CHE~TKIEWICZ

To: Cheryl Chetkiewicz <onca@shaw.ca>

> I am interested in learning more about my father's surname: Chetkiewicz as I am trying to piece together a family tree for his family.

In Polish this name would usually be spelled with the first E being the nasal vowel written as an E with a tail under it; online I use E~ to stand for this, since you can't see the Polish character without reconfiguring your browser to enable the Central European character set, which most folks find to be more trouble than it's worth. But it's simple -- wherever you see E~, read it as E with a tail under it.

This vowel is usually pronounced somewhat like "en," so that Che~tkiewicz sounds roughly like "hent-K'YEAH-veech." The initial CH is not quite the H sound of English, it's closer to the guttural "ch" in German "Bach." But that phonetic pronunciation I indicated is pretty close.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. The suffix -ewicz means "son of," so we would figure this name started out meaning "son of Che~tko/Che~tki/Che~tka." Any of those names would produce Che~tkiewicz once the ending was added, so we can't tell which one is relevant in a given instance.

These names all come from the root seen in the old term ch~etki, which in modern Polish is che~tny, "willing" (especially in the sense "ready, willing, and able"). The same basic root appears in the noun che~tka, "wish, caprice, whim," and in the noun che~c~, "wish, desire." So this surname indicates that an ancestor was the son of one named Che~tka or Che~tki or Che~tko, who presumably got that name either because he was always ready and willing to do what needed to be done, or possibly because he tended to be willful and capricious.

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 39 Polish citizens named Che~tkiewicz. They lived in the following provinces: Katowice 1, Radom 31, Slupsk 2, Torun 5. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, so I can't tell you how to find that info.

The data indicates this name is usually found in the area of Radom in southeastern Poland, and perhaps was even at one time exclusively found there, so that those Che~tkiewiczes in other areas had their roots originally near Radom. I'd hesitate to jump to that conclusion: there's nothing about the name that leads me to think it could only develop in one area. I suppose it's possible it was once more widespread, and for some reason these days it is mostly found near Radom. Still, that concentration certainly suggests a Radom connection is probable in most cases.

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CHLEBOWSKI

To: Anne <menzies@sprint.ca>

> I wonder whether you are able to give me any information about the
> surname Chlebowski.

In Polish the "ch" and "h" are pronounced the same, as a guttural somewhat like the "ch" in German "Bach." Keeping that in mind, Chlebowski is pronounced roughly "chleh-BOFF-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 3,271 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one area.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it appears in documents as early as 1399, and refers to a family connection with any of a number of villages, settlements, etc. named Chlebów or Chlebowo or Chlebówka. There are quite a few of these, and the only way to tell which one a given family was connected with would be through genealogical research. The surname itself just doesn't tell us anything about that.

The basic root of the name is chleb, "bread." Chlebowo etc. would mean "[place] of bread." Thus Chlebowski would mean "[one] of the place of bread." But as I say, normally it should be interpreted as simply "one from Chlebowo/Chlebów, etc." In isolated instances it might mean "kin of the bread guy," but usually with surnames in the form X-owski the reference is to a place with a name beginning with the X part. It generally means the family lived or was otherwise connected with such a place at some point centuries ago. If they were noble, they owned an estate there; if they were peasants, they lived and worked there.

To sum up, there is probably not one big Chlebowski family, but rather a number of separate ones that came by the name independently, due to an association centuries ago with any of a number of places named Chlebów or Chlebowo or something similar, meaning "[place] of bread." Only genealogical research might help you pin down which one your particular family came from. I have no sources of info on individual families, so there's nothing I can tell you about your Chlebowskis beyond this.

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CHMIEL

To: Carly Lynn Chmill <clc116+@pitt.edu>

> Hello, my name is Carly and I was wondering if you had any information > on the name of Chmiel or Chmill. I would really appreciate.

In Polish this name is usually spelled Chmiel, pronounced roughly "h'm'yell." The first sound isn't quite like English H, it's more like the guttural "ch" in German "Bach." But if you can manage to make an h- sound followed by an -m- sound followed by "yell," you'll be very close. Chmill doesn't look Polish, and I'd have to guess it's a misreading or misspelling of the original 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 13,030 Polish citizens named Chmiel. They lived all over the country, with no particular concentration in any one area.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it appeared in records as early as 1369, and it comes from the noun chmiel, "hops." So it simply began as a name for an ancestor whom people associated with hops. Perhaps he grew them, or sold them, or lived in an area where they grew in profusion -- or he may have been a maltster. All the name tells us is that there was something about him that made "Hops" seem like an appropriate name, and it stuck, being applied to his descendants.

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CHMIELECKI - CHMIELESKI - CHMIELEWSKI - MALASKE

To: Terri Stern <sternmd@erols.com>

> My ancestors from Peplin, Poland, had the name Malaske in the U.S.
> I just recently found an alternate spelling on a naturalization paper of
> Chmielecki. On another document, Chmieleski. Are any of these common Polish surnames?

Information on the surname Chmielecki is available at the following address:
    http://www.polishroots.org/surnames/surnames_28.htm#CHMIELECKI

As for Chmieleski, the standard form is Chmielewski. It is properly pronounced "h'myell-EFF-skee," but in everyday speech that ending is often pronounced "ess-kee," as if the name were spelled Chmieleski. Spellings in records were often phonetic, so it wouldn't be at all unusual to see the name spelled with -eski. But the standard form is Chmielewski.

It obviously comes from the same basic root as Chmielecki: the noun chmiel, "hops." Like Chmielecki, it would refer in most cases to the name of a place where the family lived at some point centuries ago. But whereas Chmielecki would usually refer to places with names such as Chmielek, Chmielik, Chmielnik, and so forth, Chmielewski would refer to places named Chmielew and Chmielewo. The distinction is that Chmielewski means literally "of the _ of the hops," and the unstated word that fills in the blank would be "place," so that Chmielewski means "one from Chmielew or Chmielewo," which in turn means "one from the place of hops." Chmielecki, however, has a diminutive suffix -ek or -ec added to the root, so that it means "one from the place of the little hops guy." A subtle distinction, perhaps, but the point is that the two names would usually refer to different place names.

However, the surnames are close enough that it would not be strange to see them confused sometimes. Unfortunately, in older records surnames often varied (even in English), so that you might see the same family called Chmielecki in one record, Chmielewski in another, perhaps Chmielewicz in a third, and so on. You have to keep in mind the possibility of such variation.

There are numerous places in Poland these names can refer to. So it's impossible to say which place either surname referred to in a given family's case. The only way to discover that would be through genealogical research, tracing your specific family back generation to generation, until you trace them to their ancestral village in Poland. At that point it might become possible to establish a connection between them and some nearby place with a name that fits.

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 33,578 Polish citizens named Chmielewski, so that name is more common than Chmielecki. But it, too, is found all over Poland; the name itself gives no leads as to what part of the country a specific family came from.

Malaske can be a variation of a name in its own right, Mala[w]ski. But in this case it seems likely to be an Anglicized version of Chmiele[w]ski. Eastern European surnames were often mangled badly when immigrants came to the U. S., past the point of easy recognition. You often have no clue what the real name was until you do some research and find documents closer to the point of actual immigration. In this case, it's highly likely Malaske is the Americanized form, Chmielewski the Polish form, and Chmielecki a similar name with which Chmielewski was sometimes confused.

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CHMIELIN~SKI

To: Michelle Lyons <MPLPML@webtv.net>

> I would appreciate any information you could give me on the name
> Chmielinski and where in Poland it originated.

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 1,839 Polish citizens named Chmielin~ski (the n~ is my way of indicating that there is an accent over the N). The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Ciechanow 204, Gdansk 223, Katowice 116, Olsztyn 211, Ostroleka 196, and Warsaw 218. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, so I can't tell you how to find that info. This data shows that the name is found all over Poland, and there is no one region with which it is associated.

As I say, in Polish this name is spelled with an accent over the N, and it is pronounced roughly "h'myell-EEN-skee" -- the initial H sound is a little bit guttural, like the 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 refers to the name of a place where the family lived at some point centuries ago, a place with the name Chmielno or Chmielen. Unfortunately, there are several such places in Poland, and without detailed information into a specific family's background, there's no way to know which one the surname derives from in their particular case. That's probably why the name appears all over the country: there isn't just one Chmielin~ski family, but a number of different ones, named for various different places all over Poland.

If you'd like to see maps showing at least some of these places, go to this Website:

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

Enter "chmieln" as the place you're looking for, select "Poland" as the country to be searched, and select "Search using Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex." Click on "Start the search," and after a moment you'll see a list of various places in Poland with names that are reasonably good phonetic matches with Chmieln-. The first four on the list are the best matches. For each one, click on the blue numbers (latitude and longitude) and you'll get a map showing that location. You can print the map, save it, zoom in and out, etc. This will give you some idea where the places called Chmielen and Chmielno are located, and at some point in your research this may allow you to make a correlation that proves handy.

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CHOJNOWSKI - HOJNOWSKI

To: Chris Choynowski <chriscct@mindspring.com>

> Would you have any information as to the names Choynowski or Chojnowski?
> The only information I could find is that its associated with the Polish clan Lubicz.
> Any info would be appreciated.

Chojnowski could also be spelled Choynowski in older Polish, but in modern spelling that "y" sound would be represented with J. Other likely spelling variations are Hojnowski and Hoynowski. In Polish the H and CH are pronounced exactly the same, so either spelling is possible; within the last century or so, though, spellings have tended to become somewhat standardized, and the standard spelling of this name these days is Chojnowski. You want to note the other spellings, however, because spelling wasn't always reliable in old records, so you might find the name spelled any of the ways I've mentioned.

The H or CH is a little more guttural than the English H, it sounds somewhat like "ch" in German "Bach"; that said, the name is pronounced "hoy-NOFF-skee," however it's spelled.

As of 1990 there were 7,211 Polish citizens named Chojnowski (only 161 who spelled it Hojnowski). The Chojnowskis lived all over Poland; there were particularly large numbers in the provinces of Bialystok, 350; Lomza, 1,957; Olsztyn, 299; Ostroleka, 548; Suwalki, 347; Torun, 322; and Warsaw, 712. So the name is most common in northcentral to northeastern Poland.

The ultimate root of the name is the noun chojna, "fir, spruce." Names in the form X-owski usually refer to the names of places with which the families were connected. If a Chojnowski family was noble, at some point they owned an estate with a name beginning Chojn-, so that the surname meant essentially "of the place of the firs or spruces." If they were peasants, they lived and worked at a place with an appropriate name somewhere along the line.

There are a number of villages and settlements in Poland named Chojna, Chojnów, Chojnowo, etc., so without more specifics on an individual family there's no way to know which of those places the surname refers to in a given case. As I said, I can't even say for sure the family was noble, because originally -owski names were used only by nobility -- X-owski meant "[lord] of X" -- but as time went on peasants took such names as well. In their case, X-owski simply meant "one from X."

So to be sure your family was of the noble Chojnowskis, you'd have to trace the bloodline back and establish a connection with a recognized noble. I'm not saying your family is or isn't of noble origin. I'm just saying you can't tell from the name itself. Only genealogical research would establish the point.

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CHIEMENGO - CIEMIE~GA - CIEMIENGA

To: Michael Chiemengo <chimengs@email.msn.com>

> I have been searching for a while and have not been able to find any information about my family. All I know is that they are from Poland and that my grandfather came to the U.S.A. around the early 1900's from Poland. He was sent to the U.S.A. by his father who owned a shoe factory somewhere in Poland. When they arrived at Ellis Island I have been told that the name was changed, I am not sure why but it was changed from CIEMIEGA to CHIEMINGO.
> My grandparents both died at very young ages, and the children were sent to farms and lost all possible family records.

My information sources don't help much with finding individual persons or families, but I can tell you a few things about the name that may prove interesting, if not helpful.

In Polish this name is spelled Ciemie~ga -- I use E~ to stand for the Polish letter written as an E with a tail under it, and usually pronounced much like "en." In Polish the combination CI is pronounced much like English "ch." So Ciemie~ga sounds like "chem-YENG-gah." Once you realize this, it's not hard to understand why the spelling might be changed to Chiemingo -- by English phonetic values, this is a reasonably good representation of how the name was pronounced in Polish. That's usually the reason for spelling changes of this sort. Different languages using the Roman alphabet use different ways of representing sounds, and in Polish Ciemie~ga is a very good way of spelling the sounds of this name; but it makes no sense to English-speakers, for us English "Chiemingo" is a more comprehensible spelling.

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 960 Polish citizens named Ciemie~ga. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Katowice 278, Radom 74, Rzeszow 149, and Tarnow 82. 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 the name is found primarily in southcentral and southeastern Poland, in the region formerly ruled by Austria and called Galicia. But the disappointing thing is that it doesn't really help a great deal in tracing where a given Ciemie~ga family came from originally; they could come from anywhere in Poland, and especially in southcentral to southeastern Poland.

There was also 124 Poles who spelled the name Ciemienga, which makes sense phonetically, if you recall what I said about the pronunciation of that letter E~.

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 ciemie~ga, which means "dullard, worthless fellow, twerp." I know this isn't very flattering, but believe me, compared to some Polish names I've seen, this is not bad at all. There are an incredibly large number of Polish surnames that come from words that are outright insults, some of them obscene. I really think some of them were surely meant in fun, the way Americans sometimes call their friends by insulting names as a jest.

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CIESZYN~SKI

To: Amy Cieszynski <buffettchick@msn.com>

> I was wondering if you had any information on my last name. It is Cieszynski.

In Polish this name is spelled with an acute accent over the N, and is pronounced roughly "cheh-SHIN-skee." Online I use N~ to stand for that accented N, so I spell the name Cieszyn~ski.

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 3,242 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over Poland, with particularly large numbers in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 191, Gdansk 612, Katowice 146, Olsztyn 133, Rzeszow 163, Slupsk 156, Torun 737, and Wloclawek 197. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, so I can't tell you how to find that info.

This data tells us a Cieszyn~ski family could come from practically anywhere in Poland, but there are significant concentrations in northcentral Poland.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it appears in records as early as 1418, and just means "one from Cieszyn" or Cieszyna or Cieszyno or Cieszyny -- there are a number of different places with these names. The only way to tell which one a specific family came from would be through genealogical research, which would allow one to focus on the exact area that particular Cieszyn~ski family came from and thus on a nearby place with an appropriate name.

There is, for instance, a famous and fairly large town Cieszyn down in southcentral Poland, on the border with the Czech Republic, and Cieszyn~ski could refer to a family's connection with that place. But all those Cieszyn~skis up in Gdansk and Torun provinces are less likely to have names referring to that Cieszyn all the way down in southern Poland. Their name is somewhat more likely to refer to a Cieszyna or other similar place name closer to home. That's why one has to know what part of Poland a family came from before it's possible to suggest which place the surname refers to.

Cieszyn~ski could also come from short forms of ancient pagan names such as Cieszybor and Cieszymir and Ciechosl~aw, in which the first part of the name means something like "joy" or "consolation." Thus Cieszybor probably meant "joy-battle" (may he enjoy battle); Cieszymir probably meant "joy-peace" (may he find joy in victorious peace); Ciechosl~aw probably meant "joy-glory" (may he find joy in glory). These names produced nicknames or short forms such as Ciech, Ciecha, Ciesza, etc.; the guttural -ch- tends to become -sz- when suffixes are added, so that names beginning Ciech- and Ciesz- are from the same source.

Once those names Ciech or Ciesza or whatever existed, Cieszyn would develop from them, meaning "[kin] of Ciesza or Ciech" or "[place] of Ciesza or Ciech." Then Cieszyn~ski could develop as a way of saying "kin of Ciesza's kin" or "one from Ciesza's place." The latter is probably applicable in most cases, as I said above -- it would mean "one from Cieszyn" or "one from Cieszyna," which in turn means "one from Ciech's/Ciesza's place." However, it is possible the surname Cieszyn~ski could refer not to a place but rather to the extended family of a fellow named Ciech or Ciesza or something similar.