To: Andrew J. Soltys, Jr., grubek@sprynet.com, who wrote:

... I once studied the Czechoslovak language at the Army Language school at the Presidio in California and one teacher once remarked to me that the spelling of Soltys was common in Czech and meant mayor of a small village. Any meaning for it in Polish.? For ur information, my father Andrew Sr. was born in 1893 , baptized in the Parish of Tarnogrod
in Wojewodstwo Lubelskie, powiat Bilgorajski i rodzony wsi Bukowinie. I thank you in advance for your graciousness. 

I didn't know Soltys is also common in Czech, but there's certainly no reason why it couldn't be. Your teacher was basically correct. The word in Polish is spelled with a slash through the L (which I represent on-line as L~), pronounced much like our W, so that the name, Sol~tys, sounds roughly like "SOW-tiss." It comes from a Middle High German word schultheisse that later became Schultheiss; it means literally "debt caller," and referred to the official who would come and call the roll of the local peasants and collect the rent in money or produce or whatever that the villagers owed the lord who owned the village or estate. That appears to be the original meaning of the word. Eventually it came to be a more general term for a village headman or mayor. 

In German this word became a name and gradually turned into the well-known German name Schultz. In Polish it was gradually Polonized into sol~tys, and the surname Sol~tys developed from that. It's a moderately common name in Poland, borne by 7,735 Polish citizens as of 1990. There's no one specific part of the country where the name is concentrated, although it's more common in the south and southeast (the region called Mal~opolska) than anywhere else. Lublin province, which is where your father came from, is in that region.

"Wojewodstwo Lubelskie, powiat Bilgorajski i rodzony wsi Bukowinie" appears to mean your father was born in the village of Bukowina in the county of Bil~goraj, province of Lublin. There are a lot of places called Bukowina (it's also the name of a region now in Ukraine), so it's a good thing you have this additional data to specify exactly which one you need. By the way, if I'm not mistaken, this area was in Lublin province from after World War II to about 1975. Then they reorganized the provinces, and it was in Zamosc province until 1999, when they reorganized the provinces. Now it's in the new, reorganized province of Lublin. This might cause confusion in your research if you're not familiar with the organizational changes.

Whenever I see the name Sol~tys I always think of American chess grandmaster Andy Soltis -- I was interested in chess before I became interested in Polish names, and it wasn't till years after I first heard of him that I realized "Hey, I know what his name comes from!" Soltis is merely an Americanized spelling of the Polish (or possibly Czech) name.

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KOS[S]AKOWSKI

To: Ann Kopka Baum, Darrel500@earthlink.net, who wrote:

... My mother always had told me that my grandfather, Ludwig Kossakowski, was a Count. When I was younger, genealogy meant nothing. Now I am very interested but my mother is gone. Can you help me find out anything about Kossakowki. I did not find it on your list. Thank you very much.

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 3,671 Polish citizens named Kossakowski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Bialystok 252, Lomza 902, Pila 264, Suwalki 262, Warsaw 589. 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 is most common in the northeastern part of the country.

It's odd that the name is spelled with SS, because Polish usually prefers not to use double letters unless you actually say the letter twice. As of 1990 there were 2,834 Poles who spelled the name Kosakowski with one S; they, too, were most common in the northeastern part of the country. I'm not sure why the unusual spelling with SS is more common than that with one S, which you'd expect to be the norm.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polaków [The Surnames of Poles]. He says either spelling comes from the root seen in the nouns kos, "blackbird," and kosa, "scythe," and the verb kosic', "to mow." He suggests names beginning Kosak- are especially likely to refer to the noun kosak, "undertaker," but I don't think you can rule out a connection with one of the other meanings. In any case, Kosakowski or Kossakowski might mean "kin of the undertaker (or of the mower, or of the blackbird guy)," but most often they would refer to the names of places the family came from, and those place names, in turn, would derive from the root kos-. (Prof. Rymut knows his stuff, but I can't help wondering if there's any possible connection with "Cossack"? In Polish that's kozak, and Kozakowski was the name of 1,254 Poles as of 1990. I'd say the connection is probably with kosak, but don't rule out a possible connection with "Cossack," because kosak and kozak differ only by one letter, and Z and S often switch in names.)

In any case, Kossakowski would usually have started out meaning "one from Kosaki" or "one from Kosakowo." There are at least three places in Poland by these names; one, Kosaki, was in Lomza province as of 1990; and there were two Kosakowo's, one in Gdansk province and one in Olsztyn province. Note that all these places are in the general area where the surname is most common, which tends to support the hypothesis that the surname began as a reference to the places in question.

Without the kind of detailed info you can get only from genealogical research, I can't tell you which of the places your family might have been connected with. It could refer to any of them. But with luck you will find some facts that will clear up which one is likely to be relevant.

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CZAJKOWSKI - TCHAIKOVSKY

To: Amebr, Bekiesz@aol.com, who wrote:

... Awhile ago you helped us with some research for our family name Bekish, you were very helpful and I would like to thank you again. Although you could not help us with Checolska we recently discovered that spelling to be incorrect. The correct spelling is Tchaikovsky. If you would have any information at all it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm glad you got more information. I have found that if the spelling of a name doesn't look right to me, and none of my sources mention it, nine times out of ten it was misspelled somewhere along the way. That's why I have to have a fairly accurate spelling, or I can't really say much that's useful.

Having said that, I must tell you Tchaikovsky is not a Polish spelling; it makes no sense at all by Polish phonetics and orthographics. I recognize, of course, as the spelling of the name of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. That's a kind of Germanized or Frenchified rendering of the Russian form, which is written in Cyrillic. If you take the Cyrillic letters and turn them into English phonetic renderings, it comes out more like Chaikovsky. I recognize this as the name spelled Czajkowski by Poles. All these different spellings are pronounced the same, "chi-KOFF-skee," with the first syllable rhyming with "why." In other words, as different as these spellings look, they are all ways of writing the same name; they only look different because different languages write different sounds in different ways.

Czajkowski comes from the noun czajka, "lapwing" (a kind of bird), but more specifically it would refer to the name of a place, something like Czajki or Czajkow or Czajkowa or Czajkowo; and those place names, in turn, would come from the word for "lapwing." Typically a place would get a name like this either because it was "the place of the lapwings," an area where these birds were abundant, or because the place was owned or founded by someone named Czajko or something similar. So Czajkowski means "one from the place of the lapwings" or "one from the place of Czajko or Czajek, etc." In some cases names beginning Czaj- can also derive from the verb czajac', "to lie in wait for," but I think most of the time Czajkowski would refer to a place named for the lapwing. Unfortunately, there are a number of places in Poland with names this surname could derive from, so without detailed info on a specific family, there's no way to know which place the name refers to in their case.

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 22,131 Polish citizens named Czajkowski. They lived all over Poland, with no particular connection to any one part of the country.

I should make sure one thing is clear. This name can be Polish; but it can also be Ukrainian or Russian, because the same word exists in those languages and there are places with similar names in those countries. In Russian the word (rendered as chaika by English phonetic values) means "seagull," whereas in Polish and Ukrainian it means "lapwing." But the point is, the name is most likely to be Polish in origin, but it can also be Russian or Ukrainian, because there are places in Russia and Ukraine with names that could yield this surname. 

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STACHULA

To: Jan Hussar, Joe Hussar@aol.com, who wrote:

... I am writing to ask if you know anything about my maiden name. It is Stachula. Stachula seems to be a rare name, as all the ones in the Chicago area (and probably Wisc. too) are related to me. My grandparents immigrated here from Lublin, Poland. 

In Polish this name is spelled Stachula and pronounced roughly "sta-HOO-lah," except that H sound is a bit more guttural than our H, more like the ch in German "Bach." 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 494 Polish citizens named Stachula. The largest number, 123, lived in the southeastern province of Tarnobrzeg, with the rest scattered in much smaller numbers all over the country; 25 lived in Lublin province. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polaków [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it derives from a nickname for first names beginning with Sta-, especially the popular name Stanislaw. Poles often formed affectionate diminutives of first names by taking the first few sounds, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes such as -ch or -sz. So the first part of the process went as follows: Stanislaw -> Sta- + -ch = Stach. Once that name existed, Poles eventually would add further suffixes to it, such as -ula. It's a little like the way English took John or James and made the nickname Jack, then later added -y or -ie to create Jacky or Jackie. But this sort of thing is not that common in English, whereas it's very common in Polish, and Polish has a whole range of suffixes it adds to names. Note that you can't say "Jacky" or "Teddy" really means anything -- they're just nicknames formed from older first names that did originally mean something. To the extent that Stachula can be said to mean anything, about the closest we can come to translating it is "kin of Stanislaw."

It's also possible in some cases that names beginning with Stach- come from another first name, Eustachy ("Eustace" in English). That would be rarer, however, than derivation from Stanislaw.

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STEC

To: Trevor McArthur, trevormcarthur@yahoo.com, who wrote:

Don Szumowski of Polish Roots sent me your note because I'm the one who attempts to answer questions about Polish surnames. You wrote:

... I am trying to find info on my in-laws name, Stec. I saw nothing on your web site, but I have seen other spellings that I believe are related--Stecz, Stetz. The only history I know is Anton Stec who came to the USA from Tarnow poland during WWI. Do you have anywhere I can go to find this name.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polaków [The Surnames of Poles]. He says Stec (pronounced "stets") developed as a kind of nickname or affectionate form of the first name Stefan, "Stephen." So it's roughly comparable to "Steve" in English, except it long ago came into use as a surname, presumably as a way of referring to the kin of some person commonly called by that nickname in his local community. By German phonetic values this name would be spelled Stetz, and that's probably where that spelling 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 8,335 Polish citizens named Stec. They lived all over the country, but the name is definitely more common in the southern part of the country than in the north. There were 803 Poles named Stec living in Tarnów province alone.

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TULISZEWSKI, WYSOCKI

To: Diane Darrah, DARREDGAR@aol.com, who wrote:

... I wondered if you had information on two other family names: Tuliszewski and Wysocki? 

Both Tuliszewski and Wysocki would refer to the names of places with which the families were connected at some point; if noble, they owned estates at those places, and if not, they probably lived and worked there. 

Tuliszewski would mean "one from Tuliszew" or some similar place name. I can't find any places by those names on modern maps, 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. The name is pronounced roughly "too-lish-EFF-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 115 Polish citizens named Tuliszewski. They were scattered in small numbers all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one area.

Wysocki ("vee-SOT-skee") can refer to any of a large number of places with names like Wysoka, Wysockie, Wysocice, etc. What these names all have in common is a connection with the root wysok-, "high, elevated," so that they probably refer to the elevation of the terrain in the area where the village or town was located. Wysocki is pretty common by Polish standards -- as of 1990 there were 29,720 Poles by this name Wysocki, living in large numbers all over the country.

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GIBOWSKI

To: DebHHart@aol.com who wrote:

... Do you have any info on the name Gibowski? Anything you may have would be appreciated. 

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 497 Polish citizens named Gibowski. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (52) and Poznan (157), with the rest scattered in small numbers all over. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have. But this does tell us the name is somewhat concentrated mainly in western Poland, in the area from around Poland north to Bydgoszcz.

Surnames in the form X-owski usually mean "one from X," that is, they refer to the name of some place the family came from at some point. We'd expect Gibowski to mean "one from Giby" or "one from Gibowo" or some similar name beginning with Gib-. There is a village called Giby in Suwalki province, but that's awfully far away from western Poland. Most likely the surname refers to more than one place with a name beginning Gib-, and not all of them show up in my sources. 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.

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KALIN~SKI

To: CynthiaSG@aol.com, who wrote:

... Would you help me to know what my family surname of Kalinski may mean?

Names ending in -ski are adjectival, and Kalin~ski (pronounced "kah-LEEN-skee" and written with an accent over the N) means literally "of, from, connected with, relating to kalina." That is a Polish noun meaning "guelder rose" (Viburnum) or "cranberry tree." So the name means literally "of the guelder rose" or "of the cranberry tree." As a surname it might refer to a family's living in any of a number of places called Kalina (presumably because these plants were common in the area), or it might refer to some perceived association between the family and those plants. Thus it might refer to one who lived in an area with these plants, or who wore clothes colored like them, or some other connection. It's difficult to say without detailed research into a given family what the connection was, but there obviously was enough of a connection that people found Kalinski an appropriate name for this person or family.

In some cases the name might also come from the Latin feminine first name Aquilina (literally "of the eagle"); but I think that would be true only occasionally. Most of the time the derivation would be from the noun kalina.

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 5,250 Polish citizens named Kalinski. The largest number, 933, lived in the province of Warsaw; the rest were scattered in somewhat smaller numbers all over Poland. Essentially, a family by this name could have come from anywhere in the country.

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POPOVITCH - POPOWICZ

...I am a writer currently working on a piece of fiction concerning Polish-Americans. I would like to be sure that the surname I have chosen for my characters is appropriately Polish. This is probably an odd request but I have not been able to make an accurate determination and your site allowed me to write to you, so I am. Is the surname Popovitch a Polish one? If not, can you suggest a good resource for this kind of information?

As an author myself, I understand and applaud your emphasis on accuracy in the smallest details. Too many writers don't bother with such "trifles," and I respect anyone who will go to a little trouble to "get it right"!

The spelling Popovitch makes sense as an Americanized phonetic spelling of the Polish surname Popowicz. That name, pronounced roughly "pop-OH-vitch," is definitely attested among Poles. 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 1,912 Polish citizens named Popowicz. There was no one part of Poland in which the name was concentrated; you run into people by that name all over the country. I would think that makes it a very good choice for your purposes -- there's no danger someone will read your work and say, for instance, "This is absurd, that name is found only among the residents of the region of Kaszuby, and the fellow in this story is certainly no Kaszub!" 

In Polish names the suffix -owicz means "son of," so that Popowicz means "son of the pop" (pronounced with an O sound about halfway between the short o of English "pop" and the long O of English "Pope"). In modern usage that term means "clergyman of the Eastern church," referring to a priest of the Greek Catholic rite; but in older Polish it could also be applied to a Roman Catholic priest. It comes ultimately from the same root as "Pope" and "papa," clearly in the sense that a clergyman was a father to his parishioners. The older meaning of "Roman Catholic priest" is probably relevant because surnames developed centuries ago, so we must take into account their meanings back then, not their modern meanings; the name Popowicz appears in records as early as 1412! 

This needs a little historical context. In the last few centuries there's been considerable mixing of ethnic groups and religions, so that today one finds Greek Catholics living in western and northern Poland. But centuries ago, when the name first appeared, there was no such thing as a Greek Catholic rite (or, as they were first called, Uniates). That did not develop until the 1600's, if memory serves. Before then you had Belarusians and Ukrainians who used Orthodox liturgy but felt some allegiance to the Roman Pope. It was in the 1600's that a compromise was worked out whereby the so-called Uniates could keep their Eastern rite and liturgy, but recognized the Pope as their spiritual leader. This, of course, was black heresy to all true Orthodox believers, and over the next few centuries there was a lot of conflict between Greek Catholics and Orthodox adherents. Poles, on the other hand, seem to have accepted Greek Catholics as followers of the same basic religion, or as followers of a rather exotic version of the True Faith, since they both accepted the Pope's leadership.

The point is that when this name Popowicz first appears in Polish, it must have referred to Roman Catholic priests, and perhaps also Orthodox priests; it couldn't refer to Uniates because no such critter existed. As time went on, and the Uniate church (later called Greek Catholic because the term "Uniate" came to be viewed as pejorative) came into existence, the term pop came to be associated more and more with the clergy of that church. In more modern times the term is identified exclusively with Greek Catholic priests. But back when the name Popowicz developed among Poles, it probably referred in most cases to Roman Catholic priests.

I don't know if we should be too literal in saying it means "priest's son" -- since obviously Roman Catholic priests weren't supposed to be having sons! Still, priests are human too, and it might be the name was sometimes applied to the son of a priest who strayed. But I believe it can also be used in a more general sense, "kin of the priest," not just in the literal sense of a son.

I hope I've helped you with this information. If you want to clarify what I said about the religious aspect, you might do a little basic research into the origins of the Uniate or Greek Catholic church. But the bottom line is, Popowicz is a perfectly good name for a Pole to bear; and Popovitch makes sense as an Anglicized form of that name. If a Pole by that name found himself dealing with German officials, the name might end up spelled Popowitsch. But Popovitch is quite credible as the form a Polish immigrant to America might choose to go by, because it retained the original pronunciation of his name but made it a bit more accessible to Americans.

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PIECHOCKI

To: JPP3121@aol.com, who wrote:

... If you have any spare time, could you please try to find something on my last name Piechocki.

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 5,437 Polish citizens named Piechocki. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 548, Konin 316, and Poznan 1,146. 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 tells us the name is found all over Poland but is most common in an area north and west of the center of the country (in its current borders). Unfortunately, that's no help trying to trace a specific family that bears this name -- a Piechocki could come from almost anywhere in Poland, but is statistically somewhat more likely to come from the area of the provinces mentioned above. 

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polaków [The Surnames of Poles]. He says names beginning Piech- usually developed from nicknames for Piotr, "Peter." Poles often formed nicknames or affectionate diminutives by taking the first few letters of a name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes, so that Piotr/Pietr -> Pie- + -ch = Piech. Once that name existed, it could easily have suffixes added to it, so that Piechocki may mean nothing more than "kin of Peter" or "one from the place of Peter's kin."

It's worth mentioning, however, that Piechocki could also have originated as an adjectival form of the noun piechota, "infantry," so that it could mean "kin of the one from the infantry." I'd think that might be more relevant; most names beginning Piech- would come from the nickname for Peter, but ones beginning Piechot- or Piechoc- more likely come from the word for "infantry." Still, either is possible; surviving records make clear that the surname Piechota can come from the nickname for "Peter."

Also, Piechocki might refer to a place name, such as Piechocice, Piechotne, and Piechoty -- there are various villages by those names, and without detailed info on a specific family there's no way to know for sure which one the surname refers to.

To summarize, with many Polish names you can't give a simple, unambiguous derivation unless you have access to very detailed info on that particular family and the context in which it came to be associated with a specific name. Piechocki could mean "kin of the infantryman" or "one from the place of the infantry," but it could also mean "kin of Peter" or "one from the place of Peter." Without firm data indicating which is relevant, I can only give info on the possible derivations, and leave it to you to do subsequent research that might tell you more.

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S~MIAL~KOWSKI

To: Theresa Nelson, greenway2@mtn.org, who wrote:

... I am interested in any information you could give me on the surname Smialkowski. I believe my great grandparents came from Galicia, Poland and settled in Northeast Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their children changed the name to Smalkoski, leaving little chance for others to be able to contact them. So I am struggling for information. My great uncles and aunts would never talk about Poland. I believe the family had much pain. Thank you for any help you can give.

In Polish this name is spelled with an accent over the S (which I represent on-line as S~) and a slash through the L (which I render on-line as L~), so that it is spelled S~mial~kowski. It is pronounced roughly "shm'yaw-KOFF-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 985 Polish citizens named S~mial~kowski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Lodz 228, Katowice 83, Plock 71, Poznan 67, and Szczecin 67, with the rest scattered in smaller 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 tells us that there is a significant concentration in the area near the city of Lodz, but not enough of a concentration to serve as a reliable guide for where a given S~mial~kowski family came from. Besides, your info suggests the family came from Galicia, the part of Poland seized by Austria during the partitions -- it included the southcentral and southeastern part of modern Poland, as well as western Ukraine. So the distribution data is no real help in tracing your family -- which is the case, I'd estimate, at least 90% of the time with Polish surnames.

Names in the form X-owski usually refer to the name of a place beginning with the X part, with which the family was connected at one time; if they were noble, they owned it, and if not, they lived and worked there. So we would expect this name to mean "one from S~mial~ki or S~mial~kowo," place names literally meaning "[place] of the bold one." They were probably named for an owner or founder who bore the name or nickname S~mial~ek, "bold one."

Without much more detailed info on a specific family there's no way to know for sure which place the surname might refer to. It's worth mentioning, however, that there is a S~mial~ki northwest of Czestochowa in southcentral Poland; this is not far from the western edge of Galicia. So the name might mean "one from S~mial~ki." The thing is, Polish surnames developed centuries ago, and often came from the name of a field or hill or little settlement, names used only by locals, that would be unlikely to appear on any map or in any gazetteer. So the place this name refers to may be quite obscure, or may even have disappeared or renamed or absorbed into another community centuries ago. S~mial~ki is the only place I can find on modern maps that makes sense as the place the surname might refer to; but it would be irresponsible to jump to the conclusion that that HAS to be the right place.

I'm afraid only genealogical research is likely to uncover facts that would establish the right place. Once you trace the family back to a specific area in Poland, it becomes possible to search that area for places with names that qualify. But I'm afraid that's more than I can do; I only have the time and resources to do "quick and dirty" analysis.

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KOCZARA

To: Whatzzup99@aol.com, who wrote: 

... Do you know what Koczara stands for? 

According to my sources, the name Koczara (pronounced roughly "co-CHAR-ah") comes from the noun koczar, which means "cabriolet," a small carriage. A person who bore this name presumably drove such a carriage for a living. 

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 697 Polish citizens named Koczara. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 114, Ciechanow 67, Krakow 71, Ostroleka 172. 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 tells us the name is found all over Poland but is most common in an area just northwest of the center of the country (in its current borders).

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FLEISCHER - FLESZAR

To: Jason Edwards, JaeWebDesigner@aol.com, who wrote:

... I just found your page. I've always been interested in finding out more about my Polish heritage. My grandfather came over to America with his parents early in life. He came over before being in kindergarten, so he really has no recollection of anything in Poland. My great-grandfather's name was Wladyslaw Fleszar. My grandparents tried to find out info on the name and the family line, but found nothing but people trying to make a buck on false information - for instance, after the move my great-grandfather "Americanized" his name to Walter Flesher. These places told my grandparents they could trace his name back for hundreds of years in Poland - of course, Flesher was not his Polish name, so these traces were not true. If there is anything you can direct me to, or even a sentence or two in your spare time, I'd be appreciative.

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 906 Polish citizens named Fleszar (pronounced roughly "FLESH-are"). The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Poznan 105, Rzeszow 280, Walbrzych 85. 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 found all over Poland, with concentrations in a couple of areas, western Poland (near Poznan) and southeastern Poland (near Rzeszow). As I say, this is not unusual; one finds names of German origin all over the country, especially in the west (which was long ruled and colonized by Germans) and in the southeast, which was never ruled by Germany but became home to many German immigrants.

One of the books I have, concentrating on Polonized forms of German names, shows Fleszar as coming from German Fleischer, "butcher" (from the same basic Germanic root as our word "flesh"). There have always been large numbers of Germans who came to settle in Poland, so it's not unusual to see Poles bearing names of German linguistic origin. Presumably a family Fleszar started out as a German family named Fleischer, presumably earning a living as butchers; as time went by and they settled among Poles, the form of their name was gradually Polonized so as to be easier for Poles to pronounce. It's possible an ethnic Pole might come to bear this name because he lived among a lot of Germans, but as a rule you'd expect a Fleszar to be of Germanic origin ultimately, because Polish has native words meaning "butcher," e. g. rzeznik.

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RASIMOWICZ

To: JRasi@aol.com, who wrote:

... I often wondered what the derivation of my name was. I never see it posted. My name is now Rasinowich but I know it was changed. My father used Rasimowicz when entering the service. Would appreciate any information.

When a name has been changed the first problem is figuring out what the original form was, and often there's no way to tell for sure without hard evidence -- documents such as naturalization papers, passport applications, ship passenger lists, etc. I can't be certain what the original form was, but Rasimowicz is a real possibility. It is pronounced roughly "rah-shee-MO-vitch," of which Rasimowich could obviously be just a slight Anglicization. So while it's not certain Rasimowicz is the right original form, I will proceed on the assumption that it is, because the odds are good it is. 

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 62 Polish citizens named Rasimowicz. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Lomza 13, Olsztyn 22, Suwalki 13. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have. But this data shows the name is most common in northeastern Poland, and that makes sense given certain clues the name provides.

The suffix -owicz means "son of," and while it is found all over Poland, it is especially common in eastern and especially northeastern Poland, which fits in with the distribution data. This suggests the surname means "son of Rasim." There are several possibilities for what that name comes from, but I think the most likely one is that it started out as a short form for a Slavic adaptation of the Greek name Gerasimos, "honored, prized." This name is somewhat rare among ethnic Poles, but is more common among Eastern Slavs, namely Belarusians and Ukrainians, in forms such as Harasim or Harasym; Greek-based names are often associated with adherents of the Orthodox church, such as the Belarusians and Ukrainians, whereas Poles were more likely to take names from Roman Catholic saints, influenced more often by Latin than Greek. 

In other words, I strongly suspect this name Rasim is a short form or nickname of Harasim or Harasym and originated among Belarusians or Ukrainians, followers either of the Orthodox church or the Greek Catholic rite. So the surname Rasimowicz, which might also be spelled Rasymowicz sometimes, probably means "son of Harasym." The data on the name's frequency and distribution is consistent with this; we often see names of Eastern Slavic origin in northeastern and eastern Poland. The family may have lived elsewhere later, but they probably started out living somewhere in eastern Poland or in the regions just east of the current Polish border, Lithuania or Belarus or Ukraine. These regions were long regarded as eastern territories of the old Polish Commonwealth, and people living in them were often ethnic Poles or regarded as Polish citizens. So even if the name is of Belarusian or Ukrainian linguistic origin, that wouldn't necessarily make the families bearing it any less Polish. Some of Poland's greatest heroes, including Kosciuszko and Mickiewicz, actually came from Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.

I've drawn some pretty sweeping conclusions based on a little data, and might be wrong. But I really think this is the right derivation of this surname. It means "son of [Ha]rasim" and is most likely of eastern Slavic origin.