymut also says in some cases BARA could have come from a short form or nickname of the first name Bartlomiej, "Bartholomew." Bartek and Bartosz are more common nicknames from Bartlomiej, but Bara is certainly a possibility. Unfortunately, without very detailed research into the family's background, there's no way to know for sure whether the name came in a given case from the German word for "bear" or from the nickname for Bartholomew. But one of the two derivations is likely to prove correct.

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 1,345 Polish citizens named Bara. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Gdansk 120, Katowice 274, Krosno 129, Lodz 95, and Tarnobrzeg 110. A look at the map will show you the name is scattered all over the country, but is more common in the southern part of the country. That's about all we can conclude from that data.

============

STACHOWICZ

To: Tom & Deb Stachowiecz <debstachowiecz@ctlnet.com> who wrote: 

I was wondering if you could shed any light on my last name. It is actually spelled S t a c h o w i c z.........a mistake in birth records years ago added the 'e'. Also - any idea as to where in Poland the name comes from....that is, what region or town??

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 6,251 Polish citizens named STACHOWICZ. They lived all over Poland; there is no one area with which the name is particularly associated, and
a family named Stachowicz could have come from anywhere in Poland. The name is pronounced roughly "stah-HOE-vich," except the CH doesn't really sound like our H, but more like the guttural "ch" in German "Bach."

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]; he says it first appears in records as early as 1346. The suffix -owicz means "son of," and Stach is an ancient nickname that developed from various Polish names beginning Sta-, especially the first name Stanislaw; so the name means basically "son of Stach." Poles often formed nicknames from popular first names by taking the first few sounds of the name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes. So they would take Sta- from Stanislaw, drop the rest, and add the -ch to form Stach. Once that name existed, it was only a matter of time before people began referring to the sons or kin of a fellow named Stach as Stachowicz, and eventually that name "stuck" as a surname. 

Incidentally, Stanislaw is the name with which Stach is most likely to be connected, but there are others, especially the first name Eustachy, the Polish equivalent of "Eustace."

============

GROCHOLSKI

To: Cynthia Grocholski Conciatu <cconciatu@paradyne.com> who wrote:

I would appreciate any information you may have about the surname Grocholski. I am told my family comes from Poznan and that my ancestors made carriages for nobility. They are referred to as "Kashub's" Their language was a mixture of Polish and German.

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 1,281 Polish citizens named GROCHOLSKI. They lived all over Poland, with no real concentration in any one province -- there was a sizable number, 118, in the province of Poznan, however. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

This name probably derives from the name of a place with which the family was connected at some point; there are several candidates, including Grocholice and Grocholin. The basic root of all these names is grochol, a kind of vetch, Vicia angustifolia, so the name may just mean "one from Grocholin or Grocholice" = roughly "one from the place of the vetch." Also relevant might be the noun grochal "churl, simpleton"; the name Grocholski might have originally meant "of the grochol or grochal," and thus "kin of the simpleton." But I'd think the connection with a place name beginning Grochol- is more likely. Without detailed research into a specific family's past, however, there's no way to say which place the name refers to in their case.

One possibility worth looking at is Grochol, at 53 degrees 19', 18 degrees 05'; it's not far from the right area. If you'd like to see a map showing where this is, go to the following Website:

http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/loctown.htm 

Enter Grochol as the name of the place you're looking for, and click on "Start the Search." In a moment you'll get a list of places with names that might match "Grochol" phonetically. Scroll on down to the ones in Poland and click on the one named Grochol. A map will come up showing you where it's located; you can zoom in or out. This is one of several places the surname might refer to -- there are others, including Grocholin and Grocholice.

If you'd like more info about the Kashubs -- a fascinating people -- you might visit this Webpage:

http://feefhs.org/kana/frg-kana.html 

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CHODZINSKI

To: Sherry Leonard <leonard@kuntrynet.com> who wrote:

I was wondering if you could interpret the surname Chodzinski? This was my Great Grandfather who Immigrated to the US. On his papers it states that he came from Germany, Poland. Go figure!

If I may give you some friendly advice, the best thing you can do is go read an encyclopedia article on the history of Poland over the last two centuries. To make any sense of Polish research you have to know about the partitioning of Poland, which basically divided Poland between Germany, Russia and Austria roughly 1772-1918. Your ancestor came from the part of Poland seized by Germany, which covered the western and northern regions of Poland in its current borders. At that time, officially speaking, no such place as Poland existed, so officials often weren't allowed to accept "Poland" as a place of origin: it had to be "Germany" or "Russia" or "Austria," or at best "German Poland" or "Russian Poland" or "Austrian Poland." It will be a lot easier for you to understand what you run across in your research if you know a little
about the history.  Another place to check is the history discussion at PolishRoots : http://www.polishroots.org/genpoland/polhistory.htm 

As for the surname CHODZINSKI, in Polish it is spelled with an accent over the N, and is pronounced roughly  "hod-JEEN-skee." 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 566 Polish citizens by this name. They were scattered in small numbers all over the country, so a Chodzinski could come from virtually anywhere in Poland -- there is no one region with which the name is associated.

None of my sources discuss the origin of this specific name, but Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut says in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles] that names beginning Chodz- usually come from the root seen in the verb chodzic', "to go, to walk." That is probably correct as far as the ultimate origin, and the name might have started
out meaning something like "kin of the walker." But most likely the surname refers to the name of a place derived from that root, a place named something like Chodziny or Choda. I can't find any places on modern maps with names that fit, but that's not unusual -- 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.