...My wife became jealous that I received this information from you and would like to know her father's surname meaning which is Staszak. We know that there are a lot of Staszaks in the Poznan area but have no clue as to the name's meaning...

In the interests of promoting domestic tranquility, I'll be glad to tell you what I can.

Poles historically loved to form nicknames and affectionate variations of names by taking the first few sounds of a popular first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes -- not unlike the way we turned "Edward" into "Eddy." One of the most popular names in Poland, as far back as we have records, is Stanisław (the ł is pronounced like our W), an ancient name coming from pagan times and meaning something like "May he become glorious!" Poles formed a great many nicknames and short forms of that name, one of which is Staś (accent over the s, giving it a kind of an "sh" sound). This is still a very popular name among Poles, I know several people called Staś.

The sz combination in Polish is also pronounced like "sh," although it's a chunkier, harder sh, whereas ś is kind of light and hissing. You have to grow up speaking the language to really get the difference -- but the point is, both Staś and Stasz sound pretty similar, and both started out as nicknames for Stanisław. Then, once these names became common, Poles started adding suffixes to them. Staszak is basically a diminutive, meaning "little Staś," often = "son of Staś." So Staszak became a surname meaning "Staś's son" (not unlike Smithson or Alexanders in English). That's the origin of this name.

Since Stanisław and many of the names formed from it are extremely popular, it's not surprising that the surnames formed from them tend to be common. As of 1990 there were 5,562 Polish citizens named Staszak. They lived all over the country, with some of the larger numbers appearing in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (380), Kalisz (693), Konin (927), and Poznan (845). But really, the name's fairly common all over the country, which just makes sense -- it could, and did, get started anywhere they spoke Polish and there were guys named Staś who had sons.

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

...I am trying to find the correct spelling of a Polish surname. It is pronounced Hyn-rick , but I believe it is spelled Hnyjnrch or something similar, but I am having no luck with my search using that spelling...

Well, it sounds as if you're talking about a surname derived from the Polish first name Henryk, which is the equivalent of our "Henry." Henryk is the standard spelling, but it derives from the German Heinrich, and other spellings are possible, depending on the degree to which the name has been adapted to Polish phonetics. They include Hejnrych, Heinrych, Hendrych, and Henrych. Henryk rarely appears as a surname in Poland, but the other four forms I just mentioned do, some more common than others. So I would guess you're looking for Heinrich, Hejnrych, Heinrych, Hendrych, or Henrych. I have no way of knowing for sure which of those forms is the exact one you're looking for, but I hope this will give you enough info to make your search more productive. Good luck!

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

... In the spirit of your notes, and my last name being Lizewski, I should look for villages in Poland such as Lizew, Lizewo, Lizewa, Lizewice, etc.? Thanks for your assistance...

It is such a pleasure talking to somebody who actually reads and understands what I have written! It makes me feel that perhaps I'm not wasting my time after all!

Yes, that is the basic idea with a name like Lizewski. You'd expect it, just judging by the form, to come from a place name beginning with Liz-, and the names you mention are all reasonable candidates. The only problem may be finding the place in question. Some surnames were formed from the names of rather small settlements, so the place names were never used by anyone by locals. Also, the surnames generally originated at least 200-300 years ago, and names can change. So there's no guarantee you'll find the right place, unless you manage to get at records that are very localized and go back a long way!

I looked in the Słownik Geograficzny gazetteer and only found a few places that might fit. There was a Liż, a manorial farmstead in Srem powiat (near Srem in Poznan province), part of the Jawory estate. There was a Liza Nowa served by Piekuty parish and part of Poswietne gmina in Wysoko Mazowieckie powiat. There were a couple of Lizawy's, one in Konin powiat, Slesin parish, and one in Stopnice powiat, Pierzchnica parish (Lizewski < Lizawy is a bit of a stretch, but not too much so). There was a Liże near Rossienie (now Raseiniai in Lithuania). And there were 2 places called Lizowszczyzna, which might be relevant -- the -szczyzna suffix usually was formed from names ending in -ski, so we have a link with Lizowski, and that could well be relevant, e and o often switch. Both these places were near Dzisna, and thus are probably now in Belarus; one was about 14 km. from Dzisna, the other about 50.

One of these might be the right place; or your Lizewskis might have taken their name from another place that has since disappeared, or changed names. I wish I could give you something exact to work with, but I just don't have enough data. Still, maybe some of this info will come in handy. I hope so! And I wish you the best of luck with your research!

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

...I would like to request information conserning the surnames Puch and Pieknik. Both families came from the Galicia region of Poland. My husband still has relatives (Pieknik) in Jaslo. I am not aware of any relations by the name of Puch currently residing in Poland, but the family original came from an area near Stary Sacz...

As of 1990 there were 160 Polish citizens named Pieknik, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (16), Czestochowa (14), Katowice (29), Legnica (15), Rzeszow (25), and a few scattered in other provinces. This indicates the name is a bit more common in southcentral and southwestern Poland than elsewhere -- most of those provinces are a little west of Galicia proper, but Rzeszow province was in Galicia. Pieknik probably derives from the root piękny (ę is pronounced much like en), which means "beautiful, pretty, nice." The name probably meant something like "son of the beautiful one." It might also come from the root piek- meaning "bake," but that -nik suffix makes derivation from the root meaning "beautiful" considerably more likely.

Puch appears in records as early as 1381, and is thought to derive from the root puch, "down, fluff" -- perhaps it referred to a person with soft hair or skin. As of 1990 there were 640 Puch's in Poland, with the larger numbers living in the provinces of Białystok (69), Katowice (52), Lublin (41), Nowy Sacz (70), and Wroclaw (40), and smaller numbers in several other provinces. The provinces mentioned are all over Poland, but Lublin was in Galicia, and I believe Nowy Sacz province (which includes Stary Sacz) was also. So the numbers fit in fairly well with the info you provided.

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

...If you have an occasion in your studies to come across any information on the name Schwerm, I would be most grateful for it...

Schwerm is a German name, but German names are often very relevant to Polish research; there are just too many names borne by true Poles that originated from German expressions or names! Schwerm appears to come from the same root as the German names Schwermer and Schwa"rmer -- those names mean "enthusiast, zealot," i.e., somebody who gets all worked up over something. As of 1990 there were 51 Polish citizens with the name Schwermer (most living in Pila and Poznan provinces), but none named Schwerm. There were 24 who used the name Szwermer (which is just Schwermer spelled by Polish phonetics), but none named Szwerm -- and you should keep your eye open for that spelling, because over the course of time the names of Germans in Poland did often come to be spelled according to Polish phonetics, particularly as those people began to fit in and lose their status as "foreigners."

This might mean the original form of the name was Schwermer rather than Schwerm, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. There might be plenty of Schwerm's in Germany. Modern numbers on German-sounding names in Poland can be deceiving, because so many ethnic Germans decided to get out of Poland after World War II (being an obvious German in post-war Poland was not a good career move!). So there may have been Schwerm's in Poland before 1945; or people named Schwerm/Szwerm may have decided to change their names to something a bit less German-sounding.

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

...I found your page ... and am interested in any info you can turn up on the name Majtyka. I don't know much except that my grandfather and his parents settled in Detroit either just before or during WW1 after leaving Warsaw. Also, I've heard several suggestions as to the origin of the name, none of which has been confirmed...

Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions Majtyka under names coming from the basic root majd-, "to move back and forth, wag (a tail), dangle (legs)," so it appears to be a name that originated (perhaps as a nickname) as a reference to a physical characteristic. Perhaps your ancestor had a habit of moving that way -- it can be tough, all these centuries later, to reconstruct exactly how and why a particular name came to be associated with an individual. All we can do is note what the words mean and try to make plausible suggestions on why the name was appropriate.

Rymut is usually pretty reliable, but I can't help wondering if this name might also be connected with the word majtek, which means "ordinary sailor." This word could quite plausibly generate a surname Majteka or Majtka or Majtyka meaning, basically, "sailor's son." It's possible Rymut looked at this and rejected it for good reason; but it strikes me as worth consideration.

As of 1990 there were 673 Polish citizens named Majtyka, living all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (69), Czestochowa (48, Krakow (84), Sieradz (130), and Wroclaw (81). These provinces are all in an area of southcentral to southwestern Poland, so that's the general area in which this name is most common -- although it is found in smaller numbers in virtually every province of Poland. Unfortunately I do not have access to further details, such as first names, addresses, etc.

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

...Thanks much for your information regarding my Grandfather. I would appreciate it if you would give me quick and dirty rundown on the following: My dads mother : Barbara Rudy from Tarnapol ...

Names beginning with Rud- can come from the adjective rudy, "ginger-colored, red-haired," from the noun ruda, "ore," or from the first name Rudolf. In this case I imagine Rudy probably comes from the adjective meaning "red-haired," although there's no way to be certain without a lot more detail. As of 1990 there were 1,178 Poles named Rudy, so it's a moderately common name; there were Rudy's living in every province, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Katowice (246), Krosno (98), and Zamosc (141) -- the latter two are in southeastern Poland (and thus geographically not that far from Tarnopol, which is now in Ukraine), the other, Katowice, is an area where many eastern Poles and Ukrainians were forced to relocate after World War II. My source of Polish data does not include areas outside Poland's current borders, so I can't tell you how many Rudy's live in the Tarnopol region.

...My moms Mother Mary Milan or Mellon ...

Mellon makes no sense as a Polish name, though it could be an anglicized version of Milan, which is a recognized Polish name. Milan could have developed as a short form of the first name Emilian, or as a nickname for the first names Milobor, Milosław, etc -- there are a number of ancient names beginning with the root mil-, "dear, nice, beloved." So either way you look at it, this is one of those surnames that derived from a first name, usually because a family was being named after the father, almost in the sense of "Milan's kids." As of 1990 there were 256 Poles named Milan, so it's not all that common a name; small numbers lived in many provinces, the largest numbers were in the provinces of Elblag (22), Krosno (33), Nowy Sacz (46), and Przemysl (23) -- so it's a bit more common in southcentral and southeastern Poland.

...My Moms dad: Andrezej Krolak ..

Królak comes from the word król, "king," so Królak means something like "king's son"; obviously in most cases the term isn't literal, it might mean "son of the king's man, son of the king's servant," something like that. It's a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 5,660 Poles named Królak; it's common all over Poland, with an especially large group of 1,500+ in Warsaw province. (By the way, that first name is properly spelled Andrzej, not Andrezej -- not a big deal, but it might prove helpful at some point to know that).

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

...I have your book Polish Surnames and enjoy it a lot. I would like to know more about the Gozdowski name and were they came from. I'm told that they came from Posen,but I donot know if it was the city or province. Is it Posne or Poznan? ...

I'm glad you like the book -- I put a fair amount of work into it, and hoped people would find it helpful.

To start with, Poznań is the Polish name of a major city in Poland, and also of the province of which it is the administrative capital (Poznan is the capital of Poznan province, Krakow is capital of Krakow province, etc.). The German form of this name is Posen, so when the Germans ruled this area (from roughly 1772 to 1918) that's the name they used. A large part of what is now western Poland was called Provinz Posen ("Poznan province") by the Germans -- it's not the same as the modern-day province of Poznan, it was much larger. So when you talk about Poznan/Posen, it makes a big difference whether you're talking about the city or the province, and it makes a big difference what time frame you're dealing with.

Names ending in -owski usually (not always) refer to some association between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ów or -owo; so we would expect Gozdowski to mean something like "person from Gozdow or Gozdowo." There are quite a few places named Gozdów and Gozdowo, but in this case you say your folks come from near Poznan, and I notice one of those Gozdowo's is in modern-day Poznan province -- it's about 40 km. east-southeast of Poznan, and less than 5 km. from the town of Wrzesnia. This doesn't HAVE to be the Gozdowo your family's name refers to, but chances seem reasonably good that it is. As of 1990 there were 597 Polish citizens named Gozdowski, of whom 142 lived in Poznan province (by far the most in any one province).

By the way, the place names Gozdow and Gozdowo probably come from the archaic root gozd, "forest," so the place name meant something like "place of the forest," and thus the surname means "family from the place of the forest." In some instances names with gozd- can also come from the root gwozdz, "nail," but I suspect in this case it's the old word for "forest" that's involved

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

...From reading your postings I'm guessing the first part of my name means "battle" but I was interested in any other info you may have. My father believes that our name did not change any when my grandfather came from Poland around 1914...

There are two roots bor in Polish, and usually when you talk about the names the one you want is the bor- that has to do with "fight, struggle, battle." But not always -- and this seems to be one of those times. The other bor is a root meaning "woods, forest," and Borcz (if the name wasn't shortened, and there's no real reason to believe it was) apparently comes from that one. A multi-volume work on Polish place names mentions a village Borcz in Gdansk province (9.5 km. southeast of Kartuzy), and says its name is from the word bór (the ó sounds like "oo" in English "book"), "woods, forest." Originally the name of the village was Borc (sounds like "borts"), and the change to the "ch" sound of Polish cz came about under German influence. So if this is true of the place name, it's likely to be true of the surname as well -- although that isn't absolutely true all the time, but it seems likely. I would think your ancestors got their name from living in or near a forest, maybe even in or near the village of Borcz. Still, there were so many forests all over Poland that this surname probably arose in different places at different times, not necessarily just from the village of Borcz.

As of 1990 there were 514 Polish citizens named Borcz; the largest numbers of them lived in the provinces of Katowice (41), Przemysl (63), and Rzeszow (114), with much smaller numbers in many other provinces.

Since the largest number of Borcz's seem to live in southcentral and southeastern Poland, it's a good idea to be cautious before applying to that surname the derivation of the name of a village up near Gdansk! So we can't be certain Borcz comes from the root meaning "woods, forest." It might derive from a diminutive form of a name with the bor meaning "fight" (e. g., Borek -> Borczak -> Borcz). But I'd lean toward the "forest" derivation myself, it strikes me as being just a little more probable.

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

...Could you please help me with the origin and the meaning of the surname Palen. I'm not sure if it was shortened or not and if it was I'm not sure what it was before. Thanks

It could have been shortened, but there's no need to assume so. Paleń is a moderately common name: as of 1990 there were 711 Polish citizens by this name. Small numbers lived all over the country, but the provinces with the largest numbers were Legnica (41), Tarnobrzeg (364), Wroclaw (33). Obviously Tarnobrzeg province seems the most likely place of origin -- it's in southeastern Poland, not too far from the Ukrainian border. And since many Ukrainians were forced to relocate west after World War II, the Paleń's in Legnica and Wroclaw province may have been living in southeastern Poland, too, before 1945.

The root pal- means "light a fire, heat," and there are a lot of words that come from it. Two that might be relevant to your name are palenka and paleń. The term palenka means "booze, liquor, vodka," a reference to the heating that's an essential part of the distilling process. A paleń is a set of two beams or rods attached side by side along a wall beneath ceiling, for drying wood, flax, onions, etc.; here the meaning is more along the lines of "dry out" rather than actually heating something. So my guess is a person got the name Paleń either because he made liquor (probably home brew) or because somehow people associated him with those drying rods -- maybe he was thin as a rod, or made such rods, or used them all the time. Centuries after the fact it can be awfully hard figuring out how names got started, the best we can do is say what words and meanings a name is associated with, and then try to suggest plausible explanations.

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

...My grandfather's name was changed when he came to the U.S. in 1907. He was only 15, and all alone. I'm not sure why it was changed, but the story is that a schoolteacher thought that the original would be too difficult to pronounce. The name was changed from Hryc to Chritz. Do you know how the original name would have been pronounced? I believe he was from Tarnow, Poland....

Sometimes these stories about how names were changed turn out to be utter nonsense, but this one is probably true. I say this because the Polish pronunciation of sounds like "Chritz," if you make the initial "Ch" sound kind of like k (as in "Christ," for instance); so it's very credible that a Hryc who asked for help in making his name easier for English-speakers to pronounce would be told "Chritz" was a good choice. The ch and h are pronounced the same in Polish, a guttural h with attitude, much like the ch in German "Bach" or Scottish "loch"; the Polish y is pronounced like the short i in English "sit," and the Polish c is pronounced like "ts" in "cats." So you see, Chritz really does do a pretty good job of rendering the Polish pronunciation by English phonetic values.

In origin Hryc is a form of the first name Gregory, and it's a form influenced by Ukrainian -- which makes sense, because Tarnow is not far from the border with Ukraine, and the Polish spoken in southeastern Poland does have a certain amount of Ukrainian mixed in. The Ukr. form of the name "Gregory" is Hrehir (with the h, remember, sounding almost like a k), and Hryc or Hryts is a kind of nickname, like "Greg." Poles and Ukrainians both like to make nicknames by taking the first couple of sounds from a popular first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes; so even though it may not look much like it, Hryc is a nickname for Hrehir... By the way, please note that the name may be of Ukrainian linguistic origin, that doesn't necessarily mean your grandfather wasn't Polish. Many native Poles have names of non-Polish origin that got started centuries ago; also, the western half of Ukraine was under Polish rule for a long time, so a lot of Ukrainians thought of themselves as citizens of Poland. So your grandfather may have been a Pole, a Ukrainian, both -- in matters of ethnic identity we almost have to say "You are what you think you are," because borders in eastern Europe changed so often it's a real mess trying to define ethnicity by strict rules.

As of 1990 there were 233 Polish citizens named Hryc, scattered all over the country, but with larger numbers in the provinces of Łomża (40) and Nowy Sacz (68). There was only one Hryc in Tarnow province. You'd expect most of the Hryc's to live in southeastern Poland, but many people from southeastern Poland and western Ukraine were forced to relocate to western Poland after World War II, so that muddies the waters quite a bit when we look at distribution of Ukrainian names... If we had data on Ukrainian names, there might be a lot more Hryc's there. Interestingly, there's a more common "Polish" name from the same root, Hryciuk (1,394 Polish citizens by that name as of 1990), which means "son of Greg."

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

...I'm wondering if you could help me out with a little information regarding my family's surname: Majdoch. I really don't know any thing about the history of my family and as far as I know there arn't too many of us out there. The majority of us live in the Milwaukee area with a few exceptions in the Dallas area and also in Arizona I believe. Any info that you may have would be greatly appreciated...

I don't have a lot that will help you. As of 1990 there was no Polish citizen named Majdoch (according to a Polish government database that covered about 94% of that country's population). There were 3 people named Majdok (1 each in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala, Katowice, and Opole), and 1,087 named Majdak -- but without further data it's not a good idea to assume either of those names has anything to do with yours. Majdoch is, theoretically speaking, a perfectly plausible Polish name; it just doesn't happen to be used by anyone now in Poland. I have run into many, many cases where a name died out in Poland after a family by that name emigrated, that may be what happened here.

I do wish we had some idea where the Majdoch's came from, it might shed light on what the name meant. I have a source that says in the Cieszyn area in Bielsko-Biala province (in far southcentral Poland) there is a term majdok that means "left-handed person," so that might be relevant to your name. Majdek is a word meaning "ordinary sailor" (i. e., not a captain or admiral, just a seaman). There's also a verb majdać that means "to wag (a tail), to move back and forth," and Majdoch could well be a name from that root given someone, sort of as a nickname, because of something about the way he moved. All these are possible -- but there just isn't enough data to let us settle on one as being the most likely.

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

...Have you been swamped with requests? I only know of three other family names: Budacz, Kubiszewski, and my grandmother's maiden name--seen spelled Walczak, Walczyk, and numerous other (surely) Americanized versions...

I have been swamped with requests, which is why I didn't answer earlier. But I can spare a few moments to talk about these names, none of which is particularly difficult.

Budacz means "stall-keeper, person with a buda" -- a buda is a small booth or stall used by, say, watchmen as a guard-house, or peddlers selling inexpensive items out of a stall at market. A buda could be used for many purposes, and a budacz was someone who worked out of or owned a buda. As of 1990 there were only 111 Budacz's in Poland, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (12), Krakow (39), Nowy Sacz (26), and Tarnow (13) and a few living in other provinces -- thus the name is mainly to be found in southcentral and southeast Poland.

Kubiszewski means "person or family from a place with a name beginning Kubiszew- or something similar." Offhand I can't find any Kubiszew's or Kubiszewo's, but it's quite common to see surnames derived from names of places that were quite tiny, or have since changed their names or been absorbed by other communities. The Kubisz- part is a nickname from Jakub, "Jacob," so Kubiszew or Kubiszewo would mean something like "Jake's place," and Kubiszewski would break down to mean "person from Jake's place." But for all intents and purposes, "person from Kubiszew or Kubiszewo" is probably the best practical translation. As of 1990 there were 851 Poles named Kubiszewski, with larger numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (79), Bydgoszcz (157), Gdansk (65), Skierniewice (138), and less than 50 living in most other provinces. This suggests the name is scattered all over the country, there's no one area most likely to be the home of the Kubiszewski's, so there's probably more than one family with that name, and more than one Kubiszew or Kubiszewo.

Walczak and Walczyk are both common names, meaning "son of Walka," and Walka was a kind of nickname that could come from first names such as Walenty (Valentine) or Walerian (Valerian), or from the verb root wal-, "to bring down, overthrow." As of 1990 there were 42,119 Walczak's in Poland, and 4,482 Walczyk's, so both names are common and encountered all over Poland.

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

...My grandmothers surname was either Petrasz or Pietrasz. Could you tell me the origin of the name. I'm assuming that the derivation between the two spellings, is just that and not two different names. If so, which would be the more accurate. The family was from Zagorz, near Sanok...

The name Pietrasz comes from the first name Piotr, "Peter," and would not mean much more than "Peter's kin, Peter's sons." Of the two spellings, I'd say Pietrasz is a little more standard -- sometimes the name is pronounced without the slight "y" sound of the i, so that Petrasz sounds like "Pet-rosh" and Pietrasz sounds like "PYET-rosh." That's a pretty minor difference, but Petrasz would be more a dialect form, Pietrasz would be "standard" Polish... As of 1990 there were only 42 Poles who spelled it Petrasz, as opposed to 1,022 named Pietrasz -- of whom 99 lived in Krosno province, which is where Zagorz and Sanok are located. (Sorry, I don't have access to any first names or addresses).

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

...If you have the time,can you tell me about the surname Gądela. The first a has a tail. I appreciate your time...

An A with a tail under it is pronounced like on in French "bon" -- and since it sounded like that, it was often written that way, so keep an eye open for Gondela, that is an alternate spelling you may well run into.

This is a tough one because none of my sources mention it specifically. There is a verb root gąd- meaning "to play on a stringed instrument," and it generated such surnames as Gądek (= "one who plays an instrument, a home-bred musician") and Gądzik. It may also be the source of Gądela -- the suffix -ela is one we see used in Polish, along with -ała and -uła and several others. That suffix usually implies continual performance of the action of the verb root, so that Gądela would mean "one always playing an instrument." This is quite plausible, and may be exactly how the name got started. I'm just a little worried because this specific name isn't mentioned in my sources, so there's always the chance it came from another root I don't know about... Still, I think the odds are good that's how the name originated, as a nickname or name for a fellow who liked to play an instrument at every opportunity but had no formal training.

As of 1990 there were only 15 Polish citizens with the name Gądela. They lived in the provinces of Krosno (9), Legnica (1), Walbrzych (4), and Wroclaw (1); I'm afraid I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses. The odd thing is, there were more named Gondela, and usually you'd expect it to be the other way around; there were 58 Gondela's, living in the provinces of Biala Podlaska (3), Gdansk (7), Katowice (2), Krosno (35), Lodz (2), Rzeszow (5), and Zielona Gora (4). This isn't much data to draw conclusions from, but it looks to me as if this name is most common in southeastern Poland (Krosno and Rzeszow provinces are in the southeastern corner). This raises the possibility of a Ukrainian linguistic influence, but I can't find any root in Ukrainian that sheds any light on the matter.

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

...My name is ... Praski. I am trying to find anything on Praski family...Need help. If you have any info or directions where I should look, please advise...

I'm afraid I can't tell you a thing about the Praski family, only a little on the origins of the name. For ideas on how to go about your research, I suggest looking through the resources offered on our website.

As of 1990 there were 835 Polish citizens named Praski, living all over the country but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (104), Czestochowa (273), Katowice (142). So there's a good group by this name in the area of the capital city of Warsaw; and about half of all the Praski's live in Czestochowa and Katowice provincesin southcentral Poland, so there seems to be a concentration of Praski's in that area.

Praski appears (spelled Prassky) in old Polish legal records for the city of Warsaw back in 1483, so the name has been around a while. It's probably derived from place names, and the ones that seem the best candidates are several places named Praga (one of which is now a part of the city of Warsaw), and Praszka, in Czestochowa province. From a linguistic standpoint, the surname Praski could easily derive from either of those place names, and since they match up reasonably well with the areas that have the most Praski's, they seem like good places to look at... Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions that this name can also come from the term praga, "longing, thirst," and that possibility can't be dismissed. But when you can match a -ski name up with a place name, that generally turns out to be the connection that matters.

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

...The surname is unusual, but Polish. As of this writing, I am under the impression that there are under 150 households in the world with this name: Gierlach. The man who died in the 1850's, lived in the area of Pozen, or Posen. My research has brought me to the eastern area of Galicia -- the Krosno province -- in the mid 1870's. I would like to know further about the meaning of my surname, because I find it interesting that this rare name can have relations living so far apart, or maybe back then the name was more common -?? ...

Gierlach is a slightly Polonized version of the ancient German first name Gerlach, from the roots ger, "spear" + lach, thought to be connected with roots meaning "jump" and "war-game." So it's one of those ancient names from pagan times, when parents gave their kids names meant to be good omens for them; naming a boy Gerlach was expressing a hope he would excel with the spear in martial activities. Here is a listing of the 3 most common spellings of this name in Poland, the number of Poles with each name as of the year 1990, and the provinces in which the largest numbers lived (I don't have access to details such as first names and addresses, so what you see here is all I can offer):

GERLACH 782: Warsaw 66, Jelenia Gora 38, Katowice 64, Krosno 94, Legnica 32, Slupsk 32, Walbrzych 34, Zielona Gora 30

GIERLACH 562; Katowice 44, Krosno 191, Rzeszow 67 (only 11 in Poznan province as of 1990)

GIERŁACH 165: Opole 36, Tarnobrzeg 87

Most provinces of Poland have a few people by these names living in them, these are the ones that seem to have significant concentrations. It's interesting that southeastern Poland, i. e., Galicia, is where the main concentration of Gierlach's and Gierłach's live (Ł sounds like our w); but Gerlach is also common in the western provinces formerly ruled by Germany. All this makes sense: there are many German names in Poland, including most of the western part, but also in Krosno and Rzeszow province, where Germans came as colonists in the Middle Ages, at the invitation of nobles, to help beef up the local economy and repopulate areas devastated by the Black Death, and also later as prisoners of war... One other thing that affects this data is the fact after World War II millions of people were forced to relocate from eastern Poland and western Ukraine to western Poland; so those numbers in Opole and Katowice provinces might also include folks who were living in eastern Poland before 1945.

...The other name I am having trouble with is Cwenar - or is it Cwynar ?? Many documents have it spelled one way or the other for the same person (US documents). Are these spellings one and the same? Also, conflicting stories put this person as Polish from Galician area, or "White Russian" which would put her in Byelorussia (maybe this is incorrect, I am uncertain about the term "White Russian")...

Well, Belarus (as it's called now) and Byelorussia and Belorussia are all the same; Belarus is the name of the country in Belarusian, the others are attempts to represent the name in Latin, spellings that later were imported into English. Belarus means "White Rus'," where Rus' is the Slavic root that has (somewhat inaccurately) been rendered as "Russia." Belarus is just east of Poland, north of Ukraine; its language is very similar to Ukrainian and Russian. Due to the history of the area, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles are well pretty mixed together in the area east of Poland's modern borders and west of Russia. For centuries the Poles ruled those regions, and Polish became the language of the upper classes for a long time. In a particular instance it can be tough telling whether a name is Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian or Russian (Lithuanian is usually easier to tell). Just going by its form, this name could be any of them, although the spelling Cwynar/Cwenar is definitely by Polish phonetic values.

In my book I had to list Cwynar as one I couldn't figure out. It's a fairly common name, as of 1990 there were 1,980 Polish citizens named Cwynar; they were most common in the provinces of: Katowice 138, Krosno 266, Opole 122, Przemysl 230, Rzeszow 475, Wroclaw 130. Notice again that the southeastern provinces of Krosno, Przemysl, and Rzeszow come up big, as do some of the provinces Galicians were forced to move to after World War II (Wroclaw, Katowice, and Opole).

The name can also be spelled Cwenar, as of 1990 there were 203 Poles by that name (distribution roughly the same as Cwynar). In some parts of Poland, especially southeast Poland, it isn't at all unusual to see e and y switch. But Cwynar appears to be the more common form.

In view of the geographical distribution of Cwenar/Cwynar, it seems likely it is of either German or Ukrainian origin -- tough to tell which. The -ar suffix is often a tip-off that you're dealing with a name that started out German, with -er; so German Zwiener, Zwinner, Zweiner are theoretical possibilities. Of those, the only one I can find in my sources is Zweiner, "quarrelsome person." It's interesting that Ukrainian has a noun tsvenik (by Polish phonetics that would be Cwenik) that means "braggart, boaster, gossiper." The problem is, Ukrainian and Polish also use the suffix -ar (in Polish it's usually -arz) much the same way as German uses -er; so I have no way to be even halfway sure what the name comes from. I suspect it's either from German Zweiner or Ukrainian Tsvenik; but I can't say with any certainty.

...Also, someone has told me that this is only actually a part of a name, not the full one...

Possibly, but there's no compelling reason to think so. As I said, some 1,980 Poles have the name Cwynar, and probably more in Ukraine -- why jump to the conclusion the name was shortened when data says this form is clearly a common name? To be honest, I get a little fed up with people who shoot off their mouths with checking to see if there's any data; and many of the folks who contact me have been fed a line of bull by such "experts."

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

...A friend of mine whose family came to Scotland from Poland during WW2 has never been able to trace anyone else with this name [Knopek] or find out anything about his roots. Could you help with this?...

I can't tell him a whole lot. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut names such as Knop, Knopa, and Knopik derive from the term knap, "weaver, clothier," and Knopek appears to be the same, meaning basically "little weaver, weaver's son." As of 1990 there were 485 Polish citizens named Knopek, living in most of Poland's provinces but with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (80), Bydgoszcz (66), Katowice (239), and Opole (44). This suggests the name is particularly concentrated in southcentral Poland, near the border with the Czech Republic -- but it is found elsewhere.

I don't know how much help that is, but it's what I have and he's welcome to it.

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

My great-grandmother's maiden name was Wodaszak. Can you tell me anything about that name? ...

Well, as of 1990 there was no one in Poland with that name, and it doesn't really sound or look right to me. In theory it could come from the root woda, "water," but I can't make any sense of it. There is one possibility that strikes me: it might be a spelling variant, or misspelling, of a name from another root, włodarz, "ruler, steward." The Ł (pronounced like our w) is often pronounced so lightly that it's dropped. You pronounce włodarz sort of like "vwoe-dosh," and if you drop the "w" sound it would come out "voe-dosh," which could be spelled either Wodarz or Wodasz. Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions in one of his books that some names with Woda- do come from włodarz, and if that's the case here, it makes sense: the name was originally something like Włodarzek, Włodarzak, meaning "little steward, son of the steward." Names from the root włodarz are moderately common, e. g. in 1990 there were 1,245 Poles named Włodarek, 1,003 named Włodarz, etc.

That's the best guess I can make, is that we're dealing with a misspelling or variant spelling of a name from that root. I can't say whether the change happened in Poland or elsewhere, but you might want to keep your eyes open for any sign that the name was once spelled with Ł. If that's not what happened, I'm fresh out of ideas!

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

...Could you do a quick & dirty study of my name Woloskowski, My grandfather came from Stanislaw. It is now called Ivano-Frankivsk...

The name is spelled Wołoskowski in Polish, where ł is pronounced like our w, so that the name would sound like "vo-wos-KOFF-skee." It comes from the root wołoch, "Wallachian, a pastoral ethnic group of Carpathia and Romania," according to Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut. The root wołoch-/włoch- actually meant "foreigner" originally, and the modern Polish word for "Italian," Włoch, comes from this root (ultimately, so does the English word "Welch," for that matter), but when used in surnames the root usually refers to the Wallachians. That may sound unlikely, but in medieval times that area was sometimes under Polish rule or influence, and there were some ties between Poles and Romanians, so it's actually quite plausible.

Your particular surname's ending of -owski suggests it began as a reference to a connection between your family and a specific place, the name of which began with Wołoch-, perhaps Wołochowo or Wołochów. Thus the surname means "person from Wołochow[o]," which further breaks down into "person from the places of the Wallachians." Offhand I can't find any places with names that fit, but the place in question is probably now in Ukraine, and my sources for there are not as good as for Poland proper.

Some of the names from the root wołoch are fairly common, such as Wołoch (997 Poles by that name as of 1990) and Wołosz (1,651), but Wołoskowski isn't one of them -- as of 1990 there were only 16 Polish citizens by that name. They lived in the provinces of Jelenia Gora (5), Opole (1), Szczecin (2), Wroclaw (1), and Zielona Gora (7). These are all in western Poland, and it's a good bet few of them lived there before 1945 -- that's when huge numbers of people were relocated from what had been eastern Poland to the lands taken from Germany and added to Poland's western borders... Unfortunately, I have no data on name frequency and distribution in what is now Ukraine, so the area around Ivano-Frankivsk (formerly Stanisławów) wouldn't show up in the data I have access to. (I should mention also that I have no further details such as first names or addresses, and don't know offhand how you could get them. I know that's disappointing, but I figure I might as well tell folks that up front).

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

... I would be interested in finding out the origin of my surname Pawlik. Idid see Pawlak but do not think this is the same. I would love to find out. I was told by my father that my grandfather was wealthy in Poland and that they came from kings and had servants apparently in southern Poland. He also stated that the name was shortened from Pawlikowski but this has not been confirmed...

Pawlik means more or less the same as Pawlak -- both come from the first name Paweł (Paul) and have diminutive suffixes, so that they mean literally "little Paul" and usually translate as "son of Paul." Whether a name took the suffix -ak or -ik seems to be insignificant -- in certain regions people may have tended to add -ik rather than -ak because they just liked the sound of it better. I don't think you can read any great significance into the difference unless you want to get into some very detailed linguistic discussions.

Pawlik could be a shortened version of Pawlikowski, but in general I doubt it, because the names mean different things. Pawlik means "son of Paul," Pawlikowski means "person or family from the place of Paul's son," i. e., "person from Pawlikow" or perhaps "Pawlikowice." I doubt Poles would shorten it, because to them there's nothing long or difficult about saying Pawlikowski; and if foreigners caused it to be changed, surely they'd change it to something more German or English-sounding than "Pawlik." However, there are always exceptions to the general rules, so I can't say definitely that the name wasn't shortened, only that I doubt it.

All these names are quite common in Poland. As of 1990 there were 12,296 Pawlik's, 43,556 Pawlak's, and 7,070 Pawlikowski's. Since the names are so common, and distributed widely all over the country, I don't really have access to any specifics that would help with your particular family; the most I can do is tell what a name means, and indicate whether there's anything about it that might make it easier to track down. These names are so common that you have to figure there are many, many different families bearing them, and I have no sources that would shed light on any particular one. Only detailed genealogical research will help with that.

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

...I wish to find out the meaning of my surname. It's K R A M A S Z. If possible, would someone be able to determine the region(s) from which that name originated in the old country?...

I'm glad to say I can give you a bit of info on this name, although of course I can never give folks all the info they'd like to have. In this case the name is essentially the same as Polish Kramarz, which has the same origin as the German name Kramer or Krämer; they all mean a person who sold things at a small stall or booth, for instance at fairs and markets. A kram in Polish is a "stall" or a "booth," and a kramarz was one who kept such a stall. Eventually the word's meaning was expanded a bit to include anyone who kept a small shop dealing in inexpensive or second-hand items. These people were often Jewish, so we often see the name borne by Jews, but not exclusively. It's kind of like Hoffman, both names are especially common among Jews but were also borne by Christians.

The difference between Kramarz and Kramasz is one of spelling. In Polish rz usually sounds like the "s" in "measure," and sz sounds like the "sh" in "ship"; but at the end of words the rz is "devoiced," as linguists say, and sounds just like the sz. So Kramarz and Kramasz were pronounced exactly the same, and thus the name could be spelled either way. However, most Poles knew the "correct" form was Kramarz and spelled it that way. Thus in 1990 there were 1,989 Polish citizens named Kramarz and only 19 named Kramasz. So basically I'm saying you want to keep your eye open for either spelling -- you may well find documents where the name was spelled Kramarz... I'm just guessing here, but it may be in the past, when most Poles were farmers or peasants and had little or no education, the spelling Kramasz was more common, because that's what it sounded like; but in recent decades, as more Poles learned to read and write, more of them realized the "correct" spelling was Kramarz, and that's why that spelling is prevalent today. So your ancestors may have spelled it that way when they emigrated, but since then that way of spelling it has become less common in Poland.

I don't see any signficant pattern to the name distribution in Poland. People named Kramarz lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (104), Katowice (187), Krakow (351), Rzeszow (148), and Tarnow (128), and smaller numbers in virtually every other province. This suggests the name is more common in southcentral and southeastern Poland. As for Kramasz, the 19 Poles by that name lived in the provinces of Warsaw (5), Katowice (3), Kielce (1), Legnica (1), Lodz (1), Opole (1), Torun (1), Wroclaw (5), and Zielona Gora (1); there aren't really enough of them to establish any kind of pattern (and unfortunately I don't have access to any source of info that would give their first names and addresses).

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

...My name is ... Slomczynski and I am interested in researching my family history in Poland. My grandfather Anton Slomczynski emmigrated from Poland between 1900 - 1915. My grandfather had a sister who still lived in Poland - her married name was Pelagia Matela. Any information you can provide would be most appreciated...

The name Słomczyński (pronounced something like "swom-CHEEN-skee") comes ultimately from the Polish root słoma meaning "straw," but this particular name probably derives from a connection between the family and one of several places named Słomczyn or Słomczyna, something like that -- and those place names, in turn, derive from the word for "straw." On my maps I see two places that are decent candidates: Słomczyn in Radom province, a little north of the town of Grojec, and Słomczyn in Warsaw province, a few km. southeast of Warsaw. There may have been more places with names that could generate the surname Słomczyński -- very few Polish place names are unique, and often surnames originated from a connection with very small places you won't even find on a map -- but those two are pretty good bets.

As of 1990 there were 1,480 Polish citizens named Słomczyński, living all over Poland, with some of the larger numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (342), Czestochowa (93), Katowice (89), Poznan (88), Radom (117), and Skierniewice (82). The large numbers in Warsaw and Radom provinces probably are connected with those two places I mentioned; the others might be as well, or might derive from other places with similar names that, as I say, are too small to show up on my maps, or have disappeared or changed names in the centuries since the surname developed.

Matela is a name seen in Polish legal records as far back as 1416. It most likely started out as a nickname for someone whose "proper" name was Mateusz or Maciej (Matthew, Matthias), somewhat the same as we form "Eddy" from "Edward." So it probably began as a name meaning something like "Matt" in English, and then eventually stuck as a surname. As of 1990 there were 951 Matela's in Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (79), Białystok (64), Konin (75), and Poznan (332), and smaller numbers in many other provinces. I can't say I see any real pattern to that distribution, which is not surprising -- by its very nature, the name could have started almost anywhere there were Poles named Matthew or Matthias. We wouldn't generally expect surnames formed from nicknames formed from popular first names to show up only in one limited area. Unfortunately, that makes our genealogical research that much harder! (By the way, I don't have access to any sources with first names or addresses of any of those Słomczyński's or Matela's, I'm afraid what I've given you is what I have).

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

...I am just starting the process of researching my family's name and history. I would appreciate any help that you can offer. The family name is Rempala. From what I know, we still have relatives in Poland and there are at least 2 distinct families here in the US. Both have their roots in the Chicago and Northern Indiana areas...

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, this name comes from the root rąpać, "to insult." The Polish nasal vowel written as an a with a tail under it and pronounced like "on" or, before a b or p, like "om" -- this vowel often alternates with the nasal ę and is pronounced like "en" or, in this case, "em." (The ć sounds like our "ch" in "cheetah"). In other words, these two vowels tend to switch often, and they are often spelled the way they sound, so that we can see the same name appear as Rąpała (ł pronounced like our w ), but it can also appear as Rompała, Rępała, and Rempała. In every case it's still the same basic name, but spelled differently (kind of like Hofman, Hofmann, Hoffman, Hoffmann, etc.). I hope this isn't too confusing -- if you work with Polish names a lot it gets to where it seems obvious, but I imagine it's kind of odd to someone who doesn't work with Polish much.

The suffix -ała, when added to a verb root, usually implies continual repetition of the action denoted by the verb. So Rępała or Rempała (both pronounced like "rem-PAW-ah") would mean "one who's always insulting people."

As of 1990 there were 218 Polish citizens named Rempała, with by far the largest group living in the province of Tarnow (in southeastern Poland) and just a few living here and there in other provinces. There were 65 Poles who spelled the name Rępała, which surprises me, I would have expected more to spell it ę rather than em. In that case, also, the vast majority (50) lived in Tarnow province... Just for comparison, there were 1,294 named Rąpała (again, Tarnow province, with 577, had the biggest number), and only 54 named Rompała (Tarnow province had 12, the largest single group).

I'm not exactly saying that you should regard all these names as identical to yours, that's not quite accurate. They all share the same linguistic derivation; but over the course of time the spellings diverged, so that different families used different spellings. It is very possible that you might run into your name spelled Rępała -- since em and ę sound so similar, we often see the same name spelled either way. It's somewhat less likely that you'll see your named spelled Rąpała or Rompała. But it is a good idea to keep your eyes open for those spellings; I can't rule out the chance that you may the name spelled that way in some cases.

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

...I am just beginning my quest to research my family history and was wondering if you could help with the possible origin of my last name and the proper spelling: Zwolinski...

That probably is the correct spelling -- as of 1990 there were 7,864 Polish citizens named Zwoliński (the name is pronounced something like "zvo-LEEN-skee"). The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (1,127), Gdansk (331), Katowice (396), Krakow (331), Skierniewice (458), and Wloclawek (390), with smaller numbers in virtually every other province. This suggests the name is fairly evenly distributed all over Poland, there doesn't appear to be any one place or region where the name is especially common, although of course Warsaw province is clearly the home to a pretty good concentration.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says this name can come from the verb root zwolić, "to permit, allow," or from place names such as Zwola. As a rule, names ending in -iński do tend to come from place names; your surname probably started out referring to a connection between your family and a place they lived in, worked at, traveled to, etc. Most often, it would simply mean "person or family from Zwola, Zwolin, etc." Unfortunately, there's more than one place this name could refer to. There are at least 3 Zwola's in Poland, two in Siedlce province and one in Tarnow province; and there may be more too small to show up on my maps. There are also at least a couple of villages named Zwolen; in a world where languages were absolutely precise, you'd expect that name to yield Zwoleński, not Zwoliński; but in the real world, where languages and spelling sometimes get a little sloppy, "Zwoliński" might also refer to a Zwolen as well as a Zwola. So the surname doesn't give us enough info to let us say "it means person from this place right here and nowhere else." But if your research establishes that your family came from a specific area, and you find there is a place with a name beginning Zwol- nearby, that is probably the one the surname originally referred to.

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

I recently learned that my great-grandfather came from Wroclaw. I recently met a lady that came to Canada from Poland about seven years ago. She put me onto 'Herbarz Polski'. This is the first time that I've tried to find anything here. I would appreciate anything that you can tell me about out paternal name of Szczygiel...

I'm glad you established that the original form of the name was Szczygiel -- if I had gone hunting for Steigel I probably would have come up with wrong information, since that is a perfectly good German name that can derive from roots having nothing to do with Szczygiel. But given the German-Polish connections in the Wroclaw area (as well as many other parts of Poland), the change Szczygiel to Steigel makes sense. So your having the right form saves error and confusion.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says this name comes from the Polish word szczygieł, "goldfinch," a kind of bird; the name would sound something like "shchig'-yeh" with a slight w-sound at the end. There are many Polish surnames that come from words for birds and other animals, and it can often be quite difficult to imagine how they originated -- why would your ancestor be named for a goldfinch? It could be he lived in an area where these birds were particularly common; or that people knew he had a special liking for them, or liked to catch them and keep them as pets; or that something about his manner reminded people of them. I also see in my 8-volume Polish-language dictionary that szczygieł was a term used jokingly for students at certain provincial and county schools, called that because they wore a uniform with a stiff red color and and a red cap; so they looked a little like the birds in question. That may or may not be relevant, but it seems worth mentioning -- even if that isn't how the name started in your family's particular case, it does shed light on how such names came to be applied.

This name appears in Polish records as far back as 1499, so it's been around a long time! I didn't know there were any noble families by this name, but the Polish nobility isn't something I know a lot about.

Szczygieł is very common in Poland, as of 1990 there were 10,245 Polish citizens by that name. They lived all over the country, with especially large numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (449), Bielsko-Biala (419), Czestochowa (409), Katowice (1,760), Kielce (632), Krakow (688), and Lublin (657) -- most of these are in southcentral to southeastern Poland, so the name's somewhat more common in that region (traditionally called Malopołska or Little Poland, and from the late 1700's to 1918 it was part of the Austrian Empire, the western half of the region called Galicia). This doesn't really narrow the area of your search down much, but I thought it was worth mentioning because you never know what detail might prove helpful in research.

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

...I am very new to geneology but I am trying to research my family the Kondysar's from a town called Rudnik n. Sanem. I am interested in that name, and have been told it is a name of some signifigance, and that it might actually be of Russian and or Jewish descent...

Well, first I looked to see if I could get any hard data on the name. A 10-volume set that lists all surnames of Poles as of 1990, and gives a breakdown on what provinces they lived in, shows Kondysar to be a very rare name -- as of 1990 there were only 15 of them, 11 living in Tarnobrzeg province, 4 in Wroclaw province. "Rudnik nad Sanem" means "Rudnik on the San River" (to distinguish it from other places named Rudnik), and Rudnik nad Sanem is in Tarnobrzeg province in southeastern Poland; so it appears we can say there are still some 11 people with your name living in or fairly near Rudnik, since Tarnobrzeg province isn't all that big.

Unfortunately I don't have further details such as first names and addresses; but perhaps you could get those from a search of the Tarnobrzeg province phone book. The Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast probably has that directory, and it will look up such data for a very moderate fee -- since you're only asking about one name and have a very good idea where it's find, I think it would be pretty cheap, maybe $10-20 at the most. You might try writing the PGS-NE at 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053, and see if they can help you. Polish phone directories are not nearly as comprehensive as those in the U.S. -- phones in private homes are less common there -- but you might get lucky and find a Kondysar listed. If so, he/she is almost certainly a relative!

The origin of the name is a puzzle. On the whole, I doubt it's Jewish; but I think the reason you were told that is that a book by Alexander Beider listing Russian Jews' surnames mentions a Kundysh, saying it comes from a Russian word for a kind of clothing, or from Yiddish kundes, "wanton, wag." But no mention of Kondysar. And if the family were Jewish, I would think chances are good Beider would have mentioned the name; and I'm not convinced the surname comes from either of those words anyway.

Since none of my sources mention this name, I went looking through my 8-volume Polish-language dictionary to see if there was any plausible root it might have come from. I discovered there is a term kondys, a variant of the word usually seen as kundel, which is a kind of mongrel dog, often used by shepherds or herdsmen; it can also be a kind of slang term for a simpleton or good-for-nothing fellow. In the Slavic languages the suffix -ar (in Polish -arz) usually means much the same as -er in English, so I tend to suspect that a Kondysar would be a person who bred or used such dogs; that strikes me as a bit more probable than the "simpleton" connection. The name might be of Slovakian or Ukrainian origin, in view of where Rudnik is located. That's even more likely because those languages are more likely to use -ar where a truly Polish form would be something like Kondysarz. But down in southeastern Poland you get a kind of linguistic mixing, so that a person might well be a Polish citizen and yet bear a name that shows traces of Ukrainian or Slovakian influence. I think that may account for the -ar form (it's interesting that there was no listing of anyone named Kondysarz). This suggests the name is rare and might not be originally Polish; but clearly there are a few folks by that name living in southeastern Poland, and they're probably related to you.

If you get in touch with them, they might be able to shed more light on exactly what Kondysar means. My guess is that it originally meant someone who bred or used mutts to watch herds. But that is merely an educated guess, and could prove completely wrong!

Anyway, that's the best I can offer you. I hope you have some luck getting in contact with the Kondysar's living near Rudnik -- if you do, I'd be quite interested in hearing what they say about the name. And in any case, I wish you the best of luck with your research!

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

...We spoke with you briefly, at the Polish Genealogy Society of Texas meeting on Saturday, about the meanings of names and from what region in Poland a name may be from. We asked you about the name Haiduk. What is the meaning of that name and what region is known for that name being prominent? ...

Hajduk is the standard Polish spelling of this name, though you might also see Chaiduk, Haiduk, Hayduk, Hejduk, and Heyduk (because of phonetic similarities -- all those spellings are pronounced very similarly). As of 1990 there were 9,133 Poles by this name, so it is a fairly common one. People by this name live in all the provinces of Poland, with the largest numbers showing up in the provinces of Warsaw (422), Katowice (1,659), Kielce (579), Krakow (512), Opole (477), Przemysl (312) and Tarnow (453). With the exception of Warsaw (which, as the capital, tends to have large numbers of almost any name you look up), those provinces are in the southcentral and southeastern part of the country, the region called Malopolska (Little Poland)... Names formed from this root are also pretty common, including Hayduczek (394), Hajdukiewicz (930, both of those mean "son of a hajduk"), and Hejduk (1,121), the same name with a vowel change. Hajduk sounds like "HIGH-duke," Hejduk sounds like "HAY-duke," and the switch between what we'd call the long i sound of "aj" and the long a sound of "ej" is very common.

The origin of the name is interesting. It comes from Turkish hajdud, "brigand, ruffian, highwayman," and came into Hungarian as hajdü. It came into Polish meaning "soldier in the Hungarian infantry, which existed in Poland from the beginning to the middle of the 17th century, and later served in campaigns of infantry captains." Near the borders Slavs shared with Turks it meant "fellow who waged war against the Turks on his own account." After it became established in Polish it also came to mean "robber, ruffian, highwayman." It also came to be used to refer to servants who dressed like Hajduks, in Hungarian clothing. It has also been used as the name of a dance common among the mountain folk of southeastern Poland, kind of like the dance we've seen the Cossacks due, with a lot of squatting and jumping.

So you see, the name can mean a lot of things in Polish, most related one way or another to the original Turkish term that came into Hungarian and thence into Polish. It's common in Poland, and I imagine in most cases the connection is with the Hungarian infantrymen -- but in some cases it might have come from the usage of the word as "robber," or even occasionally from the "servant dressed like a Hungarian" connection.

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

...Can you give me any information on the surnames of Andrysiak and Hyska...

Well, let's take Andrysiak first. It comes from the first name Andrzej (the Polish version of "Andrew"), which over the centuries has appeared in Polish in many forms. To one of those forms, Andrys, the suffix -iak was added; it generally means "son of," so Andrysiak means "Andrew's son" (compare "Anderson" in English). Surnames formed from popular first names are quite common in Poland, so it's not surprising that this name is reasonably common -- as of 1990 there were 1,793 Polish citizens by that name. I don't see any particular pattern to the distribution, which makes sense: this name could get started anywhere they spoke Polish and had guys named "Andrew" who had sons.

The change to Andershock was probably just due to phonetics. Non-Poles found it hard to figure out how Andrysiak was pronounced, so someone started using a spelling that they could pronounce, one that still sounded similar to the Polish original. Andrysiak sounds kind of like "on-DRISH-ak," and if you said that out loud to an English-speaking person it could easily end up as "Andershock." This sort of thing happened to Polish names all the time, it's not unusual or surprising.

Hyska is a tough one. I find there is a rather seldom-used word hyska that means "small horse, pony, hobby-horse," and the name could come from that. But it doesn't really sound like proper Polish, and the name itself is a problem because there's nothing it really matches up with well, and there about a jillion things it might match up with if you factor in spelling variations. All I can say is that as of 1990 there were 357 Poles named Hyski, of whom some surely were females and therefore called Hyska (the suffix -ski changes to -ska when referring to females). The Hyski's were scattered all over Poland, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Gdansk (34), Katowice (63), Legnica (30), and Wroclaw (35). That's not a lot of info, I know, but my sources just don't have much that gives clues about this name.

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

...My great-grandfather Kazimier Serwack was born 1888 in Warsaw, I'm looking for any information that I can get, thanks...

I'm afraid what I have may not be a lot of practical help to you, although it may be nice to know what the name means. It comes from the first name Serwacy (pronounced "ser-VOT-see"), not an extremely common first name in Poland but not all that rare either, especially a few centuries ago, when surnames were being formed. It comes from Latin "Servatius," from the word servatus, "saved." Several surnames were formed from this first name, including Serwach and Serwacki. I can't tell for sure which of these two is relevant here -- "Serwack" may be a misspelling of "Serwach," or a variant form of it, but it might also be Serwacki with the ending -i inadvertently dropped. Either way, though, both names would have derived from the first name, probably as a sort of verbal shorthand for "the kin of Serwacy, Serwacy's offspring."

As of 1990 there were 583 Polish citizens named Serwach, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (79), Lodz (95), and Płock (149), and smaller numbers scattered in other provinces. There were 171 Poles named Serwacki, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (20), Lublin (33), Pila (23), and Tarnobrzeg (36). The most common surname from this root is Serwa, borne by 1,087 Poles in 1990.

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

...I have recently begun trying to trace my roots back to Poland. In doing some research, I came across your page on Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites. My last name is Banas and I would love to know everything I can about it. I realize you only do meanings, but if you could lead me somewhere else, I would deeply appreciate it...

In Polish this name can be spelled either Banas or Banaś (ś is pronounced like a soft, hissing "sh"). The spelling Banaś is more common -- as of 1990 there were 11,828 Poles by that name, as opposed to 286 who spelled it Banas (without the accent). The Poles named Banaś lived all over the country, with especially large numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (504), Katowice (1,430), Kielce (1,165), Krakow (955), Przemysl (522), Tarnow (782), and Wroclaw (527). All those provinces are in southcentral to southeastern Poland, in the areas historically called "Silesia" and "Małopolska" (Little Poland). However, the name is common all over the country, those are just the areas where it tends to show up the most.

This name originated as a kind of nickname for someone named Benedykt (Benedict). Although Benedykt is the standard form of that first name in modern Polish, some centuries ago (back when surnames were being formed) there were other forms widely used, including Banadyk. Poles liked to form new names or nicknames by taking the first few sounds of popular first names, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes (somewhat as we formed "Eddy" from "Edward" and "Teddy" from "Theodore"). So they took the Bana- from Banadyk, added an -ś, and that give the name Banaś -- a lot like our nicknames "Ben" or "Bennie." Later, as surnames became established, a family might have gotten this name because some particularly prominent member had this name, so that it meant, in effect, "Ben's kin."

Surnames deriving from nicknames for popular first names generally are quite common in Poland, and this is no exception, as the figures above prove.

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

...I was hoping that you could help me with three Polish names that I am having a very difficult time finding information on: Gondek, Pazdziora, Zworski...

Well, I can offer at least a little information on them. It may not be as much as you'd hoped for -- the nature of surname research makes it difficult to provide really detailed information on names without equally detailed research into the history of the individual family that goes by them. But my sources do provide some insights.

Gondek is a spelling variant of Gądek, where I'm using ą to represent the Polish nasal vowel written as an a with a tail under it and pronounced much like on (especially as in French bon). Since the ą sounds so much like on, it is very common to see names written either way; so Gądek and Gondek are two ways of spelling the same name, with Gądek being the more "Polish" way to spell it. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles], Gądek appears in Polish legal records as far back as 1415, and derives from the term gądek, "player, home-bred musician." So this name was applied to somebody who played an instrument without any formal training.

As of 1990 there were 3,499 Polish citizens named Gądek; they lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of: Katowice 378, Kielce 406, Krakow 767, and Tarnow 596. Thus the name is most common in southcentral and southeastern Poland. As for the spelling Gondek, it was borne by 3,042 Poles, with the largest numbers in the provinces of: Bydgoszcz 202, Katowice 320, Krakow 263, and Tarnow 466 -- a similar distribution.

According to Rymut, Paździora (ź sounds like a soft hissing "zh") comes from the root paździerz, "harl of flax, awns." It might be a reference to a person's hair, which looked like a bunch of flax, or perhaps it referred to some other characteristic of a person -- surnames often developed from nicknames, and it can be very hard to deduce what nicknames originally referred to. As of 1990 there were 590 Poles named Paździora, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (248), Katowice (78), Krakow (30), and Wroclaw (29) -- again, in the southcentral part of Poland.

Zworski is far less common -- as of 1990 there were only 64 Poles with this name, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (15), Jelenia Gora (12), Krakow (12), Legnica (4), Olsztyn (9), Opole (1), Pila (4), and Wroclaw (7). (Unfortunately I have no access to any further details, such as first names or addresses). None of my sources give any clue what this name might come from, and I find no place it might refer to -- theoretically Zworski could mean "person or family from Zwor or Zwora." There is a term zwora meaning "something that closes or holds two things shut, dowel, cramp (in building)," so that might be the origin of the name. Perhaps it applied to a person who made or used such objects. But there is also a rather rare word, zwór, which means "a dry gully in the Carpathians, between mountains close together, which points to a breach of rivers." That's what the dictionary says, I'm assuming it means a narrow opening between mountains caused by erosion. In any case, geographical features such as this often were the source of surnames, which suggests the family involved lived in or near such a place. If that is the root of this surname, it suggests the family lived in southcentral or southeastern Poland, in the Carpathian Mountains.

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

...A few weeks ago, I asked you about the name Kromimceir, which you stated was probably incorrect, or else the name has "petered" out. I have found out, after checking many resources, that the name was incorrect. I have just found out and verified that my great grandmother's last name was Kromrei. In her lifetime, she lived in Sonnenborn, Germany....but that area is now known as Slonecznik, Poland. Do you know how this name is pronounced? And also, can you give me any insight, towards the name? ...

The name Kromrei would be pronounced something like "CHROME-ray" by Poles, by Germans more like "CHROME-rye." It's normal for the German combination ei to be pronounced "ay" by Poles and like "eye" by Germans; the Polish pronunciation is probably based on the fact that in some dialects Germans pronounce it like "ay" and those dialects are the ones Poles had the most contact with, even if the "standard" German pronunciation was different.

It's pretty likely this name is German in origin; the few Polish words and names with the root Kromr- were borrowed from German anyway. There seem to me two possible roots. The surname might come from Kramer/Kromer, which was an occupational term, meaning a person who kept a small stall at markets or a small shop, in either case selling inexpensive items. In Polish this term became Kramarz, in German it normally shows up as Kramer or Krämer, but it can sometimes appear with o instead of a. It is a fairly common name in those forms.

The other likely root -- and this strikes me as the better candidate -- is the German surname Krummrey, which German expert Hans Bahlow says comes from the Middle High German roots krümm, "bend in the road," + rein, "ridge, bank or border of a field." Krummrey is noted as a place name mentioned in records, designating a field and meaning probably something like "place by where the ridge or road curves."

The reason I think this latter is a bit more likely is because I looked up info on the plausible forms of this name as borne by Poles in 1990, and came up with the following data (showing how many Poles had that name and what provinces they lived in):

KROMRAJ: 36; Bielsko-Biala 7, Bydgoszcz 1, Gdansk 1, Gorzow 4, Krakow 4, Legnica 2, Sieradz 3, Szczecin 5, Walbrzych 5, Wroclaw 4
KROMREI: 9; Katowice 1, Olsztyn 8
KROMREJ: 3; Olstzyn 3
KRUMRAJ: 22; Bydgoszcz 16, Pila 6
KRUMREI: 6; Gdansk 1, Olsztyn 3, Suwałki 2
KRUMREJ: 19; Elblag 1, Katowice 1, Olsztyn 2, Torun 15
KRUMREY: 33; Warsaw 1, Bydgoszcz 5, Elblag 6, Leszno 3, Pila 13, Poznan 5

While the only real pattern we can see is that this name tends to show up in areas with lots of Germans, it also seems pretty likely from this data that these are all variants of the same name, and o and u switch pretty easily. From a linguistic point of view this is plausible. Note that these forms of the name often show up in what is now Olsztyn province, and that's important because that's where you should be looking. It may be that some regional pronunciation quirk made Olsztyn one of the places where the vowel was more often u than o.

There are two villages called Słonecznik, both in what used to be East Prussia and now is the province of Olsztyn (German name Allenstein) in northern Poland. One was called Sonnenberg by the Germans, near Szczytno, but that's not the one you want. You want the one the Germans called Sonneborn, about 7-8 km. south of the town of Morąg (ą is pronounced much like on). In Polish the root słonce means "sun," just like Sonne in German, so it's not odd the two villages have similar names in both languages. Your Słonecznik had its own Catholic parish church, which may be where your family's records were kept if they were Catholic; if they were Protestant (and many in the area were), it appears the records would have been kept either in Słonecznik/Sonnenborn or in nearby Morąg (German name Mohrungen).

So I think the name is German, the most common form of it is Krummrey in German, but the other forms shown above are all legitimate, and they all started out as a name for a place. There are not a lot of Poles these days with any of the forms of the name, but there are a few, and it appears some of them still live in Olsztyn province -- possibly still quite near Słonecznik near Morąg.

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

...I have been searching my father's family. Currently the name is spelled Schell. In older records I have found the family name spelled Szel and Szell. My grandmother's family also came from Poland. The family name was Olsheski also spelled Olshewska. My grandmother's grandmother's maiden name was Dushenski also spelled Duskenski. The Schell's came for Posen area; a town call Tokorowo which no longer exist. My grandmother's family came to Wisconsin a long time ago and no one remembers were from Poland they were from. If you can help me--God Bless...

Szel and Szell are just Polish phonetic spellings of German Schell -- the sound we spell "sh" is spelled sch in German and sz in Polish. In any case, the origin of the surname is German, from a root meaning "loud, noisy person," according to German name expert Hans Bahlow. As of 1990 there were only 38 Poles with that name, most living in the provinces of Koszalin (9), Wroclaw (11), and Zielona Gora (8) -- not surprisingly, these are in the areas of western Poland that used to be ruled by Germany. However the name Szela (from the same root and meaning the same thing) is much more common, there were 930 Polish citizens named Szela as of 1990, living all over the country, with largest numbers in the provinces of Gdansk (131), Rzeszow (359), and Tarnów (101).

Olszewski is the standard Polish spelling of "Olsheski" -- again, that latter spelling makes sense as a phonetic spelling in English of what the Polish name sounded like. Olszewski means "person from Olszewo" (or several other place names beginning with the root Olszew- or Olsz-); those places take their names from the root olsza, "alder tree," so you could interpret the surname as meaning "people from the place of the alder tree." Unfortunately there's about a jillion villages in Poland named Olszewo, so God only knows which particular one your family was named for. As of 1990 there were 44,638 Poles named Olszewski, living all over the country.

With the other name it's hard to tell whether it would originally have been Duszenski or Duskenski or what -- neither is a common name. But it might be a variant of Duszyński, a name borne by 6,436 Poles as of 1990. Most names beginning with Dusz- come from dusza, "soul," especially the diminutive duszka, literally "little soul" but used as a term of affectionate, sort of like "my sweet." Without firmer data on the original form of the name, I can't say too much more, but maybe this is enough to be some help to you.

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

...looking for name info on Krupinski, Sobczak, Warsinski (perhaps Warzinski)...

Krupiński means "person from Krupin" or Krupno or several other possibilities. Since there are several villages in Poland with names that could generate this surname, there's no way to say which particular one your family was associated with. But if your research leads you to a specific area where your family lived, and you find a place with a name beginning with Krup- nearby, chances are quite good that's the place your family was named for -- perhaps because they once lived there, or had worked there, etc... The basic root is krupa, "groats" (a kind of cereal); perhaps these places got their names because of some association with groats, and your ancestors probably took their surnames from the place names, so that Krupiński means "person from the place of the groats." Krupiński is a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 7,986 Poles named Krupiński, living all over the country.

Warsiński is the same sort of name, originally meaning "person from __" where you fill in the blank with any village name beginning with Wars-, e. g., Warsin (also called Warszyn), Lesno parish, Bydgoszcz province. A family that came from Warsin, worked at, or even once owned it (if they were noble) could end up with the surname Warsiński. As of 1990 there were 640 Poles by this name, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (185) and Gdansk (141) in northcentral Poland.

Sobczak is easy. -czak is a suffix meaning "son of," and Sob- is a short form of several different first names, including Sebastian but also ancient pagan names such as Sobiesław. So given that Sob is a nickname for someone with one of those first names beginning with Sob-, Sobczak would mean "Sob's son." Such names formed from popular first names tend to be quite common, and Sobczak is -- as of 1990 there were 27,613 Poles by that name, living all over the country.

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

...What can you tell me about this surname, its origins and meanings? For the most part it is Rys, but have seen Ryz also.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says there are three possible roots this name could derive from. One is rysa, "dash, crack"; another is ryś, "lynx"; the third is as a short form or nickname of Ryszard (= Richard). It's tough to say which one is relevant to a particular family without detailed research, but I'd think the nickname for Ryszard or the term for lynx would prove applicable in most cases. As of 1990 there were only 251 Poles named Rys but 5,587 named Ryś (i. e., with the accent over the s, giving it a kind of soft "sh" sound). That makes me think the link to the word for "lynx" is what most Rys's got their names from. (Other names like Ryszka or Ryszko might be more likely to come from Ryszard).

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

...My father and most of his siblings changed their family name from Korytkowski to Cory in the late 1940's. Since none of the survivng members of his immediate family will discuss anything to do with our heritage, I am quite curious to know more about the family background. I have heard, but not confirmed, that we are actually Russian, not Polish, but that is a very artificial distinction in my opinion, since political boundaries have moved so frequently, especially in eastern Europe...

I'm glad you understand about the variability of political boundaries -- sometimes I tell people their names come from a Ukrainian root and they say "That can't be, we're Polish." But a little knowledge of the region's history helps a lot!

Korytkowski is a Polish spelling of the name, but we can't be positive it is Polish. The basic root of the name is koryto, "trough," and that root exists in Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and probably other Slavic languages. The structure of the name -- root koryt + diminutive suffix -k- + possessive suffix -ow- + adjectival suffix -ski -- is such that it could have developed in any of the languages mentioned. If it were Russian or Ukrainian, but the family lived in Poland for a while or began their trip to America from Poland, the name's spelling might well have been Polonized slightly -- so it may have started out as Russian (spelled in Cyrillic, looking like KOPbITKOBCKNN) but when the family encountered the need to fill out documents in the Roman alphabet, the spelling used was Polish... Personally I think the name probably is Polish, but I just wanted to show that we can't assume that without proof; it is possible the name could have originated in Russia or Ukraine and only later picked up a Polish-looking spelling.

As I said, the basic root of the name is koryto, a trough, especially for watering cattle. But usually names ending in -owski developed from the names of places, and in this instance we'd expect the surname to mean "person or family from Korytkow or Korytkowo," some place with a name beginning Korytk-. There are several villages in Poland that qualify, including Kortyków in Radom province and Korytków Duzy and Korytków Maly, both in Zamosc province. All three of these places are in southeastern Poland, not too far from the border with Ukraine. There may be more places with names that qualify as possible sources for this surname, including places too small to show up on my maps, and places outside Poland, for which I don't have maps quite as detailed. But again, while we can't rule out non-Polish origin, Korytkowski certainly makes perfect sense as a Polish surname originally indicating a connection of some sort between a family and a place named Korytków or Korytkowo.

As of 1990 there were 1,599 Polish citizens named Korytkowski. There were some by that name living in virtually every province, but the provinces with the largest numbers were Warsaw (168), Łomża (410), and Płock (111). So while the name is found all over Poland, it is particularly common in an area of central to northeastern Poland (locate Warsaw, Łomża, and Płock on a map and you'll see what I'm talking about).

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

...I would like to know about the origin and meaning of Zdeb. My grandfather was born in the town Malogosht, district Injeov. Could you also please give me some information about the surname Pospiech.

The surname Zdeb comes from the term zdeb, which means "wildcat, bold cat," and in a more figurative sense "gloomy or selfish fellow." Names such as this generally got started as nicknames, designating a person who had some apparent connection with a wildcat -- perhaps he ran into one once, or perhaps he hunted them, or trapped them. And of course the name could also stick because of some perceived similarity in character -- a person who reminded folks of a wildcat might end up being called "Zdeb." It is a moderately common name, as of 1990 there were 1,742 Poles named Zdeb. They lived all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the provinces of: Katowice (125), Kielce (254), Krakow (163), Lublin (202), and Tarnow (227), thus in southcentral to southeastern Poland.

Pośpiech (the ś is pronounced like a soft "sh") is even more common, as of 1990 there were 3,877 Poles by that name. The name is found all over Poland, with particularly large numbers of Pośpiech's living in the following provinces: Czestochowa (544), Kalisz (231), Katowice (1,149), and Opole (322); looking on a map, we see that the name is most common in southcentral Poland. It comes from the term pośpiech, "hasty activity," which in older Polish also meant "success." So depending on how far back the name goes, it might have been applied as meaning "successful person," or "one who is active and in a hurry" (you can see how the two are somewhat linked semantically, a person who's always busy and does things quickly could well come to be successful).

I am somewhat concerned about your statement that your grandfather came from "Malogosht, district Injeov." Those names have clearly been distorted, and if you don't have the correct forms you'll have a devil of a time finding them. It seems likely to me you're talking about Małogoszcz (the ł is pronounced like our w), in Kielce province, a few km. southwest of the city of Kielce. If I'm not mistaken, it used to be in Jędrzejów district (ę is the Polish nasal en sound). In terms of where your names show up geographically, this makes fairly good sense, so I think that's probably right. At least, that's where I'd start looking.

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

...My paternal grandparents settled in Cicero, IL in 1913. My father spelled our surname Ceszyk, however, I believe Czeszyk , which was on his Catholic baptismal record, is probably the original Polish spelling. My grandfather's Social Security application form states Wszana, Dolna, Poland as the place of birth, but I've not been able to find such anywhere to this point in time (though I suspect possibly a little east of Krakow). If you can come up with anything on Czeszyk, I'd really appreciate knowing...

Czeszyk seems very plausible; in theory Cieszyk is also a possibility, but Czeszyk seems more likely. This name is thought to derive in most cases from nicknames of popular first names beginning with Cze-, especially Czesław (the ł is pronounced like our w); Czesław is by far the most popular first name beginning that way, so in most cases names with Cze- will prove to be nicknames of Czesław... Poles liked to take popular first names, keep the first couple of sounds, drop the rest, then add suffixes (kind of the same way we made "Eddy" out of "Edward"); so we see nicknames such as Czesz from Czesław. Then a suffix such as -yk could be added to make Czeszyk. What it means is basically "son of Czesław."

In theory it's also possible such a name could come from the root Czech, "Czech, Bohemian"; if so, it would mean "son of the Czech." Most Polish surname experts apparently don't think that's what it means in most cases, but it is at least possible, so I thought I'd mention it.

Czeszyk is not an extremely common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 244 Poles by that name. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Kalisz (56), Katowice (3), Krakow (11), Poznan (37), Przemysl (50), and Szczecin (10). From the nature of this name it's not one you'd expect to be limited to any one area -- the first name Czesław is used all over Poland, so surnames meaning "son of Czesław" could probably develop all over as well.

As for your grandfather's birthplace, I wonder if there might have been confusion and it should be Mszana Dolna, a decent-sized town in Nowy Sacz province, southeast of Krakow? I can't find any place-name beginning Wszan-, but Mszana Dolna sounds like it might fit, and it's not too hard to imagine an M being mistaken for a W, the way Poles write. There is a Mszana Dolna (Lower Mszana) and a Mszana Gorna (Upper Mszana); Mszana Dolna is roughly halfway between Krakow and Nowy Targ. If that is the right place, I think you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it on a map somewhere.

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

...grandfather Constatine Wojno/born in Poland Russia/grandmother/Mary Warka/born in Austria,thats all i know,our name is now wyno,of all things,dont really know when it was changed. grandparents married in Connecticut, This will be a hard one,thanks for anything,if not,i totally understand...

I'll give you what I can, but I'm afraid it won't be much help. What might be a good idea is to consider joining the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053. They have a lot of leads on research involving folks in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and the parts of Poland those people usually immigrated from -- most folks in the Northeast did come from the Russian and Austrian partitions.

Now, as to your names. On Warka I can't help much at all. As of 1990 there was no one in Poland with that name -- not too surprising, since you said your grandmother was born in Austria, which may mean in Austria itself or in the parts of Poland and Ukraine under Austrian rule from 1772-1918. In either case, the name might not show up in Poland by its modern borders. The name appears to come from a root warcz- or wark- meaning "growl, snarl"; but if the family came from the Austrian partition, it's also possible the name came from Ukr. Varka, a short form or nickname of "Barbara." There is a town Warka in what is now Radom province (which was in the Austrian partition), this might be relevant. Other than that, my sources don't give anything.

Wojno (pronounced VOY-no, rhyming with "boy go") comes from a root meaning "war, struggle," probably a name for a person who was a good warrior or soldier. As of 1990 there were 1,542 Poles named Wojno, living all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of: Warsaw (273), Białystok (190), and Łomża (491). All these were in the part of Poland ruled by Russia after the partitions, so that fits in with your info.

I know this isn't much help, but maybe it'll be a little use. And I really do think the PGS of the Northeast might be worth checking it; I've seen them give people some really good help. Good luck with your research!

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

...I came upon your article in my search for some information reguarding my Surname.Although my mother is from Poland she was not able to give me any hint as to it's origin or meaning.I have in recent months become more and more interested in the meaning and origin.Also if the is a family crest or some family coat of arms.My name is ... Cudzilo.The original name has a small diaganal line through it,giving it athe letter a WO sound to the last to 2 letters.I some how have come to the conclution that it has a Lithuanian ancestry due to the Jagelloean sounding Lo at the end.

The -ilo ending does sometimes indicate Lithuanian origin, but in this case apparently not -- I checked the best compilation of Lithuanian surnames, and it showed nothing for this or any of the likely spelling variants.

If it is of Slavic origin, then, the name may come from the root cud, as seen in cud, "miracle," cudo, "wonder, marvel," or cudzy, "foreign, not your own." But there's also a rare or dialect root cudzi- meaning "to groom, comb (horses)," and a noun cudzidło, "implement for grooming horses, comb." (The ł is pronounced like our "w"). I don't have enough information to tell which of these roots applies in the case of this surname -- the suffix -ło could be added to either. But I will say this: the suffix -ło tends to show up more on names from eastern Poland and its neighbors to the east, i. e., Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. So I suspect this name comes from that area, and means either "one always marveling at something," "one always doing something unusual or strange," or else "horse groom."

I looked in the 10-volume set Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland, and it shows that as of 1990 there were 549 Polish citizens named Cudziło; the largest concentration was in the two provinces of Tarnobrzeg (284) and Zamosc (42), with 20 or fewer living in most other provinces of Poland. Tarnobrzeg and Zamosc are in southeastern Poland, where there is a kind of interaction between Polish and Ukrainian, so that fits in with the whole idea about -ło.

I wish I had enough information to tell you which of those two roots the name comes from. If I had to make a guess, I'd go with "horse groom," that seems to fit a little better, both semantically and grammatically. But I can't rule out the "marvel, strange" connection.

As for whether your family was noble, I don't have any sources on that. You might try contacting the Polish Nobility Association Foundation, Villa Anneslie, 529 Dunkirk Rd., Anneslie, MD 21212-2014. If I'm not mistaken, they will do an inexpensive search of their library to see if a particular name is mentioned in any of the armorials written on Polish nobility. Other than that, I don't know what to suggest.

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

...I have been trying to track down the original name of my gggfather who arrived in the US sometime inthe late 1880's...he was from Warsaw, Poland...as the story goes the name was changed when entering the US to Cooper...I have been told that it was orignially Cooprowski...I'm leaning toward the letter K...any assistance would be greatly appreciated as it will get me going in the general right direction. As of now I'm having a hard time trying to track anything down.

I hope this is a simple case of phonetic spelling, because if his original name in Polish meant "cooper," there are a lot of possibilities. But if he just changed the spelling so that Americans would pronounce it more or less the way it sounded, that's easier. What we'd write as "Cooprowski" would probably be Kuprowski in Polish. The u is pronounced like our "oo," and Poles use K to represent the hard sound of c in "cooper." And it makes fairly good sense that a Pole named Kuprowski would change it to Cooper -- it's a good English name, one Americans would have no problem with, yet it would still sound enough like the original to make it easy for him to answer to.

Kuprowski means basically "person/family from Kuprów or Kuprowo," and those names mean something like "Cyprian's place." I can't find a Kuprów or Kuprowo on my maps, but that probably just means it was (or they were -- there could easily have been more than one) too small to show up, or has since changed its name. As of 1990 there were 190 Poles named Kuprowski, scattered in small numbers over many different provinces; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Koszalin (35), Kraków (24) and Krosno (19), which are all in different parts of the country. So there's no one area you'd go looking for Kuprowski's.

Anyway, from the info you've provided, I'd say Kuprowski is your best bet. I hope this information is some help to you, and wish you the best of luck with your research.

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

...My grandmother was born 1885-6 in Gdansk. Her name was Katarzyna Snaza / Schnaza / Sznaza. Her brother used the name Snasa. Their mother was Zophia / Sophia Etilma? Filma? The only record that shows her maiden name is difficult to read. The family history and records indicate that they were Polish. I cannot find either of those names associated with Polish descent.

Well, Etilma/Filma has me baffled. I've never run into either one, and neither sounds Polish, if you know what I mean. And as of 1990 there was no one in Poland by either name. Sometimes people give me forms of names and I can tell what the original, correct form was, but I'm drawing a blank on this one.

The spellings of Snaza/Schnaza/Sznaza make more sense than may be evident. Polish often has regional variations in pronunciation, and a common one is the switch between the standard "s" sound of s and the "sh" sound of sz; and Germans write that "sh" sound as sch. So these different spellings aren't irreconcilable; the name was probably Snaza but sometimes pronounced "Shnaza" (which Poles would write "Sznaza" and Germans would write "Schnaza"), or else vice versa. And since Germans often pronounce the "s" as Z, Schnase is another way you might see this name spelled. All these different spellings are just different ways of representing the sound (which would sound like "schnah-zuh" to us) with varying degrees of adaptation to German and Polish phonetic values.

I don't know what the name means, but as of 1990 there were 124 Poles named Sznaza, of whom 37 lived in Elblag province and 70 in Gdansk province. There were 61 Sznaze's, with 31 in Elblag province and 13 in Gdansk province. There were 32 Snaza's, all but one living in Gdansk province. Finally, there were 14 Schnase's (a more German way of spelling the name), 13 of whom lived in Gdansk province. So it's pretty likely either Gdansk province, or Elblag province (just east of Gdansk) is where this family came from.

My source for this data doesn't have further details such as first names and addresses, but there may be a way to get that info. Both the Polish Genealogical Society of America and the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast have provincial phone directories and will search them for specific names, for a reasonable fee. Phones in private homes are not as common in Poland as here, but chances are decent some relative is listed. That's the only way I know of you might be able to track them down, if your research doesn't reveal the family's ancestral home.

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

...Hi! I have recently become very interested in my Polish ancestry. I am currently 20 years old, and I am third generation American, still 100% Polish. I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say about the name Bugajski. If you have anything to contribute, I'd love to have some input. I don't believe that the name has been altered in any way.

This is a pretty common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 4,919 Polish citizens named Bugajski; they lived all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the provinces of Katowice (447), Kielce (1,107), Kraków (363), and Nowy Sacz (320) -- all in south central Poland. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut this name comes from the term bugaj, which in standard Polish means "bend in the river," and in dialect also means "bull; big, strong fellow." There are 26 towns and villages named Bugaj, probably so named because they are located on a bend in a river, and in most cases the surname Bugajski probably started as a reference to some connection between a family and one of those places -- they probably lived there, came from there, traveled there often on business, or, if noble, owned land there.

So the good news is, it's a very good Polish name. The bad news is, it's fairly common, so I can't give you any really helpful clues on exactly which of those 26 Bugaj's your family was connected with.

By the way, I'm glad to hear you're interested in your roots at such a young age. Most of the folks I deal with are older, usually retired, and the comment I hear most often is "Oh, how I wish I had gotten started with this when I was younger! I waited too long." You, at least, won't have any regrets about that. I hope you always retain your interest in your family history, and that over a long life you will learn lots and lots about them!

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

...Do you have any info on the name Malyszka?

A little -- which is a sort of pun, since this name comes from the root mal-, meaning "small, little." This name appears in Polish records as far back as 1136, so it has been around a long time! In view of the meaning, it probably started as a nickname or by-name, a little like "Tiny" or "Shorty" in English -- which, I suppose, means the original bearer might have been a little guy, or he might have been huge and burly and people called him that out of irony. As of 1990 there were 648 Poles named Małyszka (the ł is pronounced like our w); the largest numbers of them lived in the provinces of Kalisz (61) and Poznan (257), but small numbers lived in virtually every other province as well... Similar surnames from the same root and with roughly the same meaning are even more common, for instance: Małysa (790), Malyśka (1,493), Małysz (2006), Małyszko.

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

...I'm trying to trace my family roots and i've come up empty on my surname---- Bartoszek, my father was Walter Michael Bartoszek, Jr., and my grandfather was Walter Michael Bartoszek, Sr. he is beleaved to be from the Chicago area. any information that you could give me would be a big help to me.

Bartoszek is basically the Polish name Bartocha with the diminutive suffix -ek added; when such suffixes are added, the final sound of the root often changes, and in this case the guttural ch sound changes to the "sh" sound of sz. So Bartoszek, pronounced roughly "bar-TOE-shek," means "little Bartocha," or "son of Bartocha." This, in turn, is a very old Polish first name, which in some cases probably came from the Polish root barta, "battle-axe," in others from "Bart," a nickname for "Bartholomew" (in Polish Bartlomiej), or even from German Bart, "beard."

As of 1990 there were 5,277 Polish citizens named Bartoszek, so it's a pretty common name. The largest numbers of them lived in the provinces of Kalisz (280), Katowice (1,050), Lublin (509), Lodz (369), Tarnobrzeg (260), and Zamosc (358); so it's most common in the southeastern quarter of the country. But you find people named Bartoszek in virtually every province.

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

...I'm looking for information on my grandparents names: Mary Dudek and Gregory Walec. I'd love to receive any information on either name. They lived in Passaic, New Jersey. Both were born about 1890 in Poland and emigrated here about 1905-10.

Dudek is a very common name in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 49,428 Polish citizens named Dudek, living all over the country. In most cases Dudek comes from the word dudek, the hoopoe (a kind of bird). I'm afraid the word also has been used sometimes to refer to a simpleton, but surnames derived from birds are very common in Poland, so I see no need to assume the name had to be meant negatively. There is also a possible connection with duda, "bagpipes, or a home-bred musician," but in most cases that root applies to names such as Duda, Dudziak, etc. -- Dudek more likely is connected with the bird.

Walec is much less common, as of 1990 there were only 217 Poles by that name. They were scattered in numerous provinces, but the largest numbers showed up in the provinces of Kraków (26) and especially Tarnobrzeg (118) in southern and southeastern Poland. I'm afraid I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

The meaning of Walec is also harder to pin down, because there are several roots it could derive from. There is a term walec that means "barrel, cylinder," and while it's hard to see how such a term could become a name, we see many instances where such terms unquestionably did generate names. Perhaps an ancestor made cylinders, or his shape reminded people of a barrel. The term walec is also a variant of the noun walc, "waltz," so a person who liked to waltz or play at waltzes might possibly end up with such a name. Other plausible connections are with the roots walić, "to overturn," walczyć, "to fight, battle," or the first name Walenty (Valentine) -- although the latter connection is more likely with names such as Walek.

I'm sorry I couldn't give you a definitive answer on Walec, but with many names there are several possibilities, and only detailed on-site research can possible establish which one is applicable. So this is the best I can offer. I hope it's some help to you, and I wish you the best of luck with your research.

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

...My sister is the big researcher but i am trying to help her and surprize her!! We are searching for the name Arbaszewski.

Names ending in -ewski usually started as references to places with similar names, because a family lived there, or came from there, or went there often on business -- some sort of connection like that. Thus we'd expect Arbaszewski to have started out meaning "person from Arbaszewo or Arbaszy" or some place with a similar name.

I can only find one place that seems to qualify -- there may be more, because surnames formed centuries ago, and often the places they referred to have since disappeared, or changed their names, or become too small to show up in gazetteers. But there is a village Arbasy or Arbasy Duze ("Big Arbasy"), in Białystok province in northeastern Poland, 15 km. southwest of the town of Drohiczyn (there is also another village Arbasy Male, "Little Arbasy," very close by, so close that for practical purposes the two can almost be thought of as one). Over the centuries its name has varied, it has also been called Harbasy, Harbasze, etc. It is served by the Roman Catholic parish church in Sledzianów, a few km. away (in other words, that's where people from Arbasy probably went to register births, deaths, marriages, etc.). Its name comes from an ancient Polish first name Harbas, so that it meant "Harbas's place." It's interesting that there was a noble family Harbaszewski from this village mentioned in mid-16th century records, and it's clear that this name often drops the H, so it is possible -- though by no means certain -- that your family might have a link to these noble Harbaszewski's.

As I say, I can find no other place that seems to qualify, so this might be one of those rare instances where you can actually pinpoint a specific area of origin just from the name. That doesn't happen often with Polish names, and I want to stress that it's not 100% certain -- you'd be jumping to conclusions if you assumed this has to be what you're looking for. But the odds seem to me reasonably good that this is the place in Poland where the family comes from. It's worth a look, anyway, especially if the LDS has microfilmed the Sledzianów parish records and you can request them through your nearest LDS Family History Center.

As of 1990 there were 196 Polish citizens named Arbaszewski, with the majority living in the provinces of Warsaw (75), Białystok (51) and Ostrołęka (33), and a few scattered in several other provinces. These three provinces are all in northcentral to northeastern Poland. This distribution suggests a lot of those Arbaszewski's probably do derive their name from that village in Białystok province; with the Warsaw figures it's hard to say whether those Arbaszewski's came from a different place, or if many of the Arbaszewski's from the Białystok area tended to migrate toward the capital, which is a phenomenon we see with many other names... I don't have access to further details, such as their first names and addresses, but this may be enough information to help you get off to a good start with the name.

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

...I have spent years on and off trying to find some information on the origins and/or history of my surname: Badanowski, with no luck at all. I realize that you must be receiving many requests, but if you have any time, I would appreciate any information you can give me. By the way, my family is Jewish, and so I am not sure that this surname is really Polish in origin. In any case, any suggestions would be very helpful for me.

It is wise to mention that the family is Jewish, because very often different circumstances affected the surnames of Polish Jews as opposed to Polish Christians. Jewish names were, generally, established much later, often within the last two centuries, so that we can actually hope to find surviving documents that shed light on their origins and meanings; the names of Polish Christians were usually established much earlier. There are pluses and minuses, either way, but the religion can definitely make a difference in the circumstances affecting the name. In this particular case, I don't believe it does; but it was still a good idea to mention it.

I'm not surprised you have had trouble finding this name: as of 1990 there were only 3 Polish citizens named Badanowski, all living in the province of Warsaw. The source from which I got this information does not give first names or addresses, so I cannot tell you more than this, but it may prove of some value.

Usually names ending in -owski began as references to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name, so that we would expect Badanowski to have meant originally "one from Badanów, Badanowo, Badanowa," something like that. I could find no place in Poland by any such name, but one reference I checked mentioned that Badanów was a variant name by which the village Bogdanowice, in what is now Opole province in southwestern Poland, was once known. In other words, that village's name, which means in effect "the place of Bogdan's sons," was sometimes modified or distorted to Badanów, appearing as such in records from 1845; and people who came from that village or that area at that time might well have ended up with the name Badanowski, meaning "person from Badanów."

Alexander Beider's Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland also mentions Badanowski as a Jewish surname deriving from the name of the townlet of Bohdanów in Oszmiana district of Wilno province. I can't find this specific place, but Oszmiana is now Ashmjany or Oshmyany in Belarus (this place would not have been mentioned in my other source because that one covered only places still within the borders of Poland). What this proves is that Badanowski as a surname can derive from the names of at least two different places, far apart, with only one thing in common: they were formed from the old Slavic first name Bogdan/Bohdan (literally "gift of God"). So the surname Badanowski can refer to origin in Bogdanowice in southwestern Poland, or Bohdany in Belarus -- and perhaps more places that don't show up in my sources.

Some of them may be outside Poland -- Badanowski is a Polish spelling, but that doesn't necessarily mean the name had to be of Polish linguistic origin (although personally I think it probably is). Still, a Russian, for instance, named Badanovsky, might sometimes have his name written Badanowski because of German or Polish linguistic influence (since his name would have been originally written in Cyrillic and would have had to be transliterated when he emigrated). As I say, I think the name is of Polish linguistic origin, but I cannot rule out other possibilities.

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

..My name is ... Bakies. My family came over from Lubla, Strzyźow, Rzeszów, Poland between 1910-1913. On both the ships records and my grandfather's baptismal certificate, the name is spelled Bakes (no i). The family was using Bakies by 1917 when my greatgrandfather died in Ohio. My mother recalls a conversation with her father-in-law that at one point the name was originally something like (phonetic) Bakishkowski and that at some point before they came to the USA it was changed. I've looked at your book, but don't know which of several entries would apply: Bąc, Bąk (bąkać, to mutter), Bąk (bąk, bittern, gadfly, error) or Bak (bakać, to yell, scold). Does the area they were from have any bearing? Do you have suggestions or comments?

I wish I could suggest something, but it's not too common to see a Polish name ending in -es or -ies; Bakes or Bakies just doesn't sound like a native Polish name, and none of my sources mention it. So I have to wonder if it originated in some other language. But I've never run across it before, and as I say, none of my books mention it. I have a good source on Lithuanian names that mentions Bakas and Bakys -- the latter, in particularly, might possibly become Bakes or Bakies in Polish; but the Lithuanian sources aren't sure what it comes from.

In any case, the name does exist in Poland. As of 1990 there were 20 Poles named Bakes (living in the following provinces: Katowice 4, Lodz 4, Walbrzych 5, Wroclaw 7), and 35 named Bakies (Gdansk 4, Lodz 14, Poznan 1, Sieradz 2, Tarnobrzeg 10, Zielona Gora 4). (I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses, unfortunately). It's odd that we find that name exists, but there's no sign of anything like "Bakishkowski" -- the closest is Bakirzyński (20, all living in Olsztyn province). That doesn't prove the name never was shortened from something longer, but we can't help but wonder how reliable that bit of info is... By the way, if the name is Lithuanian in origin, the distribution patterns for Bakes and Bakies don't make too much sense. Lithuanian names don't have to be found only in northeastern Poland, but that is where they tend to be more common.

I'm sorry I couldn't help more, and maybe those figures on name frequency and distribution will help a little. If you'd really like to try every possible source, I'd suggest running this by the staff of the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Kraków. I doubt they'd charge more than $20, and if they can't help you, I don't know who can. Good luck!

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

...I have been trying for some time to get information about the name Bartelak.They came from Posen, Poland in the year 1890 maybe you could give me any information you have about them. If you care to list the name you can do so.

Bartelak means basically "son of Bartholomew." Bartel is a short form or nickname for Bartholomew used by Germans and Poles, and the -ak suffix is a diminutive, so that Bartelak started out more or less as a nickname or by-name meaning "little Bart," probably referring to the son of a fellow named Bartel, which is in turn a form of the name we spell Bartholomew.

I'm a little surprised to see this name isn't all that common in Poland; as of 1990 there were only 179 Bartelak's, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 3, Bydgoszcz 3, Czestochowa 121, Gdansk 1, Gorzów 7, Jelenia Gora 8, Kalisz 1, Katowice 1, Legnica 10, Piotrków 1, Szczecin 5, Walbrzych 1, Wroclaw 17. I would have expected more, and I'm a bit surprised to see there are none in the area of Poznan. (By the way, I don't have access to more details, such as first names and addresses; what I give here is all I have).

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

...I am trying to get more information on the surnames Gall, Bambas. They immigrated from Rogasen, Prussia 1860. I will be happy to reimburse you if needed. I don't know if it matters, but they were Jewish.

It definitely can be relevant that the names you're interested in were borne by Jews. Obviously genealogical research for Polish Jews and Christians overlaps in many respects, but there are a number of factors that can make a big difference, both in regard to what names meant and where records are kept. Jewish surnames, in general, originated much later than those for Christians; in general Polish Christian surnames originated 300-400 years ago, farther back then there are surviving records (except for nobility), whereas most Jews first took surnames less than 200 years ago, and many records do survive from then. Also, Jews generally took names from different sources than Christians, so that the same name can mean something different when borne by Christians and Jews. The religion of the people you're researching can make a big difference, and I always advise folks to make it clear up front what religion their ancestors were -- it can save a lot of time and trouble.

Having said all that, the sad truth is I wasn't able to come up with too much on either name. As of 1990 there was no one in Poland with the name Bambas; I looked at some of the likely spelling variations, and found there were 36 Polish citizens named Bąbas -- the ą represents the nasal vowel pronounced like on or, before b or p, like om. There were 26 named Bąbaś, and 38 named Bombas. Any of these names might be related to Bambas when you take Polish phonetics and spelling into account. The people by these names were scattered all over the country, with no real concentration, and none of them lived in Gdansk province, which is where Rogasen is located.

I could find no mention of Bambas in any of my sources, including ones concentrating on Jewish names. The closest match is with the root bąb-, which means "to strike, hit." Bambas and the other names mentioned above could possibly come from that root, meaning the guy who was always hitting. But that's just an educated guess.

Gall is not a very common name, but at least there are some folks named Gall alive in Poland: as of 1990, there were 268. They were widely scattered, with the largest numbers in the provinces of: Warsaw 42, Elblag 17, Jelenia Gora 20, Wroclaw 15. There were a dozen or less in several other provinces, including 6 in Gdansk province. (I have no access to first names or addresses, I'm afraid this data is all I have).

When borne by Christians this surname tends to come from the Latin first name Gallus, especially in reference to the Irish saint Gallus, who founded a monastery in Switzerland. My books on Jewish surnames suggest that among Jews it more often came from Yiddish gal or German Galle, both meaning "gall, bile." This might be associated with a person who was bitter or spiteful, or perhaps with someone rather pious who found life in this world to be bitter and difficult and thus looked forward to the afterlife.

By the way, I couldn't find Rogasen, or whatever it's called today. I have sources that mention it, and they locate it as very near the town of Koscierzyna (called Berent by the Germans) in what is now Gdansk province. Nearby villages are Nowy Barkoczyn, where Protestant records were kept, and Garczyn, which has a Catholic parish church where Catholic records were kept, and Liniewo (Lienfelde) for civil records. I know Rogasen has to be within a few km. of these places, but it doesn't show up on my maps, unless the Polish name is completely different from the German one (which does happen sometimes)..

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

...When you have a moment, could you give me a meaning/background for the following surnames?

Banach is a very common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 12,318 Poles by that name, living all over the country. It comes from a short form of nickname of Benedykt, "Benedict," kind of like "Benny" in English -- Poles loved to take popular first names, drop most of them, and add suffixes, and that's what happened with this, Ban- (from Benedykt) + -ach.

Kempski was the name of 1,004 Poles as of 1990, and another 1,727 spelled it Kępski; the ę is the Polish nasal vowel pronounced usually like en but like em before b or p, so that Kępski sounds like Kempski, and that's why it can be spelled either way. It comes from the root kępa, "cluster of trees," or a place named Kępa or Kępy. There are literally dozens of villages named Kępa, so we can't trace it to any one part of Poland -- it could get started anywhere they spoke Polish and had trees.

Krzywonos was the name of 974 Poles as of 1990, and means literally "crooked nose"; the term krzywonos is also the name of a bird, the grosbeak. It's hard to say how often this got started as a name for humans because someone had a crooked nose, and how often it comes from the bird, since bird names yielded many very common names in Polish. The province of Poland with the largest number of Krzywonos's in 1990 was Rzeszów in southeastern Poland, with 183, otherwise it's spread pretty evenly throughout the country.

Kujat is a rarer name, only 128 Poles had this name in 1990, and it comes from the root kuj-, "to forge, hammer." Presumably it started as a name given a smith. The name does not appear to be concentrated in any one part of Poland.

Marczyniec means literally "son of Martin," but that first name is generally spelled Marcin in Polish, so the spelling Marczyn, though pronounced almost the same, is rarer -- as of 1990 there was no one in Poland with the name spelled Marczyniec, but there were 1,344 who spelled the name Marciniec. In older times most folks were illiterate, and variant spellings of names were a dime a dozen, but in this century most Poles have learned to read and write, and the "standardized" spellings of names have taken over. So if you found relatives in Poland, you might find that they now spell the name Marciniec, but in older records the spelling Marczyniec might appear.

With Poremba we're dealing with that nasal vowel ę again; in 1990 there were 3,036 Poles named Poręba, and another 483 who spelled it Poremba. It comes from the term poręba, "clearing" in a forest, and presumably began as a reference to where a person lived; there are numerous villages named Poręba in Poland. As of 1990 the biggest concentration of Poręba's, 966, lived in the southcentral province of Nowy Sacz, and 290 lived in the southeastern province of Tarnów.

...Do you have an idea where in Poland these names may have originated? I know Kempski was from Poznan or Posen.

Your Kempski's may have come from the Poznan region, but most Polish surnames don't give much of a clue as to a specific place of origin, unless they derive from a unique place name (and there are comparatively few of those). I'm afraid none of these, except Poręba, is concentrated in any one part of the country; and Poręba may be most common in Nowy Sacz and Tarnów provinces, but there's virtually no province where you won't find a pretty good number of Poręba's.

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

...I'm researching Siwek and Bator surnames (for family history purposes). Don't know how rare/common they are. Our ancestors all came from Tarnow province. The former from Ryglice and the latter from Pilsno.

Both are pretty common names. According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Bator comes from a Hungarian term meaning "courageous, bold" (cmp. the name of Stefan Batory, in Hungarian Istvan Bathory, a Hungarian who was king of Poland 1576-1586); as of 1990 there were 4,653 Polish citizens by that name. Siwek comes from a root meaning "white, gray" -- siwak means "grey-haired fellow," and siwek is a term sometimes used for a grey horse; as of 1990 there were 11,822 Siwek's in Poland.

Of the 4,653 Bator's, 479 of them lived in Tarnów province, the largest single number; in general, the name is most common in south and southeastern Poland, the territory that was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and called Galicia from the 1800's to 1918. With that link, it's not so odd that a Hungarian name would be common in the region, there are other such names that originated as Hungarian but are reasonably common in Poland. The Siwek's are common all over Poland, there's no particular concentration in any one area.

That's about all I have on these names. I don't have access to any data on first names or addresses for the Bators or Siweks in Tarnów province, only figures on how many by each name live in each province.

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

...I was surfing the net and typied in my last name, your homepage came up and interested me. My last name is Bazydlo, was wondering if you have any information on this name? Was thinking of trying to find out more of my families past in Poland. Any information you can pass along would be greatly appreciated.

The standard form of the name in Polish is Bazydło -- ł is pronounced like our w, so that the name sounds like "bah-ZID-woe" (ZID rhymes with "kid"). Polish expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions the name Bazydło in his book on Polish surnames, saying that it is one of a number of names that derive from the first name Bazyli, which is the same as our Basil (from a Greek word meaning "king"). So when the name first originated it probably meant something like "Basil's son."

I don't recall running into this name before, so I was a bit surprised to see it is moderately common in Poland; as of 1990 there were 938 Polish citizens named Bazydło. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Łomża (240) and Suwałki (258), both in far northeastern Poland, near the border with Belarus; there were much smaller numbers scattered about in various other provinces, but Łomża and Suwałki provinces are definitely where this name is most concentrated. This is like saying a name is common in two particular states in the U.S. -- it doesn't really pin it down to a small, searchable area, but it is better than nothing. And if it's any consolation, this is more info than most surnames offer; usually I have to tell people there's nothing about the name that narrows the search down at all. Your particular family might have come from one of those other provinces besides Łomża and Suwałki, but chances are good they started out, somewhere along the line, in far northeastern Poland.

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

...The surname I was hoping you could research for me is Bendyk. My grandfather came from Szaflary, Poland in 1905 and am having trouble getting any information other than where he came from and when.

The surname Bendyk, like many Polish surnames, derives from a first name, in this case, Benedict, in Polish Benedykt. This name was used in a great many different forms in Poland, including Bandyk and Bendyk. So the name means "Benedict," probably referring to the name of a prominent ancestor.

As of 1990 there were 535 Polish citizens named Bendyk. They lived all over Poland, with larger numbers in the provinces of Ciechanów (49), Elblag (101), Gdansk (57), Olsztyn (40), and Torun (90). All these provinces are in northcentral Poland, so that seems to be the area where the name is most common, although, as I said, you run into it all over the country.

I know this information probably is a lot less specific and helpful than you'd like, but I'm afraid that's the way it is with Polish surnames: relatively few of them tell you much. Sometimes you run into one that tells you all kinds of good things, but those are definitely the exception.

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

...I would appreciate any information about the subject surname Bielejewski, (meaning etc.)...

The root from which this name derives ultimately is bial-/biel-, meaning "white," but the surname started out as a reference to some association between a person or family and a specific place with a name like Bielejewo; that's what Bielejewski means, "of, pertaining to, associated with Bielejewo (or a similar name, Bielejewa, etc.)." The name of the place, in turn, comes from the old first name Bielej, which means something like "Whitey" in English, so that Bielejewo means "Whitey's place." There are at least two villages that qualify: Bielejewo in Kalisz province, 10 km. NW of Jarocin; and Bielejewo in Poznan province, 8 km. south of Wronek. In addition, the village of Bielewo in Leszno province was called "Beleyevo" in the late 14th century, so it's possible the surname could have developed in connection with it as well.

As of 1990 there were 308 Polish citizens named Bielejewski; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Pila (114) and Poznan (111) in west central Poland, with a few scatered in other provinces here and there.

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

...Hello, my name is ... Bilicki and as you can tell from the last name by heritage is Polish. I have looked through your list on the internet and did not come across my surname. I was hoping that if you had the time you would be able to tell me more about my surname. The reason I ask for this info is so that I can track the descent of my family all the way back to Poland during WWI. Thank you for your time and help.

The name Bilicki is almost certainly a variation of the name Bielecki; in the Slavic languages the basic root bial-/biel- means "white," and in different areas it takes the forms Bel-, Bial-, Biel-, and Bil-. So etymologically speaking Bilicki should be treated as more or less the same as Bielecki. Both most likely started as references to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name like Bielica, Bielice -- there are at least 3 villages named Bielica and 17 named Bielice in Poland alone, to say nothing of other countries that might be relevant (mainly Belarus and Ukraine); so the names Bielecki and Bilicki could develop anywhere people might want to refer to a "person from Bielica/Bielice." Those place names derived from the term bielica, "soft, clayish ground, bog," and that in turn presumably derives from the root meaning "white."

As of 1990 there were some 1,507 Polish citizens named Bilicki, living all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (186), Gdansk (82), Konin (67), Lodz (79), Olsztyn (74), Pila (115), Płock (163). This suggests a concentration in the center and northwest quarter of Poland, roughly in areas once ruled by Germans. If I'm not mistaken, German influence might have a little to do with the spelling of the name as Bilicki; in standard Polish the name is more likely to be Bielecki, pronounced "byel-ET-skee," but Germans would tend to turn it more into "bill-IT-ski," Bilicki.

I'm afraid this information isn't likely to be much practical use in tracking a specific Bilicki family -- unfortunately that's generally true of Polish surnames, relatively few have any feature that offers real help in locating exactly where they came from. Still, I hope this is some help to you, and wish you the best of luck with your research.

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

...I'm trying to locate information on my Grandparents surnames.....Drebit & Bilsky. From what I've learned, they lived in the village of Kolodribka (near Sinkiv), Zalesciki Region, Ukraine. Any info is appreciated.

I'm afraid my sources on Ukrainian names are far less extensive than on Polish names. I know a little; for instance, Bilsky comes from the Ukrainian form of the Slavic root meaning "white" (in Polish it would be bial- or biel-), so this name began as reference to a place with a name from that root, or perhaps in some cases as a reference to a person's hair or complexion. It would also be a very common name, but unfortunately I have no sources that give statistics on frequency or distribution of this name in Ukraine (it's also fairly common in Poland in the form Bilski, as of 1990 there were 8,355 Polish citizens by that name).

Drebit probably comes from a Slavic root seen in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, meaning "small, fine." In Polish drobotać means "to walk quickly but with small steps, or to speak quickly but in a wheedling manner." In Ukrainian words with very similar meanings exist, but spelled drib- rather than drob-; it is quite possible, linguistically speaking, that that root could also be spelled dreb-. So I suspect that's what the name ultimately derives from, the root meaning "small, fine, mincing." As of 1990 there were only 5 Polish citizens named Drebit, all living in Olsztyn province, up in northcentral Poland -- that may well be due to post-World War II compulsory relocations that moved vast numbers of Ukrainians to parts of Poland that many ethnic Germans had been deported from. Unfortunately, I don't have access to details such as first names and addresses, so I can't tell you any more about those Drebit's, but perhaps the info will be some use to you.

The best place I know to learn more about Ukraine and Ukrainian customs and names is this Website: www.infoukes.com. If you haven't visited it, I recommend taking a look!

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

...I am interested in knowing the history of the family name Blazek from the town of Grabowa in Szczecinskie.

I have no information on individual families, all I can tell you about is the linguistic origin of the name, and sometimes where the name is most common in Poland these days.

Blazek would be Błażek in Polish - the name would be pronounced roughly "BWAH-zhek." It originated as a diminutive of the Christian first name Błażej, the Polish version of the name we called "Blaise," but that name is much rarer in English than Błażej is in Polish; if you're Catholic and are over 40 you might remember when kids used to go to church to have their throats blessed in the name of "St. Blaise, Bishop and Martyr" -- that's who the name is associated with. Błażek would mean "little Blaise, son of Blaise."

Surnames from Błażej are pretty common in Poland, e. g. Błażejczak, Błażejewski, Błażewicz, but Błażek, for some reason, is not all that common; there were only 247 Poles by that name as of 1990. They were scattered all over the country, with larger numbers in the province of Gdansk (60) and Katowice (24). There was only 1 Błażek in the modern-day province of Szczecin (I have no access on data to first names or addresses, what I'm giving here is all I have), but Szczecin province used to be much larger than it is now, so there may be a few more in areas that used to be part of Szczecin province but no longer are; and there are too many Grabowa's for me to know precisely which one is relevant to your research.

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

...I was reading your surname information ... on the internet and checked out the surname section looking for my last name, which of course was not listed. I would be interested in knowing the meaning and also if the spelling would be correct. My great-grandfather has his name spelled Bochynski. My son recently returned from Poland after studying at the University of Warsaw and had inquired about the spelling and was told very likely the spelling was Bochinski which is another way our name is shown being spelled in local records. The current spelling is Bohinski. I know that your expertise is in the area of name meanings, but I wonder also if you may know what region of Poland this name may be found if the Bochynski spelling is or was likely.

This is a difficult question, because in fact there are three different spellings that could all apply to the same name: Bocheński, Bochiński, and Bochyński, and I don't see a really clear-cut pattern in their geographical distribution. As of 1990 there were 3,501 Polish citizens named Bocheński, 497 named Bochiński, and 1,085 named Bochyński. All three spellings appear all over the country. As of 1990 the largest numbers of Bochiński's lived in the provinces of Warsaw (128), Gdansk (65), Łomża (66), and Poznan (48), with much smaller numbers in many other provinces. Bocheński is common all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (345), Katowice (244), Kraków (213), and Nowy Sacz (245), which suggests it's most common in southcentral Poland and near the capital (many names show a tendency to congregate around Warsaw as well as in areas where they presumably originated). Bochyński is most common in Kalisz (151), Lublin (128), and Poznan (95) provinces. The likely derivation is from the noun bochen, "large loaf of bread," or from place names such as Bochnia (a sizeable town in Tarnów province); the adjectival form of that place name is bocheński, which, as a surname, could mean "one from Bochnia," and that seems to be the most common, standard form of the name.

I can't say for sure that all three spellings are variants of the same name, it could be in some cases the spellings match up in some cases with different origins. But it seems pretty certain that Bocheński is the standard form and Bochyński is often a variant of that form. By modern rules of Polish orthography Bochiński is questionable, Poles avoid using the combination -chi- except in foreign words. The reasons involve linguistic questions that would bore you to death, but I would have expected Bocheński and Bochyński to be the most common forms, with Bochiński rare. I'm surprised there were 497 people with that spelling, actually. It could be that spelling originated back in the days when the rules weren't quite so strict, or people didn't know them, and that it has stuck for reasons of family tradition.

But going strictly by the rules (which, of course, people have done inconsistently over the course of history), the e sound is the one you'd expect, and in some areas regional pronunciation tendencies might cause that to become the short i sound (as in "sit") spelled as a y in Polish. So Bocheński would sound like "bo-HEN-skee," Bochyński would sound like "bo-HIN-skee." Bochiński would sound like "bo-HEEN-skee," but as I say, Poles generally avoid putting the long "ee" sound of the letter I after the guttural combination ch, and that's why I think this is the least common spelling.

To make matters worse, the ch and h are pronounced exactly the same in Polish, so in theory you could also see the spellings Boheński, Bohiński, and Bohyński. Fortunately for your sake, those spellings are, however, extremely rare in Poland, though obviously Bohinski is familiar to you. Still, I thought I'd mention it in case you ever ran across these other spellings.

Those are my thoughts on the subject. If you'd really like to know more and don't mind spending about $20 or so, there is a group of scholars in Kraków, Poland who are experts on name origins and might be able to shed more light. They can handle correspondence in English (although they prefer Polish), and I've heard from quite a few people who were very pleased with the job they did; they don't do genealogical research, just research on the origins of names..

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

...Any information on the surname Bojanowski available?

Names ending in -owski usually refer to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ów or -owo or something similar. In this case you'd expect the name to mean "person from Bojanów or Bojanowo or Bojany" -- those names, in turn, means "Bojan's place" (Bojan is an ancient Polish first name). There are at least 13 villages in Poland with names that qualify, so it's impossible to tell which particular one a given Bojanowski family was associated with. And, as usually happens when there are that many different potential sources for a name, the surname is a common one -- as of 1990 there were 4,264 Polish citizens named Bojanowski, living all over the country.

...Also researching Barna...

None of my sources discuss Barna, so I can't give a definitive source or meaning. The most likely derivations are either as a short form of the first names Bernard or Barnaby or Bronisław -- there is a popular surname Barnas that comes from Bernard, and Barn is a recognized short form of Barnislaw, a Pomeranian version of the common first name Bronisław -- or from the noun barna, which is a variant form of brona, "harrow." One source also mentions barna as a Hungarian word meaning "brown, russet-colored"; there are some names in Poland that turn out to be of Hungarian origin, but without more info it seems far-fetched to connect that to this name. There is nothing that tips the scales in favor of one or another of these derivations, all I can say is that these are possible sources of the name Barna.

As of 1990 there were 521 Polish citizens named Barna; they were scattered all over Poland, with the largest numbers living in the following provinces: Gorzów 57, Koszalin 76, Krosno 32, Legnica 78, Slupsk 42, Zielona Gora 38. In terms of geographical distribution, most of those provinces are in western Poland, the area once ruled by the Germans; that seems to be where the name is most common.

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

...I had a library patron call the Reference Desk today and ask for the meaning of the name Boronczyk. Unfortunately, we have little on Polish surnames. I found your site posted ... and promise I'll order a copy of your book for the next interested patron! In the meantime, is there a quick answer to our patron's question? If not, I'll refer him to your webpage.

I doubt there's much on the Webpage that would help with this particular name. The total number of Polish surnames is disputed, but there is no question we are talking at least a hundred thousand, probably many times that. So I haven't gotten to them all on the Webpage -- or in the book either, for that matter! On the page I deal only with those I have been asked about the last few months; in the book I deal with the most common ones. (The distribution curve of Polish surnames is odd: a few thousand account for 90% of the population, and then you have jillions and jillions of really rare ones.)

In surnames the suffix -czyk usually means "son of," so we can state with some confidence that the name means "son of boron." So it's a question of what boron means. Polish phonetics and linguistics suggests it is most likely boroń. One of my sources, Nazwiska Cieszyńskie [The Surnames of the Cieszyn Region] by Wladyslaw Milerski, Wydawnictwo Energeia, Warszawa, 1996, links it with the root bor, "forest, woods." Milerski says that names with the suffix -oń are typical of southern Silesia, so that may well be where this name originated. Milerski also says boroń is a noun meaning "forest-dweller," so it seems probable that Borończyk began as one of that class of surnames that refer to the place a person lived or worked; it would be, literally, "son of the forest-dweller."

I can add that as of 1990 there were 365 Polish citizens named Borończyk, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Katowice (67), Kielce (49), and Piotrków Trybunalski (47) -- all in southcentral Poland, a little east of Silesia proper -- and smaller numbers scattered in many other provinces. Unfortunately I do not have access to details such as first names, addresses, etc.; what I've given here is all I have.

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

...I was hoping that you could tell me something about the name Brack. We had been told it was Brak, but recently found it to be Brack.

Well, the main question is whether it is of Polish or German derivation. From what you say about the spelling, it probably was German, and German surname expert Hans Bahlow said in his Deutsches Namenlexikon that Brack means "tracker dog," or could also derive from the name of the Brack river near the Neckar. But Bahlow also mentions that the root brack can refer to moist, swampy terrain, and Brack could also be a name for a person who lived in such a place.

As of 1990 there were only 3 Polish citizens named Brack (1 in Warsaw province, 2 in Lodz province), but there may have been more once -- millions of ethnic Germans who had lived in Poland relocated to East Germany after World War II, so numbers these days don't necessarily mean much in relation to a century ago.

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

...My family has an obscure last name, as far as we can tell, anyway. My fathers parents names were Cizeski and Pionek, the latter being our family name. As far as we can tell it means "chess pawn." Would you have any clue as to where it may originate or if it were chosen upon entry into the states?

Cizeski is almost certainly a variant of Cizewski, which in turn appears to be a different spelling of Czyzewski; all three names are usually spelled with a dot over that middle z (ż), and they are all pronounced roughly "chee-ZHEFF-skee" ("ZH" = the sound of "s" in "pleasure"). In many parts of Poland that -w- right before -ski is pronounced very lightly or even dropped, so it's not unusual to see names spelled without it, even though by "proper" Polish it should be there: Dombroski vs. Dombrowski, Janoski vs. Janowski, etc. So Cizeski is probably just a slightly different form of Cizewski, which is a less common way of spelling Czyzewski.

As of 1990 there was no listing of anyone in Poland named Cizeski, but that's probably because the advent of universal literacy has caused the name to be "corrected" and standardized with the -w- intact. By comparison, there were 237 Poles named Cizewski, but there were 10,543 named Czyżewski, so you can see that's a popular name. The "correct" spelling would be Czyżewski, but some still spell it Ciżewski, and historically some pronounced it Cizeski (some probably still do), which is how that spelling came to appear in writing... The 237 Cizewski's lived all over Poland, but by far the largest number, 67, lived in the province of Białystok in northeastern Poland. Czyzewski's, on the other hand, are common all over the country.

The ultimate root is czyz, "green finch, siskin" (a kind of bird), but Cizeski or Cizewski or Czyżewski are all adjectives most likely formed from the names of villages Czyżew or Czyżewo; the surnames mean basically "one from Czyżew or Czyżewo," and those place names, in turn, mean "place of the green finch." There are a number of places named Czyżew and Czyżewo, including several in what is now Łomża province. There are also a number of places named Czyżów, and that place name, too, could also generate the surname Czyżewski. So I can't point to any one place and say "That's the one your Cizeski's came from"; there are too many possibilities, and no good reason to favor one over the other.

I should add, just to be complete, that Cizeski might also come from Ciszewski, which is also a surname derived from a place name. From a phonetic standpoint that is also possible. But I would think the link with Czyżewski from czyz is more likely to be the right one, in most cases.

Pionek does appear to come from the word meaning "pawn," although a similar word used in dialect means "potato." I'm not sure exactly how it came to be used as a name, but I'm continually surprised when I learn how creative people can be when it comes to giving names; so just because the meaning of a name isn't obvious to us doesn't mean it wasn't obvious to those who originally gave or received it.

The name Pionek itself is rather rare in Poland these days; as of 1990 there were only 13 people with that name, living in the provinces of Warsaw (2), Katowice (4), Opole (1), and Szczecin (6). (Unfortunately, I don't have access to any further details, such as first names or addresses). Pionka (441) and Pionke (351) are more common.

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

...I’m hoping you can send me some info on the surname Czekaj. Its origin, etc. I know it`s a very common name in Poland, (about 75 listed in the Kraków telephone directory). I am doing research on my grandfather who emigrated to America from Kraków in 1896. About how many Czekajs are there in Poland?

You're right that it's a common name: as of 1990 there were at least 7,328 Polish citizens named Czekaj (the source for this material was based on data for about 94% of the population of Poland, so the numbers could be a bit higher). The provinces with the largest numbers were: Katowice (1,051), Kielce (1,259), Kraków (1,318), Rzeszów (305), and Tarnów (391); there were smaller numbers of Czekaj's in virtually every province. This suggests the name is most common in south central and southeastern Poland, roughly in the region called Małopolska ("Little Poland"), which was seized by Austria during the partitions and ruled (along with western Ukraine) as an Austrian crown possession under the name of "Galicia" (German Galizien).

This is an interesting name because it's easy to say what it means, but a little harder to understand exactly how such a name got started. Czekaj comes from the verb czekać, "to wait," and in form is a command: "Wait!" It is used in Polish to mean also "Stop!" or "Listen up!" Also czekaj can be used as a noun meaning "one who waits for something." So the meaning is clear. As to why it became a name, your guess is probably as good as mine. It might be this was a nickname given to someone who was always saying "Czekaj!" Or it might be given to someone who was always waiting for something. The puzzling thing is that it's such a common name, so whatever the connection was, it surely must have applied to more than one person -- it seems doubtful all those Czekaj's could be descended from one ancestor! Although really, who knows?

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

… Seeking info on "Shywydky", "Svidky", possibly other spellings. The patriarch of my mother's branch of the family came to Canada in the 1890's, claimed to have a university education, and spoke Englsh, French, German as well as an assortment of slavic languages. The only other Shywydky family I've run accross is Jewish.

The only information I could find on this name was in a book on Jewish surnames, which mentioned that it comes from the Ukrainian term shvydkij (we'd pronounce that "shvid'-kee," the "i" in the first syllable is short, as in "sit"), which means "quick, rapid." I confirmed that that is what the Ukrainian term means, and it is certainly plausible that the surname developed from that source. The sounds of "sh" and "v" and the short "i" as in "sit" are spelled different ways in different languages, so it's no wonder this name can appear as Schwidke (German), Szwydki (Polish), Shvydki or Svidky (English), etc.

As of 1990 there were two Polish citizens named Szwydki, 1 in Kalisz province, 1 in Wroclaw province (I don't have access to further data such as first names or addresses, I'm afraid); there were also 2 Szwydko's, in Krakow province. There were 6 Szwidke's, all in Wroclaw province. There were 4 Świdka's (accent over the S), 2 in Walbrzych province, 2 in Zamosc province. And that's all I could find for this name.

So to summarize, it's probably comes from a Ukrainian word meaning "swift, rapid," is rare in Poland but probably more common in Ukraine, and can be spelled a jillion different ways (this is where the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system comes in handy; see http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/soundex.html)

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

… Our "clan" is having it's first family reunion in many, many years (being held in Fullerton, NE August 8th)! It is turning into quite a party with approximately 400 people responding. We would like to offer a T-shirt to commemorate the event and would like the design to reflect the name somehow. Could you please supply me the general meaning of the family name Shotkowski.

To start with, the spelling Shotkowski is Anglicized a little -- Polish doesn't use sh except on rare occasions in compound words when a component ending with s happens to be joined to one starting with h, on which occasion they'd be pronounced separately (to be honest, I can't think of a single case where that happens). But Polish Sz is pronounced the same way we pronounce "sh," so most of the time you can safely figure English sh = Polish sz. So Szotkowski is the name we're dealing with, almost certainly.

The direct derivation is from a place name -- these -owski names usually started as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place, usually with the same name ending in -ów, -owo, or something like that. So Szotkowski would mean "one from Szotków or Szotkowo or Szotkowice, etc." When I saw this name, I looked in a gazetteer and noticed a place Szotkowice, a village that's part of the town of Jastrzębie-Zdrój in Katowice province in southcentral Poland, very near the Czech border; I thought this might be the right place. I found a book on surnames in that general area, and it confirmed that Szotkowski began as a surname meaning "person from Szotkowice" ... That particular village might not be the only one this name could come from -- often surnames came from the names of tiny places used only by local residents, names that would never appear on any map and might have changed or disappeared centuries ago. But that's the only place I could find, and it's a good bet at least some Szotkowski's trace their name back to a link with that village in Katowice province.

So what does the place name come from? Here's where it gets interesting. The name breaks down Szot- + -k- + -ow- plus suffixes, and that means "of the Szotek's," and Szotek is a diminutive of the noun Szot, which originally meant "Scot." A great many Scotsmen came to Poland and worked as traveling peddlars, to the point that Szot came to mean not only "Scot" but also "peddler; small-scale merchant" (kind of the same way "gypsy" doesn't necessarily refer only to Gypsies, but to a way of life or a style of music, dance, etc.). Szotek would mean either "little Scot/peddler" or "son of the Scot/peddler." So Szotkowice is literally "the [place] of the Scots or peddlers' sons."

There is also a word szota, a contemptuous term for a shoemaker. In some cases the name could come from this link. But where linked with the place Szotkowice, the link is almost certainly with the root meaning "Scot" or "peddler."

As of 1990 there were only 64 Polish citizens named Szotkowski, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (3), Białystok (1), Bielsko-Biala (14), Ciechanow (3), Czestochowa (1), Gdansk (1), Kalisz (11), Katowice (6), Olsztyn (14), Opole (3), Ostrołęka (2), Szczecin (2), Wloclawek (1), Wroclaw (2). This is pretty widely dispersed, but Bielsko-Biala and Opole are both very near Katowice province, so we can say about 1/3 of the Szotkowski's live fairly near the village I referred to. The others might trace the name to the same origin, or in some cases their name might have derived from the name of some other place where Scots or peddlers lived.

So you have some interesting possibilities. You may have to display considerably ingenuity to come up with a good design, but you have a little material to work with. You could use a map of Poland showing where Szotkowice is located; or you could do something with the notion of Scots in Poland (which, believe me, is not ridiculous -- there were plenty of them!), or with a peddler's pack.

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

... I would like to know if you could furnish any information on my surname. I have learned that it could be spelled differently. My mother has said that a "m" was added to the name when my father arrived in this country, but I'm not sure. The spellings are Szczebara or Szczembara. Thank you.

I can't find any sources with any information on the meaning or origin of this name. From what you say it's clear the name would be spelled Szczębara (where ę is pronounced, before b or p, like "em") or Szczembara. But none of my sources mention this name or any root from which it seems likely to have derived.

But the name exists, no question. As of 1990 there were 124 Polish citizens named Szczębara. They lived in the following provinces: Jelenia Gora 6, Katowice 1, Kielce 2, Krakow 7, Lublin 11, Przemysl 1, Radom 1, Rzeszow 3, Szczecin 5, Tarnobrzeg 81, Tarnow 1, Wroclaw 3, Zamosc 2. There were another 42 who spelled the name Szczembara: Kalisz 10, Katowice 1, Koszalin 1, Krakow 7, Krosno 3, Lublin 4, Tarnobrzeg 16. Unfortunately I don't have access to further data such as first names and addresses, but it seems pretty clear the name is most common in Tarnobrzeg province, in southeastern Poland.

This is one I'd definitely suggest sending to the Polish name experts of the Anthroponymic Workshop in Krakow. For more info on them, read the note on my introduction to Polish surnames.

If you ever do find out more about the meaning and origin, I'd love to hear about it. I'd like very much to include it in the next edition of my book on Polish surnames!

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

… I am wondering if you have encountered the name Szafran. I am not 100% certain of the Province that it is associated with. I strongly suspect Płock ? I am also interested in the name Jucha , this is my G- Mother maiden name.

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, the name Szafran comes from the noun szafran, "saffron." It is a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 4,134 Poles named Szafran. They were pretty evenly spread all over Poland, there was no one province or region with a particular concentration (there were 67 in the province of Płock).

As of 1990 there were 1,673 Poles named Jucha, with larger numbers in the provinces of: Bielsko-Biala 235, Katowice 233, Kraków 111, Krosno 99, Opole 85, Przemysl 199, Rzeszów 150, Tarnów 98, Wroclaw 127. There were smaller numbers of them in many other provinces, but these were the provinces with significantly larger numbers, and they are all in southcentral and southeastern Poland.

The meaning of Jucha is not something I can say with any certainty. None of my sources mentions it, and I see in the dictionary that it is a dialect term for "the blood of cattle, bears, and other animals," also a term meaning "rascal." It can come from a verb meaning "to cry out ' Juchhaj' joyfully," or it can be a dialect variant of ucho, "ear." It might also be, in some cases, a sort of nickname for popular first names such as Jan and Joachim. So it could come from any of these expressions, or it might be something else entirely -- I just don't have enough information to say.

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

...I would be very interested in information on both my paternal (Switalski) and maternal (Obuchowicz) surnames. My father's family lived in Tuchola, and my mother's near Gdansk. I notice the Switalski is a fairly common name on North America with a few listings in every major city in North America. My mother's surname does not appear to be as common. I remember being told as a child that it had some inference that it may mean "from the city of....".

According to Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, Obuchowicz comes from obuch, "ax-head, battle-ax," plus the suffix  -owicz, which usually means "son of." It would seem Obuch could have been used as a kind of nickname, perhaps for someone who used this weapon well in battle, and his offspring were referred to as "son of Obuch." It might be in some cases -owicz could be used as meaning "from the city of," sort of in the sense that "so-and-so is a son of this city," but the problem is I can't find any place with a name that fits -- Obuch, Obucha, Obuchow, Obuchowa, any of those might work, but I can't find any Obuch- place name at all. Besides, it would be more common to see an -owski name, something like Obuchowski, used in that sense, rather than a -owicz name. So I'm inclined to go with Prof. Rymut and say it means literally "son of the battle-ax," where presumably the latter is a name applied to a man who was known for being good with that weapon (that's my interpretation, not Rymut's). In Polish the name would be pronounced roughly "oh-boo-HOE-vich." As of 1990 there were 762 Polish citizens named Obuchowicz, and they were spread pretty much all over Poland -- there doesn't appear to be any particular area where the name is concentrated.

(2) What is the meaning and origin of the name Switalski?

In Polish Switalski is written with an accent over the S and is pronounced roughly "shvee-TALL-skee." It's a moderately common name by Polish standards. 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 and can be searched here), there were 3,180 Polish citizens by that 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 comes from the root seen in the noun świt, "dawn, daybreak," and in the verb świtać, "to dawn, grow light."

The -ski is adjectival, so that Świtalski would mean literally "of Świtała" (using Ł pronounced like our W -- but the L in Świtalski is plain L, and pronounced more or less the same way we pronounce L). Names in the form X-ała usually mean "one always doing X, one of whom X is the most prominent characteristic." So Świtała would mean literally "the one always dawning, the one associated with dawning."

I'm not sure if this started as a nickname for one who was being compared to the brightness of a dawn, or one with a sunny disposition, or maybe just one who tended to always get up at dawn. Perhaps it could mean any or all of these things, and the exact meaning varied from case to case. Świtała is a common surname in its own right (borne by 4,753 Poles as of 1990), so it must not have been an unusual thing to call a person somehow associated with dawn. And Świtalski probably just started out meaning "kin of Świtała." I should add, however, that in some instances it might also mean "one from Świtały" -- there's at least one place by that name in Poland.

So, as with many Polish surnames, there isn't one simple answer to what the name means. It means "kin of Świtała" or "one from the place of Świtała," but the exact meaning of that name is open to debate. People named Świtalski live all over Poland, so the only hope of establishing exactly where a given Świtalski family came from, and how and why the name came to be associated with them, is to do detailed research into their history.

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

... My last name is Sulatycki and I would like to know what part of Poland the name comes from.

Actually, this name isn't Polish but Ukrainian; Ukraine was under Polish rule for a long time, and the peoples mixed to a considerable extent, so it's not at all unusual to find Polish names in Ukraine and Ukrainian names in Poland. But it's pretty certain this name derives from Sulyatichi (called Sulatycze by Poles), 82 km. south-southeast of Lvov (Lviv) in Ukraine. It's possible there are other places with similar names this could derive from -- when you talk Slavic place names, it's kind of rare to find one that isn't shared by at least a few different towns or villages -- but the Sulyatichi in Ukraine is the only one I've heard of. So the surname means basically "person from Sulyatichi."

This name is pretty rare in Poland, as of 1990 there were only 34 Polish citizens named Sulatycki, and they were scattered all over western Poland (undoubtedly the result of post-World War II forced relocations of millions of displaced persons). I would expect the name is more common in Ukraine, but have no data on that. You might want to see if you can find out more by visiting the Website www.infoukes.com, I believe they have a page devoted to Ukrainian surnames.

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

… A request for some information on the names Strzyzewski and Walkowski.

Both names began in most cases as references between a person or family and a place with a similar name; thus we'd expect Strzyżewski to mean "one from Strzyżew, Strzyżewo, Strzyże," and Walkowski to mean "one from Walki, Walków, Walkowo." In both cases, there are numerous villages with names that could produce these surnames, so it's impossible to say, just from looking at the surnames, which specific villages were the original connections. The ultimate roots of both surnames and place names are strzyż, "wren," so that Strzyżew would mean "[place] of the wren," and wal-, which can mean "overthrow, cast down," or it can come from the first name Walenty -- I imagine that Walkowski started in most cases as meaning "one from the [place] of little Wal."

Both names are moderately common in Poland; as of 1990 there were 2,901 Poles named Strzyżewski, and 2,675 named Walkowski. Both are also distributed fairly evenly across the country, so that we can't point to one area and say "Here's where they came from." It's highly likely many different families came to bear these names independently.

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

… I was hoping that you could help me out concerning my Grandfather's surname Stodolka. I am interested in finding out what the name means? Are you familiar with this surname? Do you possibility know of any other persons researching it?

I don't know of other people researching Stodolka, but Polish onomastics expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions it in his book on Polish surnames. In Polish it's usually spelled Stodółka and would be pronounced roughly "stoh-DOOW-kuh." It comes from the root stodoła, "barn," and -ka is a diminutive suffix, so the literal meaning is "little barn." It probably started as a nickname for someone who lived near a little barn, or worked at one, or something like that -- all these centuries later it can be tough figuring out exactly what the connection was, but clearly the name indicates some sort of connection with a little barn.

In Poland these days this is not a common name, but not really rare either -- as of 1990 there were 256 Polish citizens named Stodółka. They were scattered all over, with larger numbers living in the provinces of Czestochowa (98), Legnica (39), and Wroclaw (27), so the name is most common in southcentral to southwestern Poland. (Unfortunately I do not have access to further details such as first names and addresses; the data I've given here is all I have). Other names from the same root are more common, e. g. Stodulski (1,426), Stodolny (912), etc.

… Have you heard of this town "Dammratsch" ? I have not been able to find it on the Internet. Also, have you ever heard of this ship the "Allemannia"?? I can find nothing on this ship!

Dammratsch is a German name, so if the village in question is now in Poland, it's in the areas that were ruled by Germany up until after World War I or II, when territory was taken from the Germans and given back to Poland. There are a great many places now in Poland that used to have German names. My sources mention at least one Dammratsch -- there may be others! -- and say it is now called Domaradz, in what is now Opole province in southwestern Poland (near Czestochowa and Legnica provinces, so that makes some sense in terms of the surname distribution data). As I say, there could easily be other places the Germans called Dammratsch (there are at least 3 villages in Poland today called Domaradz), but this one in Opole province seems to be your best bet.

I have no info on ships, but you might use Alta Vista or another Web search engine to scan Usenet postings for mention of Michael Anuta's book "Ships of Our Ancestors." I see mention of this book from time to time on Genpol and other on-line forums, it's supposed to be a fine source of info for the ships immigrants came over on. I'm not sure, but it may also be mentioned somewhere on the Website of the Polish Genealogical Society of America . If you visit that site, you might also wish to see if they have any info on Stodolka's in their various searchable databases.

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

...This [Damasky] is my husband's surname. His ancestors (according to a death certificate on his fathers side) were from Germany (no city mentioned). However, his surname certainly does not look German to me.

My husband thinks it is German, his brother thinks it is Jewish, and his sister thinks it is Polish. Me, I do not know what to think but I have been given the task of researching the family surname for them (since I am the one that is interested in the family tree).

I have searched around on the internet for surname information trying to determine the origin of this surname, however, I just can't find any answers. Books from the local library indicate that it could possibly be Polish, Czech, Jewish, or Russian.

Well, let's start by saying what it's not. It's not German -- at least, not if we're talking linguistic origin. German just doesn't form names with the suffix -sky or -ski, that is a trait of the Slavic languages. Of course, a great many people of Slavic ethnic origin ended up living under German rule and their names were modified slightly to fit German phonetic preferences -- that's not at all uncommon. In this case there's no way to know if the name was originally Damasky or Damaski or Damazki or Domaski or Domaszki -- there just isn't any data, and any of those names (and others) could end up as Damasky under German influence.

It's probably also not Jewish, although I can't say that for sure. But Alexander Beider produced two very large books on the surnames of Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland and in the Russian Empire, and neither mentions Damasky by that or any other spelling. If it were used often by Jews as a surname, chances are Beider would have mentioned it. So while the name might occasionally have been borne by Jews, it is not a distinctively Jewish name.

So the name is Slavic -- but whether Czech, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Belarusian, that's harder to say. All those languages use the suffix -sky or -ski, and there's nothing distinctive about this name that allows us to say "Aha, it has to be so-and-so because they're the only ones who do that with names." In theory the name could have originated as meaning "from Damascus" -- in Ukrainian there is an adjective damas'kiy that means that. But in practice it seems unlikely many Slavs had any connection with Damascus strong enough to generate a surname alluding to such a connection. So the name more likely derived from a first name, perhaps Damian or Damazy or Adam, perhaps even Dominik or Domamir or Domasław, because under German influence the o could easily have been changed to a. Slavs loved to take the first part of first names, drop the rest, and start adding suffixes; so Damasky could easily come from any of those names I mentioned.

As of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Damasky or Damaski. There were, however, 196 Polish citizens named Damas, 550 named Damasiewicz, 219 named Damaszek, 273 named Damaszke, 256 named Damaziak, 247 named Damazyn, etc. So we get back to the same problem: what was the original form of the name, and has it been modified much because of German influence? Clearly the root damas- was used in Polish names; was this originally a Polish name that was modified and has since become rather rare? Or does it come from Czech or Russian or Ukrainian? I just don't have any information by which to judge, and I don't have name frequency data from anywhere but Poland.

So I can't really answer your question with anything definitive. But I hope the information I've given will prove to be a little help. The main point is that this surname -- like the vast majority of Polish and other surnames -- doesn't provide much in the way clues or leads as to its specific origin in time and place. I'm afraid only good old-fashioned digging in the records -- perhaps parish records in this country where your husband's ancestors received the sacraments or sent their kids to be educated, perhaps naturalization papers, perhaps ship passenger lists, etc. -- will enable you to make any progress with your research.

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

...Thanks for the information about names. Can you give me any background on the names; Disse, Eidenschink (Eidenschenk), Schnitzer or Nalde. These must be all German and you may not know or have anything on them.

What little information I have on these names is from Hans Bahlow's Deutsches Namenlexikon. He says Disse is a surname derived from a place name, for instance Dissen near the Teutoberg forest -- apparently the root is one of many in German that means "bog." He has nothing on Eidenschenk (or -schink). Schnitzer means "sawyer" or "one who cuts wood." Nalde is not mentioned, but Nadler is, meaning "needle-maker," so Nalde might mean something pretty similar.

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

...My last name was originally spelled Doboszynski and my GGGGfather may have been from around from what is now the Vilnius, Lithuania area... I don't feel my GGGGfather was Lithuanian but Polish.

The name Doboszyński probably started as a reference to a place with a name something like Dobosz, Doboszyn, Doboszyno. I can't find any such place on my maps, but a Lithuanian book on surnames mentions Dabaŝinskas as a Lithuanian form of Polish Doboszyński, and quotes a Polish scholar as saying it comes from a place name, Dobszyn. As best I can tell, this refers to a place now called Dobczyn, in Poznan province, in Srem township, 8 km. northeast of Dolsk; in the 15th century it was called Dobszyn or Dobszyno, and "person from Dobszyn" would be Dobszyński, which could easily be modified to Doboszyński. I can't be positive this is how your name got started, but it is plausible and there is some evidence for it ... I should add that there's nothing unusual about Poles living in Lithuania -- my wife's ancestors came from there. Poland and Lithuania were a single political entity for a long time, and certain Lithuanian regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth used to be 40% or more Polish, so it's not in the least strange to hear of Poles living near Vilnius. It's not even out of the question that a family that once lived near Dobczyn in Poznan province might end up centuries later all the way up by Vilnius.

As of 1990 there were 181 Polish citizens named Doboszynski (that's within the borders of Poland, it wouldn't include anyone living in Lithuania). They were scattered all over, with larger numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (42), Bielsko-Biala (18), Gdansk (19), and Kielce (25). I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses, so I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.

...My wife's maiden name was Magdziarz. Her grandfather's naturalization papers listed Pielzno, Austria/Poland as his birthplace in 1877.

Magdziarz comes from a sort of short form or nickname of the feminine name Magdalena -- it might almost be translated "Maggie's child." It's a fairly common name, as of 1990 there were 2,688 Poles named Magdziarz, living all over the country with no particular pattern to the distribution... That "Pielzno" is probably a misspelling of Pilzno, a reasonably good-sized town in what is now Tarnów province; this region was under Austrian rule as of 1877, part of the territory known as "Galicia" which encompassed southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. By the way, there is no guarantee "Pilzno" is the exact place of birth, it was large enough to be the seat of a county (in Polish powiat), and often people mistook that for the actual birthplace. So your wife's grandfather may have been born in Pilzno, but it's also quite possible he was born in one of the villages in Pilzno county of what was then Galicia or Austrian Poland.

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

... My family came from Gleboka in Sambor near the boarder of Russia. I hear that it is now a part of Russia. My gr-grandpa married a woman from the same village by the name of Dobrzechoski. I've seen many variations of this name. The only other people I know of on this line of my genealogy are from the same area as well with the names Houinka and Sawolia, two other names I haven't seen at all. Do you know anything about these other names?

Well, Dobrzechoski would be a variant of Dobrzechowski. In many parts of Poland they barely pronounce that w right before the -ski, so it's not unusual to see Iwanoski as well as Iwanowski, Dombroski as well as Dombrowski, etc. So the "standard" form of the name would be Dobrzechowski, which probably referred to a place with a similar name. For instance, there's a village named Dobrzechów in Rzeszów province in southeastern Poland, 4 km. northwest of Strzyzów; there also used to be a Dobrzechówka, in Rzeszów province, Niewodna parish. These are not too far from the area you're talking about, it's at least possible one of those is the place the surname originally referred to. Both places meant something like "place of Dobrzech," where that was a first name originating as a kind of nickname for people with names based on the root dobry, "good, kind." As of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Dobrzechowski or Dobrzechoski, so either the name has died out or the only people still with that name live across the border in Ukraine.

I can't really find anything on the other two, and they don't sound Polish to me -- possibly Ukrainian, possibly Slovakian, and my sources on those languages aren't as extensive as what I have for Polish. I wonder, have you investigated the Website www.infoukes.com? They just might have some info that would provide leads for you. It's worth a try!

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

...If you have the time, I am looking into several ancestoral surnames. Dziedelonis and Percha do not seem very popular. Maybe there are other spellings?

Dziedelonis is probably not Polish -- that -onis suffix is one used by Lithuanians to form patronymics, i. e., "son of so-and-so." The Dzied- part could be Polish, there is such a root dziad/dzied, meaning "old man, grandfather," also "inheritance." It is conceivable a Pole living in Lithuania (as many did and still do) might have a name like Dziedziel and his son might be referred to as Dziedzielonis or Dziedelonis. Or a Lithuanian with a name such as Dedelonis ("uncle's son," from the Lithuanian root dede, "uncle," obviously related linguistically to the Polish root dziad) might have been around Poles and had the spelling of his name Polonized to Dziedelonis. Or this may be a Lithuanian name from a totally different root. All these things happened often, but none of my sources really shed much light on this particular surname. There is a Lithuanian surname Dziedulionis, a variant of Diedulionis, that might be relevant, but I can't nail anything down.

The Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland shows that as of 1990 there were plenty of Polish citizens with names beginning with Dzied-, but none with any form of that name combined with the suffix -onis. I looked under every likely spelling variation I could think of. If the name is still in use, it is probably to be found in Lithuania, but as I say, none of my sources on Lithuanian give an exact match. So one way or the other, the name does not seem to be a very common one.

Percha is not common either, as of 1990 there were 19 Polish citizens by that name, living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (4), Elblag (4), Katowice (3), Lodz (3), Torun (2), Walbrzych (1), and Zamosc (2). I'm afraid I don't have access to further data such as first names or addresses, what I gave here is all I have. There is a term percha this name might come from, it's a term used by bee-keepers for a ball of flower pollen collected by a bee, or pollen in a honeycomb. It is conceivable this might become a name for a bee-keeper. Or it might be a variant of something entirely different, but if so, I can't think of what that original form might be.

Sorry I came up with so little, but that's the way it goes with rare names -- their rareness makes it unlikely you'll find much on them. You might want to try writing to the Polish Language Institute in Kraków and see if they can find anything more definitive in their sources. In any case, I wish you the best of luck with your research.

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

...I am trying to research my family from Poland and I would like to know the meaning of the surname Dzuibanski — the n has a ' over it I don't know if that makes much difference to the meaning or not but thought I should mention it just in case. I would also like to know how to pronounce the surname "DzuibaNski"

This is almost certainly a misspelling of the name Dziubański. This name would be pronounced roughly "joo-BINE-skee." According to Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, it comes from the root dziób- or dziub-, which means "bill, beak, pockmark," and especially the term dziubany, "pockmarked." In form it is an adjective, meaning "of, from, pertaining to the pockmarked one," and as a surname would surely mean something like "kin of the pockmarked one." Since Polish u and o with an accent over it are pronounced the same, you could see this spelled Dziubański or Dzióbański; but as of 1990 there was no one in Poland who spelled it the second way, and there were 222 Polish citizens who spelled it Dziubański. These people were scattered all over the country, but the provinces with the largest numbers were Katowice (37), Koszalin (32), and Wroclaw (30). Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, so what I've given here is all I have.

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

... One of the names that came up in my grandmother's pedigree chart was Frodyma. I've since contacted via Prinke's List, someone from Albany, NY who hails from the Springfield, MA area. She claims there's a good size bunch of Frodyma's in that area who are proud to be Polish. They hail from the area around Frysztak and immigrated to the USA at the end of the 19th century. The thing that puzzles me is the root of this name. Could it be from German froh or freude. The reason I ask is that I couldn't find it in your book. I'd appreciate your comment on this.

I didn't put Frodyma in my book because I could find absolutely nothing on it -- not in any of my sources! It's frustrating, because I keep feeling that I should be able to figure this one out, but so far no luck. I have considered German froh or Freude as possible sources, but then the -yma part makes no sense; and the books I have on German names and on Polonized forms of German names don't mention Frodyma under either root. So I've drawn a complete blank on this one; I guess the Polish Language Institute in Kraków may be the only hope for getting an explanation on this one.

It's not a very common name, but not rare either -- 383 Poles named Frodyma as of 1990, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Krosno (83), Rzeszów (90), and Tarnów (36). So it's definitely concentrated in southeastern Poland. This suggests German, Ukrainian, Romanian, or Hungarian roots might be involved -- but as I say, no German and Ukrainian connections show up in my sources, and I don't really have enough on Romanian or Hungarian to say.

So I don't know what it is. If you ever find out, please let me know and I'll be glad to include it in future editions of the surname book!

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

...I wonder if you can give me any nformation about the derivation of the name Gajewski. Your web page includes information on the name Gasiewski. I wonder if my name is a variant? I am told my grandfather came from Warsaw.

No, Gajewski would not normally be a variant of Gasiewski. The root gaj or gai- in Polish has to do with "adorn with verdure, open a garden," and the noun gaj means "grove." Gajewski is adjectival in form, meaning basically "of, from, pertaining to the place of the grove or garden," but as a surname it probably started in most cases as referring to a specific village named Gaj or something like that -- there are quite a few villages by that name, and there's no way to know which specific ones a given Gajewski family came from. So the name means either "one from the grove or garden," or "one from Gaj, Gajów, Gajewo, etc.," in either case specifying place of residence or origin.

The rub is that as of 1990 there were 25,666 Poles named Gajewski, living all over the country, so it's a pretty common name. If it's true your grandfather came from Warsaw, that still isn't much help, because in 1990 there were 3,299 Poles named Gajewski living in the province of Warsaw. I'm afraid about all I can do is give you that number and tell you the basic meaning of the name.

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

...My husband and I are planning a trip to Poland this October and since we're both half Polish, we wish to visit the villages from which our grandparents came. My grandparents' village location has been a total mystery for me to find. My grandmother told me that she came from a village named "Papuchi" (my father, however says it's spelled "Popowcz" and is in the Galicia region. I can't find anything that looks like either name. My grandmother said it was located 14km from Kraków near Bioda, and that her maiden name was Zurowski. Her mother's name was Hatman and her father was "John Zurowski" My grandfather was from the same village. His name was "Simon Galagan." My grandmother said that the name Galagan is Polish, but I suspect that it might be Hungarian. I had examined my grandparents' entry papers they had when they came to the United States, and verified the spellings of my grandfather's name to be Galagan, and my grandmother's parents' names to be Hatman and Zurowski. Could you help me with the origins of these names? Your answer may help me to find their village.

I looked through my sources, and there is mention in the Slownik geograficzny gazetteer of several places with names such as Popowice. One struck me as promising: a Popowice, a settlement on the outskirts of the village of Siepraw, which looks to be about 14-15 km. south of Kraków, roughly between Myslenice and Wieliczka. In old records it sometimes call "Popowicz." I can't find a Bioda or Bieda or anything similar nearby; but this region was included in Galicia (the far western edge of it). It's not a perfect match with your info, but it's good enough to be worth a look. This Popowice was a very ancient settlement, first mentioned in a medieval charter granting ownership of the village of Brzeczowice "with the settlement Popowicz" to a monastery. It did not show up on 19th-century maps and official lists of settlements, but it was listed in an 1826 gazetteer of Galicia. It's quite possible this is a name you would only hear locals use -- just as in the U. S. you might run across a little settlement that has since been incorporated into a bigger town, and only old-timers would use its original name. If this is the right place, residents would surely have gone to the Catholic church in Siepraw to register births, deaths, and marriages. With any luck the LDS may have microfilmed the Siepraw records, and a search through them may allow you to confirm or reject it as the right place. I will say this, "Papuchi" is almost certainly not correct, that's not a Polish name, whereas Popowicz or Popowice are quite plausible as Polish names.

As I say, I can't promise this is the place you're looking for, but it does seem worth a look. Lenius's Genealogical Gazetteer of Galicia mentions two other villages called Popowice, but one was near Przemysl, which is too far east, and the other was near Nowy Sacz -- that's not all that far away, but it makes sense to go with the one nearest Krakow. And that's the settlement that once was on the outskirts of Siepraw.

Galagan might derive from some other language, but it seems possible it is a variant of the surname Gałgan (using ł sounding like our w). This is an established name, meaning "rag" and also used to mean "good-for-nothing, scoundrel." As of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Galagan (within the accuracy limits of available data); there were 6 Poles named Gałagan, living in Płock province, and 432 named Gałgan, of whom the largest number (198) lived in Bielsko-Biala province, just south of Kraków provinces (only 1 lived in Kraków province itself). I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses, but the large number in Bielsko-Biala province would be living not far at all from the Siepraw area, so there could be a connection.

Hatman is almost certainly a variant of the name Hetman, from hetman, "captain, chieftain, army commander." That word, in turn, derives from German Hauptmann, meaning much the same thing. The 1990 data mentions 3 Poles named Hatmann, all living in Poznan province; it shows a frequency of 0 for Hatman, meaning there was at least one person by that name but the data on him/her was incomplete, making it impossible to give the province of residence. Hetman is a common name, as of 1990 there were 1,472 Poles by that name as well as 682 Hetmańczyk's and 791 Hetmański's. I can't be 100% certain Hatman is a variant of Hetman, but I'd be very surprised if it isn't.

Żurowski is a very common name, derived from the names of numerous villages called Żurów, Żurowo, Żury, etc., originally just meaning the person or family by that name came from one of those villages. Names ending in -owski are adjectival, and any of the places named Żurów etc. would form the adjective Żurowski, so there's no way to specify which one is connected with your family. There were 179 Żurowski's in Kraków province as of 1990, but there were people by that name living in virtually every province, especially in southeastern Poland (Radom province 309, Tarnów province 345, etc.).

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

... Most of my family lives in Ohio and Michigan. I currently live in North Carolina. I was contacted about a month ago by a man in England who did a search of my last name and found my email address. He sent me a note. His name is Roman Galaska. We are trying to find out if we are related. He is 2nd generation from Poland and I am fourth. My great grandfather came to the US. His name was Andrew. Apparently, his grandfather was in the calvary of Frans Joseph. I don't have his name but he was an orphan and raised by his godmother. Anyways, Roman and I agree that the last name is Galazka, possibly with a sideways colon above the Z ? We believe the name to mean "twig" or "branch of a tree". Any info you could provide would be greatly appreciated, including any family crest, shield,etc. Roman still has family over in Poland who he will go visit in August. We are still in contact with one another and he may come up with more information the next time I contact him. Thank you for your time and helping us make a distant connection with our past.

I'm afraid I have no knowledge of family arms, that's not a subject I've ever had the time or inclination to study. I can tell you that Galazka is spelled Gałązka -- ą is the nasal vowel pronounced much like "own", and ł is pronounced like English w. So Gałązka sounds much like "gahw-OWN-ska."

As you say, it comes from a Polish root meaning "twig, branch." It is not an uncommon name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 9,377 Polish citizens named Gałązka. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (1,773), Ostrołęka (912), Siedlce (923), which suggests it tends to be concentrated in northcentral and northeastern Poland; but you can find people by this name in virtually every province. This suggests that there probably isn't just one big Galazka family, most likely the name arose independently in different places and at different times.

I remember some years ago hearing of a man named Jacek Galazka living here in the U.S., he was, I believe, connected with Hippocrene Books, a firm that publishes books on Polish and eastern European subjects. There's a book something like Who's Who Among Polish Americans, he'd probably be listed in it. Anyway, I mention him just to show that the name is pretty common, it's not hard to find people named Galazka.

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

...I am interested in finding out what our name Tworek means in Polish, and its entymology, if it has one that you know of!

Tworek appears in Polish legal records as far back as 1395, and it comes either from the root twor-, "create, make," or from the first name Tworzyjan, a Polish adaptation of the first name Florian. The -ek is a diminutive suffix, meaning "little Twor, son of Twor," but we can't be sure in a given case whether Twor- came from that name Tworzyjan, or if it comes from ancient pagan Polish first names formed with the root twor-, "make, create" plus some other root, as in Tworzymir ("Make-peace"), Tworzysław ("Make-glory"). So it's clear Tworek started as a reference to a personal name, probably the father or most prominent member of a family; we just don't know whether Twor- is short for the medieval first name Tworzyjan, or for one of those ancient names, dating from when Poles were pagans. If the name was around in 1395, either is possible.

...My mother-in-law's branch of the family is Gardocki and I know her aunt has told us there was a family crest which dates from the 15th or 16th century and that the family was from the town of "Gardote". Do Gardocki and Gardote derive from the same root, and what root would that be? What does it mean?

It is likely that Gardocki originally referred to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name such as Gardote or Gardoty; when the suffix is added, the t in the original root becomes a c, so Gardocki does make sense as deriving from those place names, or from personal names such as Gardota. The ultimate root of all these names is seen in gardy, "haughty," and gardzić, "to despise, scorn." Again, this was a root used in ancient pagan names such as Gardomir ("scorn-peace"), and Poles love to take such names, keep the first part and drop the rest, and then add suffixes. So Gardota would be a kind of nickname for Gardomir and other similar names; the "place of Gardota" could be Gardoty, and "one from Gardoty" would be Gardocki... I don't see a Gardote (though there certainly could be one, or could once have been one), but there is a Gardoty in Łomża province, and I would think in the case of many Gardocki's, that's the place the name refers to.

Both Tworek and Gardocki are fairly common names. As of 1990 there were 3,548 Polish citizens named Tworek, and there were 992 Gardocki's. Both names can be found all over Poland, but the Gardocki's were most common in the northeastern provinces of Łomża (441) and Suwałki (110), and there were 618 Tworek's in Tarnobrzeg province in southeastern Poland. You can't really conclude that's where the names come from originally -- both could have developed independently in different areas -- but at least in terms of numbers those are places worth particular attention.

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

...I am John Machnicz and I am researching my family tree. I would appreciate if you could tell me about my grand-parents surnames ........ Oldakowski .......... and Gejda. I read your reply to the name Giejda, could this be variation of that name?

Gejda would almost certainly be a variation of Giejda. In Polish, according to "proper" spelling, the g is never supposed to be followed directly by e; it should always be gie-, not ge-. However, this rule is comparatively recent, and until about 100 years ago the vast majority of Poles couldn't read or write anyway, so the spelling of their names wasn't always consistent. So no matter what the grammarians say, Gejda is a perfectly good variation of Giejda. In fact, there are more Poles these days who spell it Gejda than Giejda, which surprises me. As of 1990 there were 99 Poles named Gejda, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (4), Biala Podlaska (6), Ciechanów (2), Czestochowa (4), Elblag (14), Gdansk (5), Nowy Sacz (2), Olsztyn (38), Opole (10), Ostrołęka (12), Skierniewice (2). These figures show it is most common in northcentral Poland, in what used to be East and West Prussia. (Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses of those 99 Gejda's; what I give here is all I have).

Names ending in -owski generally began as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a particular place with a similar name. In the case of Ołdakowski (the ł is pronounced like our w), we would expect the name to mean something like "person from Ołdaków, Ołdakowo, Ołdaki." I don't find any places named Oldaków or Oldakowo, but there are at least four named Ołdaki, and it's impossible to say which one a particular Ołdakowski family would be connected with, without further detailed research (which I'm in no position to do). The name Ołdaki appears to come from an old word ołd, a variant of hołd, "homage, tribute," and suggests the name of the place originally meant "place of those who paid homage" -- presumably vassals of some liege lord.

As of 1990 there were 1,189 Polish citizens named Ołdakowski; they lived all over the country, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (256), Łomża (326), Suwałki (110) -- this suggests a concentration from central to northeastern Poland. This makes a certain amount of sense, all of the Ołdaki's I found on the map are in northeastern Poland. So the name seems to be most common in that area, although as I say, there are Ołdakowski's living all over Poland.

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

...Although the Lithuanian spelling of my GGrandfather's surname was Geĉionis", the Polish version of it, for many years, was Geczionis. What, if anything, could that surname be derived from, assuming it was from a Polish root?

I notice the Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames edited by A. Vanagas mentions Polish Giec or Giecz as a possible source of the name. If that's so, the only info I can find is that giec is a dialect variant of kiec, meaning "corncrake," a kind of bird (Latin name Crex crex). As of 1990 there were 876 Polish citizens named Giec (as opposed to 301 named Kiec). Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says kiec can also mean "skirt," but if I'm reading him and my other sources correctly, giec is connected only with the root meaning "corncrake." There are a great many Polish surnames deriving from names of birds, presumably given because something about a person reminded folks of a bird; sometimes it was the clothes they were were the same color as a bird's plumage, or maybe their voices sounded like a bird, or some other connection -- all these centuries later, it can be tough to recreate the exact nature of the connection.

This is a tough one to nail down because there are so many possibilities. In some cases German Goetz might also be relevant -- that's a short form of German first names such as Gottfried or Gottschalk; in what used to be East Prussia you have a lot of connections between Germans and Poles and Lithuanians, so German origins can't be overlooked. And of course Vanagas suggests the name can be linked with the basic Lithuanian root ged-, "pain, sorrow." So you have a lot of possible derivations.

But you asked for the Polish angle, and the Giec/Kiec connection is the one that seems strongest. The only thing I'm not sure about is what part of Poland is associated with that Giec/Kiec dialect usage. If it's only in southern Poland, it probably isn't relevant here; but if we also see it in northern or northeastern Poland, then it's quite plausible. Unfortunately, I don't have any sources that go into that much detail.

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

...I am looking for any info on the Godzinski name. I have absolutely none. This is my mothers family name. My grandparents are deceased and my mother knows as much as I regarding our heritage/heraldry.

I'm afraid I have nothing on this name that will help you. None of my sources mention it. It probably comes from the root godz- meaning "to join, reconcile," or from an ancient first name that had that root as part of the name, such as Godzimir or Godzisław. It might also come from the root godzina, "hour." All that is concerning the ultimate root; the surname may have derived more directly from a place named Godno, Godzino, something like that (which in turn derives from those roots I talked about), but I can't find any place with a name that would work. That isn't uncommon, many surnames refer to places that were very small, or had names used only by locals, that would never show up on any map.

The only hard bit of info I have on the name is that as of 1990 there were 573 Polish citizens by this name, but that's not much help because they weren't concentrated in any one area. They lived in small numbers scattered all over the country.

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

...My last name is Golembiewski. Do you have any information on it?

Names ending in -owski or -ewski almost always originated as references to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ów, -owo, -ew, -ewo, -y, and so on. Thus we'd expect this name to mean "person from Golembiewo, Golebie" or something similar. There are quite a few villages that qualify, including Golembiewo's in Gdansk and Torun provinces, Golebiow's in Radom and Tarnów province, etc. The place names, in turn, come from the Polish word for "dove, pigeon," so they mean "place of the dove" and the surname means "person from the place of the dove." This is a very common name in Poland, although it's usually spelled a little differently: Gołębiewski, where ł is pronounced like our w, and ę is a nasal vowel pronounced like "em" when it comes before b or p -- the name sounds like "go-wemb-YEFF-skee." As of 1990 there were 12,330 Polish citizens by that name, living all over the country, i. e., there's no one area they're concentrated in.

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

... If time allows would it be possible to find meanings for two surnames: Goralski and Marek. Many thanks for your time.

Marek derives from the first name Marek, which is the Polish equivalent of "Mark," from Latin Marcus. This is a common surname in Poland, as of 1990 there were 16,202 Polish citizens named Marek, living all over the country; surnames derived from first names are very common in Poland. Most likely it began when some member of a family named Marek was prominent, so people began using his name when referring to his kin -- as I say, a very common practice.

Góralski comes from the root góral, meaning "mountain-man," used to refer to the mountain-dwellers of southeastern Poland. There is a whole separate sub-culture of the górale, and they are regarded as wild, colorful, and fiercely independent. Góralski is in form simply an adjective meaning "of, from, pertaining to the mountain-men." As of 1990 there were 4,416 Polish citizens named Góralski, so this, too, is a pretty common name.

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

… I've been following Gen-pol question and answers and am really impressed by the professionalism of folks in geneaological research. The knowledge of history has certainly been interesting and pertinent. Since I am just getting started on our family tree I would ask that you allow me to impose on you for information as to the origin and meaning of the Kalinowski name.

Genpol is a very impressive group -- we have a lot of knowledgeable folks who share information, and we've been spared most of the "flame wars" so common on other Internet groups. I think anyone interested in Polish genealogy who doesn't keep up with Genpol is missing a bet.

As for Kalinowski, it is a very common name; as of 1990 there were some 30,012 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country. The basic root of the name is kalina, "guelder rose, cranberry tree," according to Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut. But names ending in -owski are adjectival in form and usually (not always, but usually) began as references to a connection between a particular person or family and a place with a similar name, typically ending in -ow, -owo, -owa, or some other possibilities. Thus Kalinowski means literally "of, from, pertaining to Kalinow, Kalinowo, Kalinowa, etc." If a family was noble, that would typically be the name of the estate they owned; if peasant, they probably lived or worked there, or traveled there often on business, something like that.

The problem is that this surname -- like many -owski names -- can refer to any of numerous towns and villages. There are quite a few Kalinow's, Kalinowa's, Kalinowo's, etc. in Poland, and the name could have begun in connection with any or all of them; that's probably why the name is so common. Those places, in turn, got their names because they were places where guelder roses or cranberry trees were plentiful. So functionally we'd interpret Kalinowski as "person from Kalinow/a/o, etc.," but a literal translation would be "place of the guelder roses."

These surnames derived from place names seem to promise us help with tracking down our ancestors, but usually disappoint us precisely because so few place names are unique; if you find one Kalinow/o/a you may easily find 3 or 4 or even 20! For what it's worth, that's the way it works with most names; not many provide really helpful clues.

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

...I'm researching my husband's family. The main surnames are Gruchacz and Kurkiewicz. I've never seen either name on any lists. I'm most interested in knowing which part of Poland has populations with these surnames.

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Gruchacz comes from the verb gruchać meaning "to coo (like a pigeon), to warble"; the -acz suffix usually denotes one who often performs the action of the verb, so Gruchacz would mean literally "cooer, warbler." It is apparently one of those names that arose due to association of a person with a particular characteristic, perhaps a gentle or tuneful voice. The name Gruchacz appears in Polish records as far back as 1424, so it's been around a long time. However, these days it's not particularly common: as of 1990 there were only 175 Polish citizens named Gruchacz; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Katowice (19), Kraków (77), Warsaw (19), Wroclaw (10) and Zielona Gora (11), with fewer than 10 in several other provinces. The only pattern I see there is that the name is most common in southcentral Poland, but that doesn't really tell us a lot.

In Kurkiewicz the suffix -iewicz means "son of," and kurk- comes from a diminutive form of the words meaning "cock" and "hen," so the name means literally "son of the small chicken." That's the literal meaning of the word; Kurek and Kurko and other such names may have been used as by-names or nicknames for a fellow who reminded people of a bantam rooster; also, like "cock" in English, kurek has many other meanings, including "weather-vane," "faucet," etc. But the basic connection would probably be with a cock, either because a person raised chickens or sold them or else reminded people of them somehow. Whatever the precise origin, this is a pretty common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 2,205 Polish citizens named Kurkiewicz, living all over the country.

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

I have a question about several family names. They are Gudelski, Gneiwek, Brys, and Merski.

The most likely derivation for Bryś is as a nickname or short form of the Latin first name Brictius, which came into use by Poles as Brykcy or Brykcjusz but is quite rare among English-speakers. There may be other possible derivations for the name, but this seems the most likely. As of 1990 there were 2,248 Polish citizens named Bryś (with an accent over the s, giving it a slight "sh" sound), so this is a moderately common name in Poland.

Gudelski is a rare name, as of 1990 there were only 50 Poles named Gudelski, living in the provinces of Koszalin (1), Łomża (2), Ostrołęka (22), Suwałki (5). This means almost all of them live in northeastern Poland, which is near Lithuania and makes me suspect the root of the name is Lithuanian in origin. A book I have on Lithuanian names cites Gudelskas (= Polish Gudelski) as derived from Gudelis, which means "son of Gudas" -- it turns out in Lithuanian gudas means either "Belarusian person," sometimes also used to refer to a Russian or Pole, or "skilled, experienced." So this appears to be a Polonized version of a Lithuanian name, meaning either "son of the experienced one" or "son of the Belarusian."

The proper spelling of Gneiwek is surely Gniewek. This is a moderately popular name -- as of 1990 there were 1,130 Poles named Gniewek. The root is gniew, "anger, wrath." The name could come from that term directly, perhaps applied to a wrathful person, but it might come from ancient Polish pagan names with this root, such as Gniewomir ("wrath" + "peace"); Gniewek would be a typical nickname for someone named Gniewomir. So the derivation is from the word for "wrath, anger," either directly or by way of a first name.

Merski is hard to pin down. As of 1990 there were 409 Poles by that name, so it isn't rare, but it's not too common either. Merski doesn't really look or feel quite right, it might be a variant of Mierski or something similar, or it might come from the first name Marek (= Mark). I just don't have enough information to give you anything very definite.

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

...I was wondering if you knew anything about the surnames Guzek, Kalak, or Biraga? Any info would be appreciated.

I can't find anything on the origin or meaning of Biraga; as of 1990 there were 200 Polish citizens by that name, of whom 44 lived in Ciechanów province, 101 in Ostrołęka province, and the rest were scattered in small numbers in other provinces. (Unfortunately I have no access to further details, such as first names, addresses, etc.).

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Guzek comes from the root guz meaning "bump, bulge" (there is also a term guzik, "button"); as of 1990 there were 3,682 Poles named Guzek, living all over the country.

Rymut says Kalak comes from the verb kalać, "to soil, dirty, stain." As of 1990 there were 126 Poles named Kalak, of whom the vast majority (108) lived in the province of Kalisz, so that's a prime place to look for them.

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

… I am looking for information about my grandparents family names, Lugowski & Resel.

The name Ługowski (ł is pronounced like our w), like most names ending in -owski, initially referred to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name. In this case we'd expect Ługowski to mean "person from Ługi or Ługów or Ługowo," something like that. There are several villages named Ługi and at least a couple more named Ługów, so there's no way to say which one a particular Ługowski family came from. The ultimate root of the place name is probably either ług, "lye," or a variant of łęg, "marshy meadow." As of 1990 there were 3,992 Polish citizens named Ługowski, living all over the country, so there is no one region we can point to and say "That's where they came from." The surname probably started independently in several different places in reference to a nearby Ługi or Ługów.

As of 1990 there were 147 Poles named Resel, with larger numbers living in the provinces of Czestochowa (39), Opole (54), and Walbrzych (16) and a few living in other provinces scattered here and there. The provinces mentioned are in far southcentral and southwestern Poland, in areas with large German populations. That may be significant, because Resel does not appear to be of Polish linguistic origin -- there is no similar Polish word or root. It is most likely a Polish phonetic spelling of a German surname such as Ressel or Roessel or Roesel. According to German surname expert Hans Bahlow the name Roesel is found among Germans in that general area, and means "rose-gardener, one who sold flowers." It is perfectly plausible that the spelling of the name of a German family Roesel who lived among Poles might eventually be modified so that Poles would pronounce it correctly, and Resel fits. So that strikes me as the most likely derivation of this name -- though I can't be 100% certain.

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

...I came across your website today when my father asked me to search for any information on our surname - Haczynski. My grandfather was born in Grzymalów (I think that may be a parish?) And the town on the birth certificate we believe is Bucyki but I can't find anything on the web about it. Would you have anything on the origins of Haczynski?

I can't find any source that says definitively what Haczyński comes from. It could come from the root hak, "hook," also seen in the verb haczyć, "to hook"; the root is basically the same in Polish and Ukrainian, so if Haczyński is the correct spelling and the name hasn't been modified somewhere along the line, that probably is the ultimate root. But often names ending in -iński and -yński refer to places, so that Haczyński could mean "person from Hak, Haka, Haczyn," etc. I can't find any places by those names, so the surname may not refer to a place and may have started as simply meaning "guy with a hook, guy who uses a hook." But it's not rare to find that the place a surname referred to centuries ago has since vanished or changed names; and, as we'll see in a moment, we need to look in Ukraine, not Poland, anyway, and my maps for Ukraine aren't as good. So I can't rule out a reference to a place named something like Hak, Haka, Haczy, or Haczyn. In any event, if such a place name existed, it probably derived from the root meaning "hook" anyway, so one way or another we end up back with that root.

As of 1990 there were 140 Polish citizens named Haczyński. They were scattered all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (13), Bydgoszcz (35), Legnica (13), Walbrzych (12), and Wroclaw (20). As I say, that's pretty widely scattered, I don't see any significant pattern to that frequency and distribution. By the way, people often ask, so let me explain that I get this data from a multi-volume directory of Polish surnames -- it does not give first names or addresses or anything more detailed than the data I've quoted here, and I don't have access to anything more detailed. So what I've given is all I have.

At first I couldn't find Bucyki, but I have on microfiche a 15-volume Polish gazetteer dating from the turn of the century, and it does mention Bucyki. Here's what it says (I've edited out some stuff that almost certainly wouldn't interest you):

"Bucyki: a village in Skałat county, 2 km. east of Grzymałów, 17 km. from Skałat... It belongs to the Roman Catholic parish in Grzymałów, and there is a Greek Catholic parish in the village, which, along with branch parishes in Leźanówka and Bilenówka numbers 939 souls of the Greek Catholic rite and belongs to the Skałat deanery... The owners of the major estate are Leonard and Julia, Count and Countess Piniński." [Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polkiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, vol. 1, p. 433].

Remember, that info was current as of, say, 1870-1890, that time period. Since then borders have changed, and now that area belongs to Ukraine. Skalat is a town or village southeast of Ternopil, Ukraine, which explains why you couldn't find it. It was part of Polish territory long ago, but from about 1772-1918 this area was ruled by Austria under the name of Galicia (German Galizien). I can't find Bucyki (probably now called Butsyki, if it still exists) or even Grzymałów (probably something like Grymaliv) on my maps of Ukraine; Skalat is all I could find. A lot of villages in that area suffered terribly during the two World Wars, so there may no longer be any village there. But there definitely was one at one time. I would expect the Roman Catholic records of the parishioners' births, deaths, and marriage to have been kept at Grzymałów, and the Greek Catholic ones on-site in Bucyki. I have no idea whether the LDS has been able to microfilm them yet, you may have to do a fair amount of searching to find them, if they even exist any more. A lot of records in that area were destroyed. If you want more info, I suggest visiting the Website www.infoukes.com.

There may be more Haczyński's in Ukraine than in Poland, since the area your ancestors came from is now in Ukraine; but I have no sources for that country, so I can't tell.

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

... My grandfather, Jan Jajko arrived 1902 and settled in Massachusetts. Think he came from Gradisca/Gradiska, near Austrian border? Some family have changed spelling to Jayko. I only know the ones in MA. Somehow we're related to Albert Moryl, LaPorte, IN. My grandmother, Mary Tarka (lots of Tarkas) I think came from Kanna. She had a brother Wojciech Tarka, came to see Marya Fail. Mary Tarka's mother was a Trac, don't think she came over.

I can't tell you a thing about your families, only the linguistic origins of their names and, in some cases, a little info on where in Poland those names are most common. Thus Jajko comes from the Polish word for "egg," and as of 1990 there were 675 Polish citizens by that name; there were some living in almost every province of Poland, but the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Kraków (71), Krosno (95), and Tarnobrzeg (207), all in south-central to southeastern Poland. (I'm afraid I have no access to further details such as first names and addresses, what I've given here is all I have).

Tarka comes from the word tarka, "grater," and in 1990 there were 4,262 Poles by that name; there were sizable numbers all over the country, but the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Płock (575), and Radom (410) -- there were 101 in Tarnobrzeg province and 98 in Tarnów province.

Trac is probably from tracz, "sawyer," also meaning "merganser," a kind of duck. Apparently in 1990 there was no one in Poland with this name, it may have been changed somewhere along the line; if so, it probably was Tracz originally, which was the name of 6,323 Poles as of 1990.

One last word: with your MA and Galicia connections, you really should look into joining the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053. I think it's $15 a year, and they specialize in research in precisely the areas you're interested in. Chances are you could pick up some very helpful info.

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

... Can you give me information on Stellmach, Jandryca, Plachetka, or Motzko?

Stellmach: this comes from German Stellmach and Stellmacher, a term used in East Germany and Silesia (and brought from there into Poland) for "waggoner, cartwright." In Poland it is more often spelled Stelmach, and as of 1990 there were 8,354 Polish citizens by that name.

Jandryca is a very rare name, as of 1990 there were only 6 Poles by that name, all living in the province of Opole in southwestern Poland, the region called Silesia (near the Czech border); unfortunately I don't have access to any further info, such as first names or addresses. None of my sources mention this name specifically, but it's a good bet it comes from a variant form of the Polish first name Andrzej or German Andreas, "Andrew," and means "son of Andrew."

Motzko is a German spelling of a Polish name; Polish uses the letter c (sometimes cz) where German uses tz, so the Polish name would be Mocko or Moczko. That could be a nickname for someone named Matthew, or it could be a variant of the name Moczko (665 Poles by that name in 1990). But I'd have to see the original Polish spelling to say anything more definite, because the exact form makes a difference as to what name we're talking about.

Plachetka comes from the Polish word plachta, "covering, shroud." As of 1990 there were 304 Poles with the name Plachetka; a more common name from the same root is Plachta (3,256).

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

Thanks in advance for your efforts.

Name: Janowski or Janovsky

The correct spelling in Polish is Janowski, pronounced roughly "yah-NOFF-skee." It's a moderately common surname, borne by over 13,000 Polish citizens as of 1990; they lived all over the country, with no concentration in any one area.

The name means literally "of John's _," where you fill in the blank with something so obvious it didn't need to be spelled out -- usually either "kin" or "place." So this name could mean simply "of the kin of John."

But most of the time surnames in the form X-owski refer to a family's connection at some point centuries ago with a place that had a name beginning with the X part. So we would expect this name to mean "one from Janów or Janowo" or some other place name beginning with Janow-. There are lots of places that qualify, and there's no way to know which one a given Janowski family came from, except by doing genealogical research. If you trace your family back to their ancestral region, at that point it may become possible to establish exactly how this name came to be associated with them. It helps a lot if you can focus on looking for a Janów or Janowo or Janowice in a specific area, instead of having to cope with dozens of them all over Poland.

This name can also appear in other countries, especially the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but also sometimes Russia and Ukraine. But Russians and Ukrainians use "Ivan" for the name "John," as opposed to Poles and Czechs and Slovaks, who use the form "Jan." So Janowski (Polish spelling) or Janovsky (Czech/Slovak spelling) usually originated among Western Slavs, not among Russians and Ukrainians, who'd be more likely to use the surname Ivanovsky with the same meaning.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

... With my name being Jankowski I asked the Nuns what the difference was between our two names. Being a very Polish school and many fluent Polish speakers there I was told the following. Jan in Polish is "John" and the suffixes -kowski and -kowska meant "the son of or daughter of John." Or translated "Johnson" or "Johnsdaughter." After watching the post for sometime I have seen all kids of explanations for the ski suffix. Kind of lost.

I understand how you feel. It can get very confusing. Part of the problem is that there were basic rules that applied to the formation of surnames, but they weren't always applied consistently. And even a well-educated Pole who hasn't actually studied name origins can get it wrong; it's no disgrace, this is a specialized field and has its odd twists and turns. The only disgrace is insisting you know more than you actually do -- and all of us are vulnerable to that one!

At this point I should probably shut up, but I'll risk disgracing myself and try to explain.

There's no question the basic root of Jankowski is Jan, the Polish form of "John." But a name like this has to be broken down into its component root and suffixes. In this case it breaks down as follows: Jan + -k- + -ow- + -ski.

Janek is a diminutive form of Jan, meaning "little John, Johnny," or sometimes in names "son of John"; the -e- drops out when suffixes are added. The suffix -ow- basically implies possession or an "of" relationship (you can remember what it means by connecting it to our word "of"), so Jankow- means "[something or someone] of little John." The suffix -ski is adjectival, so that Jankowski literally means "of, from, pertaining to [something or someone] of little John." That's how the name actually breaks down.

In practice, Jankowski could have developed sometimes as meaning "son of John," that cannot be denied. And whatever its origin, Jankowski is an adjective and must follow Polish grammatical rules, so it changes forms, depending on grammatical considerations. Thus a female Jankowski would be called Jankowska in Polish. So the nuns could have been right, it could sometimes mean nothing more than "son of John" or "daughter of John."

But more often names in -owski originated as references to a connection between a person or family and a particular place with a similar name. Generally we'd expect Jankowski to mean "one from Janków, Jankowa, Jankowo," etc. Those are the most likely possibilities, but you can't rule out other place-names such as Jankówka, Jankowice, etc. -- by modern Polish grammar those names could not generate Jankowski, but centuries ago, when surnames were developing, the rules were looser.

There are a great many villages and settlements in Poland named Janków, Jankowo, etc., and all got their names as meaning "[place] of little John." Perhaps a Janek founded them, or at one point the noble who owned them was named Janek or was the son of a Jan, hard to say exactly what the connection was. But most of the time the surname Jankowski originated as meaning "one from Janków, Jankowa, Jankowo, etc.," and that in turn can be broken down to "one from the place of Janek." The word for "place" wasn't included because it was implied and everyone understood it without spelling it out. If the family in question was noble, they owned this place Jankow/Jankowo, etc. If they were peasants, they probably lived and/or worked the fields there, or else had once lived there and then moved elsewhere. In either case, at the time surnames were developing it made sense to refer to them as "the ones from Jankow/o/a."

So you see the nuns weren't necessarily wrong, and in some cases their analysis will prove correct. But on the whole, -owski names usually refer to a place name that is similar, beginning Jankow- or something like that.

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

... I am researching my family name Karbowski. I noted in your Home Page that you might be able to provide a short analysis of Polish Surnames. If it is possible, I would appreciate it if you could send me a brief analysis of my family name.

There are a couple of possible derivations for Karbowski. Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut notes that names beginning with Karb- generally come from the root karb, "notch, nick"; but he also notes that names with Karbow- can come from the term karbowy, "overseer," i. e., the man on a noble's estate who supervised the peasants as they worked. It is quite possible that Karbowski could be interpreted as "kin of the karbowy," since the -ski ending is adjectival and usually means "of, from, pertaining to."

The other interpretation is that Karbowski could mean "one from Karbów, Karbowo, Karbowa, Karby," in other words Karbowski is an adjective that fits several different place names. Of those, the only name for which I could find a place that actually exists was Karbowo -- there's a village by that name in Elblag province (the nearest parish and civil registrar's office is either Orneta or Lubomino), and another in Torun province (just a few km. north of Brodnica, which is probably where they went to register births, deaths, etc.). There may be more too small to show up on my maps, but it is thoroughly plausible that this surname started out meaning "person or family from Karbowo." Of course, the interpretation "kin of the overseer" is also perfectly plausible. In fact, we often see that a given surname can end up having derived two or three different ways, and that seems to be true here.

... I might mention that my goal is to find my ancestral village in Poland. I have been able to track my ancestors back to the year 1852 in a Polish settlement in Parrisville, Michigan. So far, I haven't been able to find out how these Polish settlers came to Parrisville, or where, in Poland, they came from.

Well, either of the Karbowo villages I mentioned above, in Elblag and Torun provinces, might be the place your ancestors were named for. I should caution you that surnames developed centuries ago, and over those centuries villages have disappeared, or been renamed, or been absorbed by others, so there may once have been other places named Karbów or Karbowo or Karbowa or Karby that this name could have come from. But these two might suggest areas to start looking in.

I'm afraid I have no other info that will help you pinpoint where your ancestors came from. As of 1990 there were 3,999 Polish citizens named Karbowski, living all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Suwałki (385) and Torun (413), and only 93 in Elblag province. So the frequency and distribution pattern offers no useful clues.

You say your ancestors settled in Michigan -- have you checked out the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan, c/o Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward Ave. Detroit, MI 48202-4007. If anybody can help you uncover some leads, I'd think they're the ones.

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

... Can you give me any input on Kazanowski?

Usually Polish surnames ending in -owski refer to a place name with similar form; we would expect Kazanowski to mean basically "person or family coming from, living in, connected with Kazanów, Kazanowo, Kazany," something like that -- there are several different forms of place names that could all end up generating Kazanowski. In this case I notice there are at least two places that qualify -- perhaps more too small to show up on my maps -- a Kazanów in Radom province and one in Wroclaw province. People who came from (or, if they were noble, owned) either of these villages could easily end up being called Kazanowski. So it's unlikely there's only one Kazanowski family; there are probably multiple families with this name, with the name developing independently in reference to different places.

As of 1990 there were 1,152 Polish citizens with this name, scattered all over the country. The largest numbers appeared in the provinces of Warsaw (158), Chelm (87), and Lublin (245), but smaller numbers lived in practically every province. I see no real pattern to the distribution and frequency of the name -- which, again, suggests it probably started independently in different places.

I hope this doesn't disappoint you. Many people contact me in the hope that their surname will offer some really good clue as to exactly where their ancestors came from, so they won't have to do the tough work of tracking them down. I wish it worked that way, and once in a while it does. But the vast majority of Polish surnames just don't tell you anything really helpful; the most you can find out is their basic meaning and whether they're common or rare.

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

... I am interested in any information you have on the origin of my paternal grandparents names Kaznocha from Rola Cicha, Rzeszów and Madej, Rudna Mala Rzeszow.

Madej is a name seen in records as early as 1415; it comes from the Latin first name Amadeus ("love-God"), famous mainly as the middle name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but it was a moderately popular first name in Poland and other European countries. Names beginning with Mad- can also come from the name Magdalena, but in this case I think it's pretty likely Amadeus is the source. A great many Polish surnames come from first names, often referring to children by their father's names -- "There goes Madej's son" could eventually generate the surname Madej, or it could simply be a first name that came to stick as a surname. As of 1990 there were 16,799 Polish citizens named Madej, living all over the country (413 in Rzeszów province alone), so it's a pretty common name.

Kaznocha is tougher -- none of my sources mention it -- and also rarer; as of 1990 there were only 90 Poles by this name. They lived in the following provinces: Bielsko-Biala 3, Gdansk 5, Gorzów 7, Katowice 21, Kielce 2, Kraków 2, Krosno 1, Lublin 12, Rzeszów 9, Szczecin 17, Tarnobrzeg 5, Wroclaw 6. (I'm afraid I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses; what I've given here is all I have). A look at a map will tell you that the name is scattered in small clumps all over Poland, but it is possible this was not so before World War II -- the dislocations caused by that war, and especially by post-war forced relocation of massive numbers of people from eastern Poland and western Ukrainian to western Poland, may have muddied the waters considerably. Looking at this distribution, it strikes me as entirely possible that before 1939 this name might have been concentrated mainly in southeastern Poland (including Rzeszów province and those surrounding it). I can't be sure, I have no source of pre-war data, but it is at least possible.

It seems clear that this name comes from a root seen in Polish and Ukrainian, kazn-, which means "to scold, chastise, punish"; kazna is also a term used in Ukrainian to mean "public funds, treasury," and also in terms such as kaznokrad, "embezzler," and that may be relevant, but I suspect the other meaning is the one behind the surname. We see such terms as kaznodzieja in Polish, literally "chastise-doer" but used in the meaning "preacher," especially in the sense of one who chastises the sinful and brings the wrath of God down on his listeners. We see a number of names in Polish that come from a root plus the suffix -och or -ocha, which don't have a clear-cut meaning but are just suffixes added to form names. Such names were popular in Poland, especially before the country was Christianized and Christian names such as Jan, Piotr, Stefan, etc. supplanted the old native Slavic names; thus the name of the city of Czestochowa means "Czestoch's place" (the root means "many, much, frequent"), and I know a man named Zimnoch, from the root meaning "cold," etc. My best guess is that Kaznocha meant originally "the scolder, the chastiser." It would make a pretty good name back in the old days, meaning perhaps an intimidating fellow who punished anyone who got out of line.

I am just speculating here -- as I said, none of my sources mention this name -- but going by analogous names, I think it's pretty likely that's how this name started.

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

... I was hoping you might be able to give me some insight to my wife's surname Kendziora. I have read that it means a lock of hair or lock of red hair.

Yes, Kendziora comes from the Polish term kędzior, "lock of hair" (the ę is pronounced in most cases somewhat like en, so that names with this sound are often spelled either ę or en). This is a very common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 8,165 Polish citizens named Kędziora and another 121 who spelled it Kendziora. Unfortunately, with names this common there is no way to deduce just from the name exactly where it originated in the case of a particularly family. Only someone who possesses considerable knowledge about a given family's background can trace them to their origins; the name itself just doesn't offer enough in the way of clues.

... I do have couple questions, are there coat of arms or family crest in Poland? If so do you think that the surname Kendziora may have received one?

I don't know of anyone researching this name, but there surely are people who are doing so. As for a coat of arms, I have very little information on the subject of nobility and heraldry. Your best bet would be to contact the following organization: Polish Nobility Association Foundation, Villa Anneslie, 529 Dunkirk Rd., Anneslie, MD 21212-2014

I believe they will, for a moderate fee, search armorials and heraldic literature to see whether a given family was recognized as noble. However, the more information you have about your family, the better. I tend to doubt it would be enough to say "Were the Kendziora's noble?" You would probably need to be able to say "Were the Kendziora's living in the area of __ noble." However, I'm not sure about this -- it can't hurt to write and ask.

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

... My grandfather was a Klimkiewicz, born in Radzwie, Płock Poland. My second grandfather was a Kensicki from Dobrzejewicz, Torun, Poland. The third name I am interested in is Stroj, again from the Radzwie area. If you can shed any light on them I would appreciate hearing from you.

I doubt the info I can give you is a lot of help -- few Polish surnames do offer any really useful leads as far as tracking down a family's origins. But then you never know what might prove useful, so here's what I have.

Names ending in -owicz or -ewicz mean "son of," so Klimkiewicz means "son of Klimek or Klimko." Those, in turn, are short forms of the name Klemens (= English "Clement"). So Klimkiewicz means more or less "son of Clem" in English. Surnames formed from first names are very common and widespread in Poland, and this is no exception: 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 3,439 Polish citizens named Klimkiewicz, living all over the country -- of whom 147 lived in the modern-day province of Płock.

Kensicki is another way of spelling Kęsicki (ę is pronounced roughly en). The ultimate root of this name is the noun kęs, "piece, morsel." But it would generally refer to the name of a place with which the family was connected at some point, places named Kęsica or Kęsice. There was mention in old records of a Kęsicki family with an estate at Kęsice in Sierpc district; I can't find any such place on modern maps, but that's not odd; surnames developed centuries ago, and often the places they referred to have since disappeared, changed names, etc.

As of 1990 there were 1,448 Kęsicki's, of whom 118 lived in the province of Torun (only the province of Pila, with 167, had more). There were 21 Poles who spelled the name Kensicki, 3 in Elblag province, 11 in Gdansk province, 3 in Walbrzych province, and 4 in Wroclaw province -- unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses.

Strój is one of numerous names from the root stroi-, stroj, meaning "to deck, trim, adorn." Strój itself probably comes from the noun stroj, "dress, attire." This name is surprisingly rare, as of 1990 there were only 75 Poles named Strój, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 15, Gdansk 2, Katowice 17, Kielce 26, Kraków 7, Poznan 6, Szczecin 1, Zielona Gora 1.

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

... I hope you can help me. I can't seem to find out any information on my name Klejnowski.

Names ending in -owski usually referred to some connection between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ów, or -owo or -y or something similar; in this case, we'd expect the name to mean "person from Klejnów or Klejnowo or Klejny," something like that. I have a book that lists German and Polish names of places in some of the regions ruled by Germany up until 1918 and 1945, and it mentions at three villages called Kleinau, which is how Germans would write what the Poles would call Kleinów or Klejnów. One Kleinau was in Trzebnica county in Silesia, and the Polish name for it is Małczów. Another was in Goldap district in East Prussia. The third is called Malkowice by the Poles, in Prudnik county in Upper Silesia, now Opole province. These are places that might be connected with the name Klejnowski. I would imagine the original root of the name was German klein, "little, small." A great many "Polish" surnames actually started out German, and this could be one, especially since there is no root klejn or anything like it in Polish. (Note that the Polish equivalent of German klein, "little, small," is mały, and we see that root in the names Malczów and Malkowice).

As of 1990 there were 631 Polish citizens named Klejnowski, living all over the country, with larger numbers in the following provinces: Warsaw 98, Bydgoszcz 55, Ciechanów 65, Elblag 59, Katowice 40, and Torun 116. This suggests a concentration in northcentral Poland (Bydgoszcz, Elblag, Torun, Ciechanów and Warsaw provinces), and a smaller concentration in southcentral Poland (Katowice province). That is consistent with origin in several different places -- there were villages called Klejnów or Kleinau in several different areas of Poland, so the surname developed in reference to them, and thus is not unique to any one region.

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

... I apologize for misleading you and wasting your time... My family name was not Kochanski, rather it was Kochanowski and, if my father can be believed, Kochanowska. The question I should have asked is... I was wondering if you had any information readily available for the last name Kochanowski and/or Kochanowska?

Actually, no harm done, because the answer is almost the same. First of all, names ending in -ska are the same as names ending in -ski, except that the -ska is the ending used for females. So the husband would be Kochanowski, but the wife would be Kochanowska. To Poles this is the most obvious thing in the world, but when they came to this country they eventually stopped doing it when they found themselves among English-speakers because they realized Brits and Yanks didn't understand and thought those were two different names.

As for Kochanowski, the key is in my previous note: "I don't see any place by that name, but some might have existed centuries ago, when surnames were being formed -- there are several villages named Kochanów, but that name would tend to generate a surname in the form Kochanowski, not Kochański." The surname Kochanowski began in most cases as a way of referring to a person or family who lived in or came from a place called Kochanów, Kochanowo, Kochanówka, or something similar. There are several villages named Kochanów and Kochanówka, so a Kochanowski family could have come from any of them, and thus there's no way to pin down which one a specific family came from without detailed data on the family. In other words, the most I can do is tell you what kind of place name to look for, and then with any luck you can use what you learn about your family and where they came from to see if there's any place nearby that qualifies.

As of 1990 there were 4,728 Polish citizens named Kochanowski, and they lived all over the country, so I'm afraid the surname itself doesn't offer much in the way of clues. About all we can know of it is that it originally referred to some connection between a family and a place called Kochanów or Kochanówka or something like that, and there are several places that qualify.

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

... Would like any information concerning the surname Kolaczkowski which was my maiden name. My research has just began and the only information I have is that my great-grandparents immigrated from Poland/ Czechoslovakia in the 1800's to U.S. Then on to Dallas, Texas in the late 1800's. Certain also the name remains in its original spelling.

As for Kołaczkowski, the standard Polish spelling of this name (ł which sounds like our w), names ending in -owski usually started as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place, most often the village they lived in or came from. The name of that place is usually very similar but ends in -i, -ów, -owice, -owo, etc. Thus there is in Poland at least one village called Kołaczków, 3 named Kołaczkowice, and 3 named Kołaczkowo -- and the name Kołaczkowski could have started as a reference to any of them, or to more too small to show up on my maps.

As of 1990 there were 816 Polish citizens named Kołaczkowski. They were scattered all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one area. So unfortunately the surname doesn't offer much in the way of leads. If it's any consolation, that's the way it usually turns out -- even surnames that refer to place names, and thus seem to promise a specific lead, turn out to be disappointing because there are several places with the same name.

By the way, the spelling Kołaczkowski is distinctively Polish rather than Czech or Russian or whatever. However, that can be misleading. The same name, pronounced virtually the same way, surely exists in Czech: they would spell it Kolaĉkovsky. And there is at least one place named Kolaĉkov in Slovakia. The point is that if a Czech or Slovak named Kolaĉkovsky emigrated and came through Poland to a Polish or German port, his name might possibly end up being spelled by Polish phonetic values, simply because the officials involved were more familiar with Polish than Czech. If so, the Polish form of the name might fool us into excluding the Czech/Slovak region as his original home.

With the spelling Kołaczkowski, odds are they were Poles. But I thought I'd better mention the possible Czech or Slovak connection, just in case it comes up at some point.

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

… I was wondering what you could make of my last name, Piczak. I traveled to Poland in 1997 w/ my father to tour and visit new-found relatives on my maternal grandparents side, Sliwa (I gather it means "plum"), which is apparently very common... Amazingly, the Polish people we spoke to over there, did not think "Piczak" was a real Polish name. Hmmm.... I did find one Piczak in a Warsaw phone book.

Well, native-speakers are not always right about names. They usually have a good feel for whether or not a particular name is a common one, but names are a rather specialized field of study, and without experience you can easily go wrong. In fact Piczak is a perfectly legitimate Polish name, one seen in legal records as far back as 1490. It is not a very common one, however; as of 1990 there were only 205 Polish citizens named Piczak. They were scattered all over the country, with the largest single block (55) in the province of Rzeszow in southeastern Poland -- no other province had more than 12. (I'm afraid I don't have access to more data such as first names or addresses).

Probably the reason the Poles you met weren't familiar with the name is because it derives from an archaic root, one not used in the living language for centuries. That root is pica (pronounced almost exactly the way we pronounce "pizza"). This word had several meanings: 1) fodder for animals; 2) a lifelong pension for ex-soldiers; 3) a soldier's daily ration; and 4) the vulva. I don't mean to be indelicate here, but many Polish name origins turn out to be unmistakeably from rather vulgar words, and pica is one of many, many slang words for the female genitals -- what's more, in the case of at least some names beginning with Pic-, Polish experts think that meaning was the original one behind the name, sort of like calling a person a "son of a slut" (although if I wanted to be absolutely accurate, I'd use a different 4-letter word).

I don't think we have to assume this was the meaning behind Piczak, however (and it's highly unlikely any of the Poles you talked to have ever heard this word). It could easily have started as a name for someone who fed animals or provided fodder, or an ex-soldier on a pension. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't mention the other possibility as well. For what it's worth, there are many, many other names with similar meanings, to the point that I sometimes ask people "Are you sure you want to know what your name means?"

Śliwa is indeed the word for "plum," and is a very common name, borne by 11,499 Polish citizens as of 1990.

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

...This name is a duzzy!!! It is my cousin's name and everyone, even Polish people, had a difficult time spelling it correctly. So all the children legally changed their name to "Jeff" which is the pronunciation of the first part of Dziechciowski. I doubt if you can come up with anything on this name--it is very rare!

As of 1990 there were 217 Polish citizens named Dziechciowski; here is the breakdown of where they lived by province:

DZIECHCIOWSKI: 217; Bielsko-Biala 10, Bydgoszcz 2, Gdansk 1, Katowice 2, Koszalin 4, Krakow 3, Nowy Sacz 105, Poznan 21, Rzeszow 1, Szczecin 14, Walbrzych 11, Zamosc 10.

The name almost certainly comes from the name of a village or tiny settlement named something like Dziechciowo or Dziegciowo, most likely somewhere in the province of Nowy Sacz. I can find no such place, but that may just mean it's too small to show up in the atlases and gazetteers, or its name has changed in the centuries since the surname started. Dziechciow- is a spelling variant of Dziegciow-, caused by very similar pronunciation; the ultimate root of the name is dziegieć, "birch tar," and there is an adjective dziegciowy meaning "of birch-tar." There were people who worked collecting such tar for making various products, and presumably Dziechciowo/Dziegciowo was a village where such activity was common.

...I see from your list that there is nothing on the name of Ratulowski. Do you have any clue where or how this name originated?

Here is the data on that name's distribution by province as of 1990:

Ratułowski: 101; Bielsko-Biala 4, Gdansk 13, Kalisz 1, Krakow 7, Krosno 4, Nowy Sacz 63, Wroclaw 8, Zielona Gora 1.

This name also comes from a place name, and since the largest numbers appear in the province of Nowy Sacz, that's where I looked. Almost certainly this name comes from Ratułów, Nowy Sacz province, 15 km. southwest of Nowy Targ, 7.5 km. southeast of Czarny Dunajec, served by the Catholic parish in the latter village. A gazetteer entry for Ratułów even mentioned that there was a Maciej Ratułowski who owned the property in 1660. The place was originally called Radultów, after a local official named Radult, then later the name was mangled or changed into Ratułów.

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

...What does the surname 'Jekot' mean?

The name is spelled Jękot in Polish, where ę stands for the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it and pronounced, roughly, like en, so that the name sounds like "yen-kot" -- you might sometimes see it spelled Jenkot, too. It comes from a term jękot, apparently not used a lot, which means "one who's constantly moaning and groaning." As of 1990 there were 515 Polish citizens with this name, living all over the country but with the largest numbers showing up in the provinces of Katowice (43), Krakow (62), and Tarnow (180). All these provinces are in far southern Poland, with Tarnow stretching into southeastern Poland, not too far from the Ukrainian border. So the chances seem fairly good most Jekot's originally came from the Tarnow region or a little west of there. Unfortunately the source for this data does not give first names or addresses, so what I've given above is all I have access to.

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

...Am very new to this. Am researching the Scislowicz surname from Nowy Targ Poland...

As of 1990 there were 408 Poles named Ścisłowicz (pronounced roughly "schees-WOE-vich"). They lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (43), Kielce (76), Krakow (29), Nowy Sacz (114) -- all roughly in southcentral Poland, not far from the border with the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The suffix -owicz means "son of," and ścisły means "compact, dense, exact," so the name would appear to mean "son of the short, squatty guy," or perhaps "son of the precise, exact fellow."

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

...Could you please tell me the meaning of the Polish names Lanczak and Pisczek? Also, how long they have been around? I am also looking for the name Marosz/Marosze or Marosk. I do not know if it is Polish or not.

As of 1990 there were 4,657 Poles named Piszczek, living all over the country but with the largest numbers (over 200) in the provinces of Katowice (948), Krakow (953), Nowy Sacz (248), Pila (313), Radom (203), and Tarnow (244). Polish surname expert Dr. Kazimierz Rymut notes this name appears in documents as early as 1390, and usually comes from the term piszczek, "one who plays pipes or fife."

Lanczak is a tough one. My best guess is that this is an English rendering of Łańczak (pronounced roughly "WINE-chok"). There were 104 Poles by this name in 1990, scattered in small numbers all over; the largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (14), Leszno (18), Przemysl (9) and Torun (9). I don't see any pattern to the distribution. The root would be either łania, "doe," or łan, "field, full-sized farm." The most reasonable guess is that the name started as meaning "son of a fellow owning a full-sized farm" -- many people were too poor to own regular farms and just owned little pieces of land, this would be a farmer who owned a full 30 acres or whatever. There are other possible meanings, but this is the one that seems most likely to me.

Marosz and the other variant forms certainly can be a Polish name, although there are probably other languages such a name could originate in. It probably started as a nickname for someone named Marcin (Martin) or Marek (Mark); Poles often formed names by taking the first syllable of a common first name, chopping off the end, and tacking on a suffix, in this case -osz. So you can't really say Marosz means anything, any more than "Teddy" or "Johnny" mean something; they're just nicknames that have developed into names in their own right. As of 1990 there were 593 Poles named Marosz, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (50), Bydgoszcz (81), Krakow (60), and Poznan (49). There were also 1,836 Poles named Maroszek -- the other spellings you mentioned suggest this might this name might be relevant. That name would just mean "little Marosz" or "son of Marosz." This name is rather common, and the largest numbers for it appear in the provinces of Warsaw (192), Kalisz (129), Katowice (394), Krakow (128), and Radom (266) -- pretty well spread out all over the country.

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

... I am trying to trace my family roots and recently seen your book Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings advertised for sale. However I was wondering about ... my 2 family surnames... They are: Mruk, my grandfather was born in Moszczenica in Poland; Tylenda, my grandfather was born in the Suwałki region of Poland.

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Mruk comes from the basic root seen in the Polish words mruk, "man of few words, gloomy fellow," and the verb root mruczeć, "to mumble." It is a fairly common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were 2,915 Polish citizens named Mruk. They were scattered pretty much all over the country, which is not surprising, since the name could arise any place Polish was spoken and there were taciturn or glum fellows around, i. e., anywhere.

Tylenda is harder to pin down; Rymut mentions it, but cannot say for sure which root it comes from. It could be from the term tyl, "rear, back," or from tyle, "how much?", or from the Germanic first name Till. I do see in my 8-volume Polish-language dictionary that there is a very similar-sounding word, tylędzie (the ę stands for the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail and pronounced much like en), which means "back or blunt side of a knife" or "the back of something" in general. Poles were quite imaginative in their use of nicknames, sometimes we can tell a name came from a particular word without quite being able to figure out what the association was -- I think that's true in this case. As of 1990 there were 475 Poles named Tylenda, scattered all over the country but with by far the largest concentration in the province of Suwałki (302) in northeastern Poland, near the border with Lithuania and Belarus. The spelling Tylęda, which would be pronounced the same way, is far less common, only 32 Poles by that name, with 31 of them living in Suwałki province. This suggests to me that far northeastern Poland is probably where this name originated, or at least where it's most common by far -- and that fits in with your information, too.

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

...My last name is Plucinik. My research shows that the original spelling is Plociennik, which later became Pluciennik, and then the present spelling. Some of my cousins who I've never met still spell it as Pluciennik. Can you provide any meaning or story behind the name?

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, this name comes from the Polish word płóciennik (pronounced roughly "pwooh-CHEN-nick"), which means "dealer in linen or cloth." Even in Poland the name can be spelled Płóciennik or Płuciennik. As of 1990 there were 3,265 Poles named Płóciennik and 3,242 named Płuciennik, so it is a pretty common name. The people with this name live all over Poland, with the largest numbers of Płócienniks in the provinces of Kalisz (492), Konin (292), Lodz (233), Poznan (275), and Sieradz (270); the most Płucienniks live in the provinces of Warsaw (222), Konin (282), Lodz (350), and Sieradz (373). So the name is found all over -- which is normal with names deriving from terms for common occupations -- but the main concentration seems to be in the central part of the country. (I'm afraid more detailed info, such as first names, addresses, etc., is not available, what I show here is all I have). The name is a fairly old one, it appears in records as early as 1395!

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

...Do you have any information on the last name of Ksen?

The letter combination ks is not native to the Polish language, usually it shows up in words or names borrowed from Greek or Latin, especially by way of Ukraine or Belarus, because their ties to the Orthodox church caused them to borrow many names and words from Greek. In this case I'm fairly certain the name derives from either the Ukrainian feminine name Kseniya or the masculine name Ksenofont (for which Ksen' is a recognized nickname, in Cyrillic it looks like K C E H b). The latter name comes from the Greek roots xenos, "foreign" + phone, "sound," so apparently it originally meant "one who sounded foreign" -- but that was in Greek, I suspect by the time Eastern Slavs heard of the name it had become just a name, and few had any idea what it actually meant. The feminine name Kseniya, from the Greek xenios, "hospitable," is a bit more common, and the surname could also derive from it. In Poland and Ukraine surnames formed from first names are very common, especially from a father's name, but in Ukraine names formed from mother's names are not uncommon. So it's plausible to say this surname comes from one of these two first names.

Since Ksen' is distinctly Ukrainian (or perhaps also Belarusian or Russian), I'm not surprised that it's not very common in Poland, at least within its modern borders (back in the days of the Polish Commonwealth western Ukraine was ruled by Poland, and Polish and Ukrainian names mixed to a considerable extent). As of 1990 there were only 72 Poles named Ksen', living in the provinces of Warsaw (4), Elblag (5), Katowice (4), Kielce (16), Koszalin (2), Olsztyn (1), Opole (5), Poznan (2), Rzeszow (10), Szczecin (12), Tarnobrzeg (6), Tarnow (2), Walbrzych (3). They are scattered pretty much all over Poland, but that is probably due to all the forced relocations of displaced persons after World War II; I'd bet if we had data from before 1939 you'd find most of the people named Ksen' lived in or near Ukraine or Belarus. (Unfortunately I don't have access to more data, such as first names or addresses; what I give here is all I have).

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

...Do you have any background on Surdyka?

When I worked on my Polish surname book, I couldn't find any discussion of this name by the experts I prefer to rely on. So I had to make the best guess I could -- usually my "educated guesses" prove right, but not always, so don't take this for Gospel truth!

I found a verb in Polish szurdać się, which means "to pout, sulk." In Polish names it is not at all uncommon to see s and sz switch back and forth, any name with S might have a counterpart with SZ, and vice versa. So it's plausible to say Surdyka and the other names with the same beginning (Surdacki, Surdej, Surdek, Surdel, Surdy, Surdyga, Surdyk, Surdykowski, Surdynski, Szurdak) come from this root. If so, the name probably started as a nickname for someone who sulked a lot, or perhaps some who had a kind of pouty look to his or her face. As I say, this is only plausible, I don't have any solid evidence, but my batting average on such guesses is pretty decent.

Surdyka, and the closely related name Surdyk, are not rare; as of 1990 there were 392 Poles named Surdyka, and 1,077 named Surdyk. The Surdyka's lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Rzeszow (81) and Tarnobrzeg (143), thus mainly in southeastern Poland. The name Surdyk appears in many provinces in small numbers, none more than 43, except for one huge group in Poznan province (560!). So if Surdyka is the correct form (it could easily be a grammatical form of Surdyk, so you want to make sure that -a really belongs there), southeastern Poland or Galicia is likely to be where it came from; if it's Surdyk, the Poznan region seems the best bet. Unfortunately, I don't have any more data such as first names or addresses, so I can't help you locate any of those Surdykas or Surdyks.

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

...Post the following in the ... surname site if you think it is accurate and would be helpful to others.

RE: Csehill

The Cs suggests Magyarization. Do you have how the name was/is written in Cyrillic? That would help in its interpretation because the name, in addition to being Magyarized, was also anglicized.
________

Lavrentij Krupnak

**********************************************

I read a little more about the Magyar language and have some information which may help decipher the meaning of the name Csehill. In 1910, when the Hungarian language orthography was modernized, the cs consonant combination was eliminated. It was replaced with ch and ts.

The ch is pronounced like "ch" in "CHeap" and ts is pronounced like "ts" in "iTS."

RE: Csehill. Perhaps this spelling is the version based on the pre-1910 Magyar orthography. Today, it maybe in Magyar written as Tsehill (here also preserving the anglicized form).

Ts is pronounced like the 27th letter of the Ukrainian alphabet. The Ukrainian word tsehla means "brick" or "tile." A tsehl'nik is a "brick-maker." Perhaps the surname Csehill is based on the Ukrainian word for "brick" or "tile."
________

Lavrentij Krupnak

Note: I can't think of anything to add -- I doubt I would ever have thought of this particular connection, but it strikes me as plausible.

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

...I was looking thru your Polish Surname book, which I recently purchased, for a translation of a family name, Niemojewski. I tried matching up with all possible variations for a meaning but I didn't have any luck. Can you please help me out?

People who bought the book and want to contact me with requests for more info are welcome to do so! There are so many Polish surnames I couldn't hope to include them all, and I could not include all the info I have on the ones I did list. But E-mail and the Web allow me to share some of the info there was no room for in the book.

As of 1990 there were 175 Polish citizens named Niemojewski (one reason it wasn't in the book, as a rule I didn't have room for names borne by fewer than 300 people). They were scattered all over the country, with the largest numbers (20 or more) living in the provinces of Warsaw (30), Lodz (20), Radom (21), and Skierniewice (22). This suggests the name is most common in the central part of Poland (in its current borders).

Names ending in -ewski usually derive from a place name, especially ones ending in -ew, -ewo, -ewice, etc., so Niemojewski probably started out meaning "one somehow connected with a place named Niemojewo/Niemojow," etc. Unfortunately, there are several different villages in Poland with names that could yield this surname, Niemojewo, Niemojewice, Niemojki, Niemojow, etc. One was an estate called Niemojewo near Inowroclaw in modern-day Bydgoszcz province; it was served by the post office in Parchanie, about 5 km. away, and the Parchanie Catholic parish church is probably the one to which people in Niemojewo went to register births, deaths, and marriages. As of 1583 this village was owned by a Mikolaj Niemojewski. I mention it to prove that this is at least one place the surname could come from; but as I say, there are several others, and without much more detailed info on your family there is no way to know which one applies in your family's case. However, with luck and perseverance you may uncover enough info to settle the matter -- if you trace your ancestors back to a specific area and one of these Niemojewo's or Niemojki's or Niemojow's is nearby, that's probably the place!

The root of these place names is interesting. Niemoj is an old Polish first name; Niemojewo and Niemojow just mean "Niemoj's place." Niemoj could have arisen in a couple of different ways, one from a term meaning "mute," but one meaning is literally "not mine" (nie = "not," mój = "mine"). Sometimes in olden days when parents had lost one or more child and ascribed it to evil spirits, they would name a child "Niemoj" in hopes of convincing the evil spirits to leave it alone -- "This one's not mine, no point bothering it, I don't care." Probably later on people just named kids that without thinking about what it meant, but that is one way we know the name got started! ... I wish I'd had room for more info like this in the book!

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

...Could you please e-mail me with a short message regaurding the city or region of origin for my last name, Marhefka? Possibly spelled Marchefka.

Unfortunately, the name Marchewka (the standard Polish spelling, of which the others you mentions are variants) is very common in Poland; as of 1990 there were 6,800 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country. The largest numbers showed up in the provinces of Warsaw (422), Czestochowa (790), Katowice (501), Krakow (561), Radom (855), but the only pattern I see to the distribution is that Marchewka's are a bit more common in the southern part of the country. The name comes from the noun marchewka, which just means "little carrot," I believe often used as a kind of nickname for red-heads, so the name could arise anywhere Polish was spoken and there were people with red hair, i. e., anywhere in Poland.

So, like the majority of Polish surnames, this one doesn't offer any helpful clues on where the families bearing it originated. It's pretty clear many different, unrelated families from many different parts of the country ended up with this name.

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

...I am not big into genealogy, just interested in my heritage. I have not been able to obtain any information on my name or history from relatives or informal sources. The information that I have been able to obtain indicates that my grandparents came to the US in the time period of 1897-1902 from the area of Tarnow in SE Poland. I would be happy with any information you might be able to provide, even if it is only to put a meaning to the surname, much like the surname "cooper" refers to the barrel makers trade.

I can't provide as much info as I'd like on Kumiega, but I have a little info that may be relevant.

First, the frequency and distribution of the name. There are two forms, Kumiega and Kumięga (here the ę represents the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it, pronounce much like en). As of 1990 there were 215 Kumiega's; the overwhelming majority (168) lived in the province of Tarnow, with small numbers in a few other provinces. Kumięga was a bit more common and more spread out, there were 568 Kumięga's, but again, the huge majority lived in the neighboring provinces of Tarnow (271) and Tarnobrzeg (96) in southeastern Poland. This strongly suggests that your ancestors came from the heart of Kumiega country, and that the area you've identified is likely to be the area where this name originated and is most common.

Unfortunately I have no access to any further data, such as first names, addresses. If you want such data, you might try seeing if you can find someone to do a search of the Tarnow province phone directory; the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053, does this at reasonable prices, but I'll warn you, there are problems. The way these books are organized, a search for a particular name tends to take several hours, plus phones in private homes are not as common in Poland as they are here -- so there's no guarantee any of the Kumiega's listed would be any kin to you, or at least not close kin. Still, it's the only way I know of to try to get specific addresses. If you want to go this route, you'd probably be better off pursuing your research to find out first what specific villages in Tarnow province your ancestors came from, since the name is so common in that area -- focusing on a specific village or two would narrow the focus of the search and increase the chances of a respectable pay-off.

As to the origin of the name, the only root I can find in Polish (or any other Slavic language) is the word ... which means "godfather," also "crony, pal." Poles (and Russians and Ukrainians) often use this term to refer to close buddies, guys you hang around with, as well as an actual godfather. There is a related verb kumać się, "to hobnob." The -iega suffix is not an extremely common one in Polish names, but we do run into it occasionally. In this context Kumiega or Kumięga would probably refer to "my buddy's kin," something like that. So if someone was regarded in the village as a good old boy, everybody's pal, the name Kumiega might get attached to his family as a kind of nickname, eventually becoming their surname.

That's the best explanation I can come up with. None of my sources discuss this name, so I'm having to make an educated guess, so to speak -- but I think the chances are good this is reasonably close to the truth.

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

...I have another favor to ask. On my grandfather Mohylowski's death certificate, signed by my father who is now 7 years deceased, I see the maiden name of my great-grandmother. This is written in, everything else is typed. The death certificate is from 1947. It gives her name as Rose Mohovak. I see no Mohovak in your book, and of course, Mohovak with a "v" doesn't seem Polish to me, anyway. What do you think? This is another surname I have never come across. I'll do a search on the Internet -- Switchboard -- to see if there are any occurences of this name in the US.

No, this doesn't make sense as a Polish name. However, it seems there's a Ukrainian connection to your family, and Mohovak could be a rendering by English phonetics of a name such as Mokhovak, which in Cyrillic would look like MOXOBAK. I looked that up in my big Ukr. dictionary, and the root mokhov- deals with "moss" (in Polish the same term is mech). Some words from this root include mokhove boloto, a term for "moss-bog," and mokhovik, a term for the wood grouse, a kind of bird. So a surname Mokhovak makes sense as a reference to where a person lived (near a mossy area) or perhaps as a reference to this or some other kind of bird or animal. (By the way, the word Moch in German means something similar, "marshy place"!). This name is apparently not used by anyone in Poland, though there are a couple of Mochowicz's; and I have no data for Ukraine, but I bet it's not so rare there!

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

...I am researching the names Krushinski and Dembowski (Debowski) from one or all of theses areas - Poznan, Dulsk, Ripien. I am not able to find any information at all. Can you help me?

In Polish spelling the names you're interested in would be spelled Krusiński or Kruszyński and Dembowski or Dębowski. Both these names probably originated as references to the names of places with which the families were connected -- if noble, they owned them at one point, if peasants they worked and lived there or traveled there often.

Krusiński probably originated as meaning "person from Krusin" or something similar. There is at least two places by this name, Krusin in Czestochowa and Torun provinces. It might also be Kruszyński, which suggests an association with places named Kruszyn, Kruszyna, etc. There are at least 15 villages with names that could, and probably did, generate the surname Kruszyński. So without very detailed info on the family there is no way to say exactly which places are referred to. If you can find a Krusin or Kruszyn near your families ancestral villages, that is likely to be the right place. As of 1990 there were 5,573 Poles named Kruszyński and 862 named Krusiński, but the names are too common and too spread out to offer any useful clues.

The same is true of Dembowski/Dębowski (spelled either way). The root is the word dąb, "oak," and there are at least 20 villages named Dębow, Dębowo, etc., all meaning essentially "the place with the oaks," or else "place associated with a fellow named Dąb or Dęb" (probably as a nickname). As of 1990 there were 9,745 Poles named Dębowski and 2,475 named Dembowski.

So unfortunately with both these names there are too many places the name might refer to -- only detailed info on the family will let you make an educated guess which one your particular ancestors were associated with. This is true of most Polish surnames coming from place names -- it's a shame, but that's the way it is. However, it sounds to me as if you have some info that may help you focus on the right areas, so with some luck and persistence in your research you may uncover enough info to zero in on the right ones.

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

...Hi, my ... maiden name [is] Gaszynski. I am looking for any information you might have on the name Gaszynski. I'm not sure where to start to get ancestor information. I'm not sure if anyone is even left alive in the family that could provide anything.

The name Gaszyński is not extremely common in Poland, but it's not rare either. As of 1990 there were 486 Polish citizens by this name, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (45), Bydgoszcz (63), Kalisz (30), and Poznan (40), and smaller numbers in many other provinces. So they're pretty well scattered, and I don't see any useful pattern in the distribution. Unfortunately, I don't have access to more detailed info such as first names, addresses, etc.

It's tough saying exactly what the name came from. It probably refers to a person with a name beginning with Gasz-, a name root coming from first names such as Gabriel, Gawel, etc. Poles often took the first couple of sounds of a first name, dropped the rest, and added suffixes to form nicknames or by- names, so that the names I mentioned would yield Ga-, the suffix -sz- would be added, and then further suffixes would be added to that. So you can't say it really means anything, it's just a form of a first name, sort of like "Ted" vs. "Theodore," "Jack" vs. "John" in English.

There is a village called Gaszyn in Sieradz province, and there might be more villages with similar names too small to show up on my maps -- chances are your ancestors lived or worked in such places, or owned them if they were noble. Those places, in turn, got their names from the Gasz- I mentioned above. So in most cases I would expect Gaszyński meant "person from Gaszyn," which in turn was named for a prominent citizen who had a name beginning with Gasz- (or possibly Gach-, that's also a root that could yield Gasz-).

I know this isn't really a lot of help, but that's not unusual for Polish surnames. Sometimes they give you a helpful clue, most of the time they don't. If, however, you have some luck with your research and trace your ancestors to a specific area, then you learn that there's a nearby place with a name beginning with Gasz-, chances are reasonably good you've found the place they took their name from.

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

...If you could assist me on the meaning/origin of my surname Pusiak, it would be very appreciated. The information on my family history is limited to that I know they were in the Bukowina province of the Austrian Empire as of 1850. This line converted from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic approx. 1880. I know from internet sources that a Pusiak was in Tartakow (north of Lvov) in the 1930's. Also through the International Genealogical Index, I know that there was a Pusiakin Marggrabowa, Ostpreussen who's Christening date was 1711.

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut's book Nazwiska Polaków [The Surnames of Poles], Pusiak comes from the root pusz- as seen in old Polish pusz, "tuft of feathers," or puszyć się, "to prance, preen, swagger" (the root seems to mean about the same thing in Ukrainian, which is relevant in your ancestors' case). Presumably it originated as a kind of nickname, perhaps for someone who wore feathers as an ornament, or had a tuft of hair that stuck out, or who went around prancing or preening -- all these centuries later it's hard to say exactly what the connection was, we can only say what the word meant and speculate on why this particular name stuck.

Pusiak is not a very common name, at least not in Poland. As of 1990 there were only 176 Polish citizens with this name -- of course, remember that data was only available for people living within the borders of modern Poland, so if this data were available for 100 years ago, or included Ukraine, the numbers might be higher. The Pusiak's lived in the following provinces: Warsaw (9), Chelm (12), Jelenia Gora (6), Kalisz (4), Katowice (8), Legnica (1), Leszno (24), Pila (1), Poznan (39), Szczecin (9), Walbrzych (1), Wroclaw (2), Zielona Gora (60). (Unfortunately I have no further data such as first names, addresses, etc.)

This distribution may seem odd -- why are there so many Pusiak's in western Poland and so few in eastern Poland, which is where you'd expect to see them? I've seen this before, and think I know the answer: Operation Vistula. This was a massive program of relocation undertaken after World War II, when thousands (maybe millions?) of Ukrainians living near the new border with Poland were packed up and shipped off to populate the western parts of Poland, which had been seized from Germany and given to Poland. Huge numbers of Germans left the area to go to East Germany (not always voluntarily), and this left those newly-created western parts of Poland underpopulated. So vast numbers of people living in what had been eastern Poland were forced to relocate to western Poland. Ukrainians still have very bitter feelings about it and blame the Poles for it -- which may be justified, but I strongly suspect Joseph Stalin is the one who deserves the blame. Anyway, it was a wrenching experience, and it also muddled things for those of us doing research. Very often the descendants of people we know came from western Ukraine now show up in western Poland. Chances are very good many of the Pusiak's in Zielona Gora and Leszno province were living in Ukraine just a few generations ago.

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

...I would like it if you could tell me what the name Penczkowski translates or derives from. The name is my mother's maiden name and I've also seen it spelled Pinkowski and Penkowski by other aunts and uncles, but my grandfather always used the cz and said that was the correct spelling.

Pinkowski and Penkowski are legitimate names in their own right, but it sounds to me as if you have reason to believe Penczkowski was the original form of the name, and that's certainly plausible. I should mention that whenever you see a Polish name with en, you must also consider the likelihood that it will also be spelled Pęczkowski or Pączkowski, where ą and ę (which are often interchangeable) refer to the Polish nasal vowels written as a with a tail under it and e with a tail under it, pronounced like on and en, respectively. Thus you're not just looking for Penczkowski, but also Pęczkowski, maybe even Pączkowski. The most likely form is Pęczkowski, as of 1990 there were 950 Poles by that name, only 10 named Penczkowski -- so this affects the spelling you want to look for. The Pęczkowski's were scattered all over the country, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (74), Bydgoszcz (100), Ciechanow (65), Czestochowa (54), Katowice (52), Konin (60), Lodz (60), Lublin (52), and Poznan (67). I'm afraid I don't see any helpful pattern in that distribution, the name is not concentrated in any one area.

Usually names ending in -owski refer to a place name ending in -i, -y, -ow, -owo, etc. So this name probably started as meaning "person with some connection to a place called Penczkowo, Pęczkowo, Pączkowo, Pączki," etc. As you might expect from so many alternatives, there are several different villages in Poland this name might come from, including 2 Pęckowo's in Pila and Poznan province, Pączkowo in Poznan province, and a few other possibilities. Without much more detailed info on the family, I can't suggest any one place as the one likely to be relevant in this case. However, if you have a little luck with your research and manage to trace the family to a particular area, and a village with a name beginning with Pęczk- is anywhere close, chances are good you've found the place the name originally referred to.

I know this isn't a lot of help, but unfortunately that's the way it usually is with Polish surnames -- sometimes they provide a really helpful clue, but most of the time there are just too many possibilities, especially considering spelling variations, multiple places with the same name, etc. So if this info isn't a lot of help, at least you're not the only one with this problem!

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

...I'm wondering if you happen to have any info on the name Zuraw. Apparently in Polish the word zuraw means "crane" or "gantry". Does that have any significance?

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions the name Żuraw (Ż, pronounced like the "s" in "measure") in his book on Polish surnames, and he says that the derivation of the surname is from the noun Żuraw, "crane," referring to the bird -- apparently the meaning "gantry" came later. By the way, the Ukrainian word, though spelled in Cyrillic, is pronounced and means the same thing. Rymut mentions that in old Polish the word was Żoraw, and it appears in records as early as 1204. I suppose the name may have started as nickname because someone reminded folks of a crane -- maybe he was thin and walked a certain way? All these centuries later it can be hard to figure out exactly why a certain name got stuck to certain people, the best we can do is examine what the name means and suggest plausible interpretations. There are a lot of names from this root, including Żurawek (little crane), Żurawicz (son of the crane), Żurawik (little crane, or crane's son), and Żurawski (coming from a place named for cranes). Żuraw itself is one of the more popular ones -- as of 1990 there were some 1,400 Poles with this name. They live all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (80), Kalisz (88), Lublin (119), Rzeszow (89), Siedlce (101), Sieradz (85), Tarnobrzeg (228), and Wroclaw (96). The name seems to be a bit more common in southern and especially southeastern Poland, but not so much so that it suggests anything helpful to me.

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

...I am a professor of French whose mother was French. My father was either of Polish, Ukraine or Hungarian ancestry. He was born in 1910 and placed in an orphanage at age two. I never gave much thought about my father's origins, but now that he is no longer with me, I do wonder about it. His last name was Sikola, but he also went by the last name Banaszak at one time (when very young). His mother's name was Dembkowski or something like that I think.

Well, Dembkowski is a common Polish surname, so that's likely enough to be right, but it doesn't help much because there are Dembkowski's all over Poland. Banaszak is a name meaning something like "Ben's son" -- Banach is an old nickname, so to speak, from a variant form of Benedykt, "Benedict" (Benoit, s'il vous plait!), and when the suffix -ak ("son of") was added to it, the guttural ch sound modified to the "sh" sound of sz: Banach + -ak = Banaszak. As of 1990 there were 5,410 Poles named Banaszak, living all over Poland, so that one doesn't help much either.

Sikola is a rare name, as of 1990 there were only 2 Poles by that name, living in the province of Walbrzych in southwestern Poland (unfortunately I don't have access to any further data such as addresses). It appears to come from a root meaning "to trickle, spurt," and in vulgar usage "to piss." Names ending in -ala and -ola usually denote someone who was in the habit of doing whatever the root of the word indicated, so this suggests Sikola was a name meaning "one who was always trickling, spurting." I know this isn't very complimentary, and I'm not trying to be offensive here, but all I can do is say what the word appears to mean -- and I've heard of people with names with this root changing them precisely because they got sick of people making fun of them (cmp. the notes under Krzywosika). So it's at least conceivable your father may have gone by Banaszak because that's a perfectly ordinary, common name, not so easily made fun of... However, that's pure speculation, which probably isn't much help to you.

To be honest, when I saw Sikola I wondered if it was a variant of Sikora, an extremely common name (39,850 Poles by that name in 1990), coming from sikora, the titmouse (a kind of bird). I may be completely wrong, mislead by the similarity in sound, but I have seen r and l interchanged occasionally in names, and Sikora was the first thing that came into my mind. I just wanted to mention it so you can keep it in the back of your mind, just in case it ever comes up.

...On one form he filled out in WWII he said she was born in Russia, on another, Ukraine, on another, Poland. When I asked him about it, he said that the territory had changed ownership several times over history and he wasn't sure. His half-sister, now deceased, said their father had Hungarian blood.

The most likely explanation is that he came from what was called Galicia, now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine -- though from the late 18th century to 1918 this area was ruled by Austria, it has also been ruled by Poland and Russia, so the varying data on those forms would be quite comprehensible if he came from there. Also, when you get into that area there's quite a mixing of ethnic groups over the centuries, it's not out of the question that you might run into ethnic Hungarians. That whole area was ruled by Austria-Hungary, so there are some possibilities of connections.

As for how you could try to learn more, I don't do research, but I think it's worthwhile suggesting you join the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053 -- I believe their dues are $15 a year, they put out a very fine newsletter twice a year, and they have some pretty good sources for research throughout the northeastern U. S. (and many of their members come from Galicia). If there's any group in the U. S. that might be able to offer some ideas for leads, especially regarding the Pennsylvania connection, PGS-NE is the one.

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

... Found a name on your web site and I want to thank you for that information. Do you have anything on Golaszewski or Stasiak??

Stasiak comes from a nickname for "Stanislaw" -- Poles often take the first couple of sounds from a popular first name, chop off the rest, and start adding suffixes; so Staś is a popular nickname for Stanislaw, and when you add on the -ak you get Stasiak, probably meaning "Stan's son." Surnames meaning "son of" someone with a common name are themselves very common -- as of 1990 there were some 19,870 Poles named Stasiak, living all over the country. Which only makes sense: this name could get started anywhere Polish was spoken and guys named Stas' had sons, namely, everywhere in Poland!

Golaszewski is also a fairly common name, there were 4,302 Poles by this name as of 1990, scattered all over the country. The ultimate root of the name is gol-, "bare," but this surname probably originated as a reference to a place name, meaning basically "person from Golasza or Golasze or Golaszewo" -- any of those place names could generate the surname Golaszewski. As you might suspect, there are several different villages bearing those names, so we can't pin down which one is that one your relatives took their name from. If you have a little luck with your research, however, you may find something that lets you focus on a specific area in Poland. If you do, and you locate a village nearby with a name beginning with Golasz-, that's probably the one your ancestors came from.

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

... If you are still offering your services to provide basic information about Polish surnames, I would like to know if you have any information on my family name. My grandfather, Donat Szoch, immigrated to the USA in either 1900 or 1902.

Assuming that Szoch is the correct form of the name -- and I have to, if we start trying to deal with possible variants we'll never get anywhere, there are too many -- there are a couple of likely sources for it. In Polish there is a rather rare or dialect term szoch meaning "bulrush," of which the dictionary says: "1. Any of various aquatic or wetland herbs of the genus Scirpus, having grasslike leaves and usually clusters of small, often brown spikelets. 2. Any of several wetland plants of similar aspect, such as the papyrus and the cattail."

The other root I find is German Schoch -- a Pole hearing that name would spell it Szoch, so a German by that name who lived among Poles might well come to spell it that way. In German Schoch is a name from an old German word meaning "hay barn." So it appears we're dealing with a Polish name meaning "bulrush" - - and many Polish names do come from plant names, so that's plausible -- or a German name meaning "hay barn." In both cases, the name probably got started as a reference to a feature near where someone lived; he lived near a prominent growth of bulrushes, or near a hay barn. From the info I have available, those seem the two most likely derivations.

The name is pretty rare in Poland. As of 1990 there were 71 Polish citizens named Szoch, and here is a breakdown by the provinces they lived in: Warsaw 10, Białystok 14, Bydgoszcz 18, Katowice 1, Łomża 4, Lodza 1, Olsztyn 2, Ostrołęka 1, Radom 1, Siedlce 10, Suwałki 9. Unfortunately I don't have access to any more details such as first names or addresses. For what it's worth, however, the name seems more common in northeastern and northcentral Poland, and Warsaw, Białystok, and Suwałki provinces were areas ruled for a long time by Russia, so it would make sense a person coming from there would be listed on the census as born in "Russia-Poland."

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

... Wondered if you have info on the surnames Zacharek and Zachemska. They lived near Nowy Targ before 1900. My wife's grandfather who came from Hungary thought Zacharek was of Bohemian origin but my grandparents and my father who was born in Budapest Hungary spoke Polish.

Regarding Zachemski (the -ska is just the feminine form, no other difference), here are notes I wrote on this name, also spelled Zahemski, for another researcher:

...This one did not appear in the book because it is so rare. 1990 government databases list no Polish citizen by this name. However, h and ch are pronounced exactly the same in Polish, so the spelling Zachemski is also relevant, and as of 1990 there were 21 Poles by that name, all living in the province of Nowy Sacz, in south central Poland. I have to wonder if this is a mangled form of some other name, because I can find no Polish root that Zachemski would come from.

[Added note, 27 Feb 1998: Unfortunately, I do not have any details such as first names, addresses, etc., for those 21 Zachemski's in Nowy Sacz province. You might be able to get that info if you have a search done of the Nowy Sacz provincial phone directory. No guarantees, but that's the only way I can think of to get such info. The PGSA and the PGS-Northeast, 8 Lyle Road, New Britain CT 06053, can do such searches, contact them if you'd like to inquire about what's involved -- WFH].

You know, it could be we're dealing with a variant of a more common name, affected by dialect, mispronuncation, misspelling, something. The za- part makes perfect sense, it's a prefix and a preposition meaning "past, beyond, on the other side of." It's possible, for instance, that this name was originally something like Zachełmski, meaning "from the other side of Chełm," or "person from Zachełmie," the name of several villages that were "beyond, past Chełm." This makes sense too because that ł is pronounced so softly that sometimes it is just dropped, which would yield something sounding very like "Zachemski."

Also, a name Zachemba appears in the Surname Directory (very rare, only 8 bearers), and when the suffix -ski is added on that b sound would tend to disappear, again yielding "Zachemski." That name doesn't appear in the Directory either, but to me either Zachełmski or Zachembski sounds "more Polish" than Zachemski.

That's the end of the note on Zachemski. Zacharek is a name meaning "little Zachary" or "son of Zachary." As of 1990 there were 953 Poles with this name, living all over Poland but with the largest numbers (more than 40) in the provinces of Warsaw (41), Bydgoszcz (73), Gdansk (47), Koszalin (81), Olsztyn (49), Ostrołęka (140), and Torun (270). This suggests the name is most common in northcentral Poland, but is found elsewhere -- which is really what you'd expect with a surname formed from a popular first name. Such surnames could and did originate anywhere Polish was spoken and there were fellows named Zachariasz (in Ukrainian Zakhar) who had sons, i. e., anywhere in Poland.

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

...I really don't like to take advantage, but I have always been curious about the family surnames of Chmelyk and Yuzda from Galicia.

Chmelyk is not tough, that's a Ukrainian form, equivalent to Chmielik in Polish, and it refers to hops, the plant used in beermaking. Most likely the surname started out meaning "hopster" or perhaps "son of the hopster." As of 1990 there were 13 Polish citizens named Chmelik, a spelling variation of Chmelyk. But as I said, Chmelyk is a Ukrainian form, it's probably quite a bit more common in Ukraine, although unfortunately I have no source of data with which to check. (in Poland there are 372 Chmielik's, so it's not a really common name in Poland, but not rare either).

Since the sources I have are mainly in Polish, and Yuzda is a phonetic spelling of a name originally written in Cyrillic, I looked for the Polish spelling Juzda (Polish j is pronounced like our y) -- but I struck out, no Juzda's at all. At first I couldn't find any root it might derive from. But then I noticed in the dictionary a note that helped -- it mentioned, in connection with another word, that sometimes words beginning with J/Y are dialect variants of words with neither. In other words, Juzda/Yuzda can very well be a dialect variant of Uzda; this happens with other words, e. g. the word for "already" in Polish is już (pronounced sort of like "yoosh"), but in Russian and Ukrainian it's uzhe -- the main difference is that one puts a Y sound before the u, the other doesn't. And uzda I can find, in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian --it means "horse's halter, bridle." That may sound odd as a name, but there are many other similar terms that became surnames, probably starting as nicknames because a man made halters, or sold them, or used them, something like that.

So it's plausible -- not certain, but plausible -- that Juzda is simply a variant of Uzda and meant originally "halter, bridle." Neither name is common in Poland, but might be a little more common in Ukraine -- as I say, I have no data on that.

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

...I checked "the book", pp 468 for Story but the closest name is Storc. Story is on a baptismal certificate twice. Penmanship is very poor however I remember the surname Story being used at home a long time ago so I do believe it is a legitiminate Polish name. Unfortunately I've been blessed with rare surnames: Budarz (11) and Charamut (13). Is this another one?

You need to travel back in time and tell your ancestors to get easier names!

However, by comparison, this is a common one: Story was the name of 246 Polish citizens as of 1990. They were scattered all over, with the largest numbers (more than 10) in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (11), Elblag (14), Gorzow (25), Olsztyn (14), Rzeszow (38), Tarnobrzeg (40), Wroclaw (24).

As for the meaning, there are a couple of possibilities. The dictionary mentions stora as a variant of sztora, which means "window blind." That seems unlikely as a surname root, but I've learned never to say "never"... However, when I first saw this name I thought "That just might be a dialect variant of Stary, 'old.' I wonder if it is?" Well, here in the Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland, right after Story, is an entry for Storybrat -- now I know that is a variant of an established name, Starybrat, literally "old brother." This proves that Story can occasionally be just a variant of Stary, also not an extremely common name (192) but not rare either. Given a choice between "window blind" and "old," I'd go with "old" every time. Besides, in Polish the pronunciations of O and A are similar, they're easily confused and switched.

So that's my best guess: you're dealing with a dialect variation of the word meaning "old."

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

...I have an ancestor with the last name Jaks/Joks. Is there some connection with Jaktor/Hektor? The first entries of this name appear in the register of the catholic church in the village Mikstat in the province Kalisz (formerly province Poznan) in 1803. I searched for this name in registers of several surrounding catholic, Jewish and Lutheran parishes. I could not find any references before 1803.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions Jaks in his book on Polish surnames, saying that it derives from short forms or nicknames of the first names Jakub (Jacob) and Jakim (Joachim) -- possibly others, too, but those would be the main ones. Another expert, Maria Malec, lists it among the derivatives of Jakub. So in most cases I would expect Jaks to be a short form of Jakub; in an individual case it might derive from the name Jaktor/Hektor, but those names are a lot less common in Poland than Jakub, so odds are Jakub (or Jakim) is the connection in question. One problem with this name is that it probably was, originally, just a nickname, and a halfway common one at that; with nicknames that became frozen as surnames, you can only go so far back before you don't know whether the name should be treated as a nickname or surname.

It's interesting that there's a work called the Dictionary of Old Polish Personal Names [Slownik staropolskich nazw osobowych], a collection by scholars of the first few appearances of names in old documents. Jaks is mentioned briefly in a 1485 entry in the Poznan Council Records ("Iakx, cerdo ruff[us])", and again in 1486. There are numerous citations of the name Jaksa/Jaksza/Jaxa. So these are old names. However, Jaks is probably common enough that you shouldn't jump to the conclusion this fello was an ancestor of yours -- I just wanted to show you that the name has been around a while!

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

...Thank you for putting together the very informative home page regarding Polish surnames. Unfortunately I did not find Pilsudski. This was my mother's maiden name. I would appreciate any information you may have regarding the surname of Pilsudski.

Piłsudski (the l with a slash through it is pronounced like our w) is a surname deriving from a place name, and the Polish name of the place is Piłsudy, in what is now Lithuania. I cannot find it on maps, so I do not known the Lithuanian name, but it is surely very similar, probably something like Pilsude. I did find this information in an 1890's Polish gazetteer (Polish names are given first, Lithuanian names are given in brackets, when I could find them):

Piłsudy, 1) a village in Rossienie [Raseiniai] county, parish of Gierdyszki [Girdiske]. 2) a manor and village, Rossienie [Raseiniai] county, parish of Skawdwile [Skaudvile], property of the Wojdyllos.

So there were actually two places named Piłsudy, both fairly close to each other, near the town of Rossienie [now Raseiniai] in Lithuania; the inhabitants of one went to the Catholic parish in Gierdyszki to register births, deaths, and marriages, the inhabitants of the other went to the church in Skawdwile. The Polish leader Gen. Jozef Piłsudski was surely of noble birth, and usually when you have a Polish noble name in -ski from the name of a place, it is connected with a manor -- so I imagine the 2nd one was the seat of the noble Piłsudskis, even though another family (Wojdyllo) owned it as of 1890 or so.

As of 1990 there were only 8 Polish citizens living in Poland who had the name Piłsudski, living in the provinces of Warsaw (1), Gdansk (1), and Kielce (6). (I have no access to further details such as names and addresses, so I'm afraid the info I give here is all I can have). However, that data deals only with people living within Poland's current boundaries -- there may be more Piłsudskis living in Lithuania, but I don't have any info on that.

Since Piłsudski was so important in Polish history, there are probably books on him and his family -- you might write to see if one of the volunteers can find anything in the Library of the Polish Museum of America that would give background on the family. You might also want to write a gentleman named David Zincavage (jdz1@delphi.com), he is very interested in Lithuanian research and nobility, he might have more info on the surname, the village, etc. If not, he may be able to recommend some places where you could learn more. It wouldn't hurt to ask.

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

... I ran across your web page while searching for info, places, & history on the net. My last name is Szulczewski...anything you can tell me about would be greatly appreciated.

Names ending in -ewski usually -- not always, but usually -- derive from the name of a place, and that name tends to end in -ow, -owa, -owo, -ew, -ewa, -ewo, or sometimes -y or -i. The most likely name would be something like "Szulczewo," though any of the other possibilities (and more!) can enter into it. I can't find mention in my gazetteers or maps of a specific village by the right name, although there was a Szulcowo some 80 km. from Kaunas in Lithuania, and another not too far from Vitebsk in Belarus. The fact that these places are no longer in Poland is no issue, at one time they were ruled by Poles and Poles lived there, also the inhabitants of the areas often identified themselves as Polish citizens regardless of their ethnic origin... There are also a few villages called Szulec that might come into play, but I see nothing to point to any particular one.

It's worth mentioning that any name in Szulc- usually derives from szulc, the Polish spelling of German Schultz, equivalent to Polish sołtys, meaning a kind of village headman or bailiff. So Szulczewski probably started out meaning "person associated with the village of Szulczewo (or the other possibilities)," and the name of that place in turn meant "the headman's place." This is relevant because a name like that could refer to just a very small settlement or farm that was owned by the local village administrator. So that name might be one used only by local inhabitants, it might never show up on any map or in any gazetteer, and yet such names generated surnames.

As of 1990 there were 1,159 Polish citizens with this name, so it is not rare. They lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (73), Bydgoszcz (74), Gorzow (70), Lodz (99), Płock (140), Poznan (145), Szczecin (94), and Wloclawek (126), and smaller numbers in virtually every other province. The only pattern to that distribution I see is that the name tends to be found mostly in central and western Poland, in areas once ruled by Germans (which is not surprising in view of the Schultz link). I should add that I have no access to more detailed info, such as first names and addresses.

I'm sorry I couldn't offer you more in the way of specific pointers, but it's that way with the majority of Polish surnames -- there are just too many places with names from which a particular surname could arise. You're going to find people with names begining Szulc- all over Poland, but especially in the areas closest to Germany. There just isn't any clue in the name itself to help pin it down.

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

... I have been recently searching for my grandmother's maiden name to begin the quest of tracing my heritage. Her sister in law has tried, in the past, however, to no avail. Finding your website may give me a better chance at understanding just who I am, and possibly give my grandmother the gift of better knowing hers. The surname that I am looking for is Ogitzak.

I have looked through all my sources, and I'm afraid I have to admit I'm stumped. I can find nothing that appears to be related to this name. To start with, that is not a Polish spelling, although the name definitely appears to be Slavic; in Polish the tz would be spelled c, so I tried looking for Ogitzak or Ogicak, and found neither. There was no one in Poland with either name as of 1990, and none of my books shed any light on them. The only possibility I can think of -- and it's pretty far-fetched -- is that the family with this name might have lived in the part of Poland ruled by Russia, and the name was changed. Russian doesn't use the sound h, and Russians regularly turn h into g, so that in Russian I am called "Goffman" instead of "Hoffman." If that's relevant, the name might originally have been something like Ohidzak or Ohydzak; phonetically speaking, that is at least plausible. There is a Polish root ohyda that means "something horrible, dreadful, frightful, monstrous," and it is theoretically possible that a surname Ohydzak might derive from that and then turn into Ogitzak due to Russian phonetic influence. If so, the name would mean something like "son of the frightful one, hideous one." This is not a particularly pleasant name -- although I've seen plenty of Polish surnames that meant things like this, and worse. I wouldn't blame you a bit if you don't take it this too seriously, especially since I've had to make several stretches just to get to it; also, there was no one in Poland with this name or any likely spelling as of 1990. So it's far-fetched, as I said. But it's the only thing close to an explanation I can find!

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

...Please can you help? My wife is a Kuss from Lodz. Where might her family have originated from?

The short answer is, there's no way to know. Kuss, in that form, appears to be a German name, perhaps from the root Kuss, meaning "kiss." But it may be a variation of a nickname for a first name such as "Kosmo," or it might be a Germanized spelling of a Polish name beginning with the root kus-, which can mean "small chunk of bread," "tempt," "short, scanty," "a young boy," etc. There just isn't enough info to say anything more definite.

As of 1990 there were 70 Polish citizens named Kuss, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 2, Białystok 3, Bydgoszcz 17, Ciechanow 2, Czestochowa 1, Elblag 1, Gdansk 5, Katowice 5, Legnica 14, Lodz 4, Lublin 5, Poznan 2, Szczecin 2, Torun 4, Wroclaw 3. If you are determined, you might be able to get hold of a Lodz province phone directory and see if any of the Kuss'es in Lodz are listed (they may not be, phones in private homes are by no means universal in Poland), and that might provide an address for someone to write to. Other than that, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. The source from which I got the above data does not contain any more details such as first names and addresses, and I have no access to any such data. A telephone directory search is by no means certain to succeed, but it's the only way I know of you might be able to learn more.

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

My grandfather was born in Biavestake (sp?), Poland. Do you know anything about this surname [Formanski]?

In Polish it is spelled with an accent over the N and pronounced roughly "fore-MINE-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 169 Polish citizens by that name. They were scattered in small numbers 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 is a variant of Furmański, from furman, "coachman." So Formański or Furmański would mean "of the coachman," presumably referring to the kin of one who made his living that way.

I can tell you there is no place in Poland named "Biavestake" -- that name has been badly mangled somewhere along the way. I don't know what it would have been originally. It might, possibly, have been Białystok, written with a slash through the L and pronounced roughly "b'yah-wee-stock." It is a sizable town in the far northeastern corner of Poland. One problem with this theory, however, is that the Surname Directory shows no one named Formański living in the province of Białystok as of 1990; so if your kin did live in the area once, it appears they no longer do.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I have been told many things over my life about my heritage, it just seems that I can't tell what is true. My surname is Gorski, and yes I state it with pride. I am wondering if you can tell me what it means, and approximately how old it is.

In Polish the name Gorski is spelled with an accent over the O, Górski, pronounced roughly "GOOR-skee" -- the accent over the O causes it to be pronounced like Polish U, and that's why you also see it spelled Gurski sometimes, but Górski is the standard spelling. As of 1990 there were 41,790 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over Poland, with no significant concentration in any one area; a Górski family could come from practically anywhere.

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 1386. The root of the name is góra, "mountain, hill." So górski is just an adjectival form meaning "of, from, pertaining to, connected with the mountain or hill." Sometimes the name just means "hill-guy, the guy who lives on the hill," and sometimes it refers to any of the jillion villages with names formed from that root góra, thus "one from Góra, Góry, Górka, Górsko, etc." Or in other words, this name developed among Poles much the same way the surname Hill developed among English-speakers.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I was wondering if you find me something definitive on the name Grabowski

In Polish this name is generally pronounced "grah-BOFF-skee," or in everyday speech it would often sound like "grah-BOSS-kee" -- which is why one may sometimes see it spelled Graboski. But Grabowski is the standard form (with Grabowska used when referring to females).

It is a very common surname 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 54,652 Polish citizens named Grabowski. They lived all over the country in large numbers, so it's highly likely there are many separate Grabowski families, not just one big one, and they are found all over 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 1387, and generally derives from the name of a place where the family lived or worked at some point centuries ago. It could refer to any of a large number of places with names beginning Grab-, including Grabowo, Grabów, Grabowa, Grabowo, Grabowice, Grabówka, Graby, etc. In such cases there is no possible way to know which of those places a given Grabowski family was connected with, short of doing genealogical research that traces them back to a specific region.

Those place names, in turn, derive from the root seen in such Polish words as grabie, "rake"; grab, "the hornbeam tree"; and grabić, "to plunder." Thus a place name like Grabowo would often have started out meaning "place of the hornbeams," and the surname Grabowski would mean "one from the place of the hornbeams." But place names beginning Grab- could also have been named for an owner or founder named Grab, and that name could come from the expression for "plunder" or "rake" or "hornbeam."

So there are no specific answers available through general research; only research into the past of a specific family can uncover facts that will establish the exact origin of this name in that family's case, and perhaps why it seemed appropriate to call them that.

I should add that sometimes surnames in the form X-owski can mean just "kin of X." So Grabowski might, in certain specific cases, mean "kin of Grab," referring to an ancestor by that name. But as a rule these -owski names tend to refer to place names. If you trace your Grabowski family to a specific area in Poland and then find a place nearby with a name beginning Grab-, chances are fair that's the place the name referred to. (Of course, you couldn't be positive unless and until research established it -- there are just too many places in Poland with names that qualify).

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I am interested in finding out the meaning of the surname Gucwa. If you have any info, I would appreciate it.

Gucwa, pronounced roughly "GOOTS-vah," is a moderately common name by Polish standards. As of 1990 there were 1710 Polish citizens by that name, living all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the southcentral and southeastern part of Poland, in the provinces of Katowice (164), Krakow (163), Nowy Sacz (278), and Tarnow (455).

I have a book by a Polish name expert that focuses on names from that region, and it mentions Gucwa, saying that it may come from a short form of the old Germanic first name Guttwein or Gottwin. This is not as implausible as it might seem; it is credible that Poles might modify that name into Gucwa, and historically large numbers of Germans have lived in those regions. So absent any more definitive source, I'd have to say that's the best explanation I can offer.

The Germanic name was introduced in the area centuries ago with German soldiers, prisoners of war, and colonists who came to settle in southcentral and southeastern Poland, and over time Poles modified that name Guttwein or Gottwin, which sounded very foreign to them, into something a little more consistent with their phonetic preferences. They took Guttwein, dropped the last few sounds, turned the T sound into the "ts" sound spelled as a "c" in Polish, and changed the ending to -wa, a suffix that shows up fairly often in Polish names.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I am trying to locate information about my last name Jaskulski... Please advise of any information about the history of my name...

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He explains that it comes from the root seen in the noun jaskółka, which refers to the bird we call a swallow. In Polish the O has an accent over it and the L has a slash through it; and sounds like "yoss-KOOW-kah." The accented O is pronounced the same as U in Polish, which is why you often see names spelled either way. That's the word the surname comes from.

Jaskulski sounds like "yoss-KOOL-skee," but it can also be spelled Jaskólski, pronounced the same way (when the -ski is added, Ł changes to normal L). You want to keep an eye open for either spelling, since the same person might be Jaskólski in one record and Jaskulski in the next. Literally this name would mean "of the swallow," and might refer to an ancestor whom people associated with swallows for some reason. An ancestor might have imitated a swallow, or dressed in clothes that reminded people of a swallow's coloring, or lived in an area where there were lots of swallows -- hard to say which derivation might apply in a given instance.

Rymut points out that this name can also refer to the names of places in Poland derived from the word for swallow. In other words, Jaskulski or Jaskólski can also just mean "one from Jaskółki." There's more than one place by that name, and only detailed research into your family's history might uncover facts that would clarify which one your particular Jaskulskis 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 4,867 Polish citizens named Jaskólski. There were another 5,113 who spelled it Jaskulski. Both names were common all over the country, and give no clue what area a given Jaskólski or Jaskulski family might have come from. As I said, only research into the history of your particular family would establish that; the surname itself gives no clue.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Any ideas on the origin of Kaniewski from the Torun area circa 1905 immigration?

In Polish Kaniewski would be pronounced roughly "con-YEFF-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 7,194 Polish citizens named Kaniewski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 924, Bydgoszcz 221, Katowice 292, Kielce 303, Lodz 235, Pila 315, Poznan 424, Siedlce 212, Skierniewice 222, and Wloclawek 545. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

Names ending in -ewski usually refer to the name of a place the family came from centuries ago. In this case, one would expect the name means "one from Kanie or Kaniew or Kaniewo," or some similar place name.

Unfortunately, there are a number of places in Poland that would fit. There are a couple of villages named Kaniewo in the former (1975-1998) province of Wloclawek, including one about 25-30 km. south-southwest of Torun, and another farther south, near Lubraniec. Either of these could plausibly be the place the surname refers to in your specific case. But only genealogical research might uncover facts that would allow you to say for sure "This is the one." Without that kind of detailed info, I can only suggest possible candidates. I think chances are good one of those Kaniewo's is the one the surname refers to, but I don't have enough information to be certain.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Do you have any idea what the name Kasprzycki means, if there is a meaning.

It's pronounced roughly "kosp-ZHIT-skee" (with the -a- in the first syllable sounding halfway between a short o and "ah"). It means more or less "son of little Casper" or "kin of Casper's son." In Polish Casper is either Kacper or Kasper. Add the diminutive suffix -yk to Kasper and it becomes Kasprzyk, "little Casper, son of Casper." Kasprzycki is literally an adjective meaning "of Kasprzyk," but in practical terms the name would usually mean what I indicated above.

Scholars are not positive what that name Kasper comes from, but they think it might be from Persian kansbar, "treasurer, keeper of the treasure." This name caught on among Christians because medieval tradition said it was the name of one of the three Wise Men or Magi who visited the infant Jesus, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (the other two were Melchior and Balthazar).

Kasprzycki could also conceivably mean "one from Kasprzyce" or some such place name, which in turn would have meant "[place] of Casper's son." But offhand I couldn't find any place with a name that fits, so I'm inclined to think it began as a reference to a person rather than a place. I should say, however, that there are many surnames derived from names of places that are too small to show up on most maps, or that have disappeared or been renamed. But even if the name does refer to a place called Kasprzyce or something similar, that name in turn started as a reference to a Casper or son of Casper who owned or founded the place at some point centuries ago. So one way or another, it all comes back to Casper.

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 2,949 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over the country, with no particular concentration in any one area.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Surname is Kucharska

Kucharska is the feminine form of Kucharski, pronounced roughly "koo-HAR-skee." 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 1395, and usually refers to a family's origin in or connection with any of a number of villages named Kuchary. The basic root kuchar- means "cook," so that Kucharski could mean simply "kin of the cook." But in most instances it would refer to a family's coming from one of those villages named Kuchary, which in turn presumably got that name because of some connection with cooks. The only one to find out which one your particular family came from would be through genealogical research, tracing the family generation by generation till you find documents that tell exactly where they come from. At that point it may be possible to identify a nearby village Kuchary, which would probably be the one the surname referred to.

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 30,949 Polish citizens named Kucharski. They lived all over Poland, with no significant concentration in any one area.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Hi. My father is Stanley John Mastalisz.

All he knows is that his surname was changed, he thinks, from Mastalerz or some other such spelling. I do have some living relatives in Poland still.

They would be on my father's mother's side. Can you give me any info?

Mastalerz is probably the right spelling. 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 masztalerz, "court master of the horse." So it was a ceremonial position of honor held by a noble in the court of a king or lord; he was theoretically responsible for seeing to the state of the lord's stable. Of course, he had peasants who did all the actual work -- but that's what the word means.

Mastalerz is pronounced roughly "mos-TALL-esh." It is a variant of that noun masztalerz, which sounds more like "mosh-TALL-esh."

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 3,897 Polish citizens named Mastalerz. There wasn't any one area in which they were concentrated; a Mastalerz family could come from practically anywhere in Poland. (There were another 1,203 Poles who used the form Masztalerz.)

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I'm a high school student at Resurrection H.S. in Chicago. My U.S. History class was given the assignment of researching our family history, including name origin, if possible. While the paper is due within the next week, I would appreciate it greatly if you could forward any information you might have on the Mielcarek family name, simply to satisfy my family's own curiosity.

In Polish the name Mielcarek is pronounced roughly "m'yell-TSAR-eck." Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions it in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles], saying that names beginning Mielcar-, Mielczar-, and Milczar- come from an archaic noun, mielcarz, "maltster, brewer." The suffix -ek is a diminutive, so Mielcarek would mean literally "little maltster." It might have begun as an affectionate nickname for one who produced or sold malt, or it might simply have meant "son of the maltster." Many X-ek names do just mean "son of X." Either way, the name clearly indicates that an ancestor was associated with malt in some way.

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 5,723 Polish citizens named Mielcarek. They lived all over Poland, with particularly large numbers in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 520, Kalisz 1,112; Konin 348; Leszno 319; and Poznan 1,144. This name was most common in the western part of the country.

Even more common was the form Mielczarek (11,379) ("m'yell-CHAW-reck"), meaning the same thing; it's just a slightly different form of the same name. If you researched the family you might find the name spelled Mielcarek one time, Mielczarek the next -- such variations are very common in the records.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Would the surnames Modrzejewski and Modrzewski be the same regarding origin and meaning? If not can you tell me about Modrzejewski please?

The answer "by the book" is that these aren't the same surnames. Modrzewski sounds like "mo-JEFF-skee," whereas Modrzejewski sounds like "mo-jay-EFF-skee." I should add that in everyday talk there's a tendency to drop the "ff" sound spelled W in names with the endings -ewski and -owski, so that Modrzewski would often sound more like "mo-JESS-kee" (which Poles would spell phonetically Modrzeski), and Modrzejewski would sound more like "mo-jay-ESS-kee" (Modrzejeski). Both would almost certainly refer to the name of a place the family came from at some point centuries ago. Modrzewski would point toward a place with a name Modrze or Modrzew or Modrzewek or Modrzewie; Modrzejewski would point toward a Modrzejewo or Modrzejowice.

Unfortunately, there are a number of places by all those names I mentioned, so only research into a specific family might uncover info that will clarify exactly which place they came from. Just from the surname there's no way to tell whether a given Modrzewski family came from this village or that village (there are at least 8 with names Modrzew, Modrzewo, Modrzewie, etc.). And there are at least two places Modrejewski could refer to, Modrzejewo and Modrzejowice. That's not counting smaller places that may exist but don't show up on my maps.

But as I say, if we go by the book, the names are distinct, referring to different places of origin, and in theory should not be confused.

The way things are on planet Earth, however, people don't always go by the book. Obviously these two names sound similar and are related semantically. It's not at all unlikely that people might slur the pronunciation of Modrzejewski to where it was easily confused with Modrzewski. A good illustration is the fact the famous Polish actress Helena Modrzejewska spelled her name Mojeska and Modjeska when she came to the United States. She realized Americans had trouble spelling and pronouncing it, so she changed to a form that more closely resembled the way it sounded, in terms of English phonetics. Strictly speaking "Mojeska" would be spelled phonetically Modrzeska (or properly, Modrzewska) by Poles, which is not the same as her real name. But the point is, the way people pronounced her name, it sounded a lot like Mojeska or Modrze[w]ska.

So the two names should be distinct. But in plain everyday talk, they are easily confused.

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 4,873 Polish citizens named Modrzejewski (which includes females named Modrzejewska). They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 553, Gdansk 282, Lodz 341, Poznan 275, and Wloclawek 586. This indicates the name is most common in central to western Poland. 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.

As of 1990 there were 880 Poles named Modrzewski (and Modrzewska), so it's a less common name. The largest numbers lived in these provinces: Warsaw 110, Biala Podlaska 89, Elblag 65, and Olsztyn 103. So it's more common in northeastern and eastern Poland. But both names are found all over the country.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I was wondering if you can give me some history on my last name, Motovidlak. I'm curious how old it is and the nationality of it.

Also, how many Motovidlak's there are. Thank you.

In Polish this name is spelled Motowidlak, pronounced roughly "mo-to-VEED-lock." 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 10 Polish citizens by this name. They lived in the following provinces: Katowice 4, Rzeszow 6. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses.

There's one thing you might try. In the July 2000 issue of the Polish-American Journal, the PAJ Answerman suggested one can find individuals or families "by contacting the one office in Poland that has on file the addresses of all people currently living in Poland: Centralne Biuro Adresowe, ul. Kazimierzowska 60, 02-543 Warsaw, POLAND." I have no idea whether this works or not, and it's of no help if a name is scattered all over the country. But in instances where a name is highly concentrated in one area, I pass the info along, because if this Central Address Office does succeed in providing you with addresses, chances are very good those addresses belong to relatives. It's worth a try.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. It comes from the noun motowidło, "a reeling-machine, spool." An ancestor presumably got that name because he made or sold or worked with such a machine. The suffix -ak in surnames generally means "kin of, son of, one associated with," so it seems likely this surname began as a way of referring to the son or kin of one called Motowidło because of a connection with reeling or spooling. The name Motowidło is more common, borne by 361 Poles as of 1990; a diminutive, Motowidełko, "little reel, little spool," was borne by 59 Polish citizens as of 1990.

I am assuming this name is Polish. It could develop in other Slavic languages; I don't know. I deal mainly with Polish names, so that's all I can talk about. Thinking about it, though, it's certainly possible the same name, spelled with a V instead of a W, could develop in other languages, too, such as Czech. It would presumably mean more or less the same thing, however.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Do you have any information on the surname Agopsowicz ??? If you do, could you please send me info?

Regarding the last name Agopsowicz. Thats my maiden name. If you have any info regarding this name. I live in Regina, Sask, Canada. Where there is a lot of Agopsowicz's here form the Zehner area. Love to hear from you regarding this name.

This one is fascinating. The suffix -owicz means "son of," so this means "son of Agops." But I had never run across that name before, and the -ops ending did not sound right for a Polish or Slavic name. But then I looked in a book on Polish surnames by Jan Stanislaw Bystron, Polskie Nazwiska, and sure enough, he mentioned Agopsowicz! It is listed among names coming originally from Armenian, and means "son of Jacob" -- apparently in Armenian this name is Agop or something similar. So the name, at least, would suggest an ancestor of the family was Armenian, but later came to Poland or the Slavic regions east of Poland. If they had held fast to their Armenian roots, the name would be something like Agopyan, since most native Armenian names end with that suffix -yan. The fact that the name ends in -owicz suggests they came to be Polonized, since that suffix is Polish (or, in the spelling -ovich or -ovych, Ukrainian or Russian or Belarusian).

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 67 Polish citizens named Agopsowicz. They were scattered in tiny numbers all over the country. The only "concentration" was in southcentral and southwest Poland, in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (8), Krakow (8), and Wroclaw (13). These numbers show just how widely scattered the name is, if these are the largest numbers in any provinces. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

I also looked in an index of names appearing in the 15-volume Polish gazetteer Slownik geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego (Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland), published in the late 1800's. It shows that there were several villages or estates owned by people named Agopsowicz, so clearly this name can be one borne by nobles. Here are the four places this work mentions and their owners as of the time of publication:

Balince, village, Kolomyja county, owner Jakob de Hasso Agopsowicz [Vol. I, p. 88]. Bazar, village, Czortkow county, owner Jozef Agopsowicz [Vol. I, p. 121]
Buczaczki, village, Kolomyja county, owner Kajetan Agopsowicz [Vol. I, p. 437] Czernelica, village, Horodenka county, owner Antoni Agopsowicz [Vol. II, p. xvi].

All these places are now in the country of Ukraine, which used to be ruled by Poland. If you want to find these places on a map, it is possible you might be able to find them at this Website: http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/loctown.htm

Or you might find some useful material at the InfoUkes Website: www.infoukes.com

Or at this Website, which specializes in research in Galicia (the former crown land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that consisted of what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine): www.halgal.com

Since at least some Agopsowiczes were noble, you might be able to learn more about them if you post a question to the mailing list Herbarz-L. It is frequented by gentlemen with access to various armorials and libraries, and very often they are able to provide some information on specific noble families and their coats of arms. To subscribe (which costs nothing), send an E-mail message with just the word SUBSCRIBE to this address:

HERBARZ-L-request@rootsweb.com

No one reads this note -- a computer will process it automatically, add you to the mailing list, and send you a brief note explaining procedures. Then you can post a note to the list itself, where it will be read by the members, at this address: HERBARZ-L@rootsweb.com

It's possible they can tell you more about this name or family.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

My grandmother was from Szarwark, Poland, and her maiden name was Mozdzierz. I am doing my genealogy and would like to know what this name means or where it came from.

In Polish Mozdzierz is usually spelled with an accent over the first Z. So this name would be spelled Moździerz, and is pronounced roughly "MOZH-jesh."

You might also sometimes see it spelled with that first Z having a dot over it instead of an accent. This reflects a subtle difference in pronunciation, and to be honest, it's not significant for our purposes. Just remember it might be spelled with a dotted Z instead of an accented one, and this is just a minor spelling variation. As of 1990 there were 37 Poles who spelled it that way, scattered in small numbers all over the country.

Polish name experts say Moździerz derives from the noun moździerz, which means "mortar." Thus it probably began as a nickname for an ancestor whom people associated with mortar. Perhaps he made or sold mortar, or used it extensively in his work. That's typically how such names get started, although one can never be sure of the exact meaning of a nickname without detailed research into the specific family that came to bear the name. Still, it makes sense that a family wouldn't have come to be called "Mortar" unless an ancestor had some clear, obvious connection with the making, sale, or use of mortar.

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 952 Polish citizens named Moździerz. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Katowice 69, Krakow 46, Tarnow 491, and Wroclaw 91. 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 makes it clear the name is found all over Poland but tends to be concentrated primarily in southwestern to southeastern Poland, especially near the city of Tarnow in southeastern Poland. This is consistent with your info, since the only place I can find named Szarwark was in Tarnow province under the setup in force 1975-1998; it's northeast of Tarnow. So the Tarnow area is where you need to concentrate your research.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

MSZAŃSKI

I believe there is a town named Mszana in Poland which means Mass???

There is a town in Poland named Mszana, but it doesn't mean "Mass" (although that's a reasonable guess). The name of that town comes from mszany, which, believe it or not, is the adjectival form of mech, "moss." So Mszana was called that because it was the "mossy" place. (The adjectival form of Msza, "Mass," is mszalny).

Does my name (Mszanski) mean I am from Mszana??

Mszana is a good candidate, but unfortunately it's not the only one. There are quite a few places in Poland with names from that root meaning "mossy," places called Mszana, Mszanka, Mszanna, Mszano, etc. This surname could refer to any of them. Suffixes were often dropped before adding -ski, so that Mszański could mean "one from Mszanko" or any of the other places mentioned. I think the Mszana in Nowy Sacz province (which actually consists of Mszana Dolna, "Lower Mszana," and Mszana Górna ("Upper Mszana") may be the place the surname is most likely to refer to. But you can't rule out the other possibilities without detailed research into a specific family's past.

In Polish the name is spelled with an accent over the N, and is pronounced roughly "M'SHINE-skee." It's not a very common 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 85 Polish citizens by this name. They lived in the following provinces: Gdansk 3, Jelenia Gora 10, Katowice 7, Konin 21, Krakow 8, Krosno 3, Lublin 6, and Nowy Sacz 27. 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 indicates the name is scattered all over Poland, with some concentration near the towns of Nowy Sacz and Konin. The ones near Nowy Sacz, obviously, would be especially likely to refer to Mszana Dolna and Górna, since they are fairly near Nowy Sacz.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

NIEMCZYK

Have been trying to locate the origin of my last name for some time to no avail. Any info you might have would be greatly appreciated.

The name Niemczyk is pronounced roughly "NYEM-chick." Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles], saying it appears in records as far back as 1376. He says it comes from the term niemiec, "German." Niemczyk would mean simply "son of the German," and as such, we'd expect it to be found pretty much all over Poland, since Germans came to resettle all over that country -- especially in the western parts, but not exclusively.

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 7,453 Polish citizens named Niemczyk. They lived all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the following provinces: Bielsko-Biala 830, Bydgoszcz 402, Gdansk 471, Katowice 1,736, Krosno 511, Rzeszow 295. 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 confirms the surname is found throughout Poland, so we can't pin down where a particular Niemczyk family might have come from just from the surname alone. Only genealogical research might establish that, by tracing the family back, generation by generation, till you find a document that tells exactly what part of Poland they came from.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

PAJĄKIEWICZ

Today I was reading PolishRoots and I found that you could tell me something brief about my surname... As you could see, my surname is Pajakiewicz and my grandfather was born in (for what I know) in Kurowice around 1901. I was trying to find some reference of Kurowice, but I couldn't.

In Polish the second A in this name is usually the nasal vowel Poles write as an A with a tail (ogonek) under it, pronounced somewhat like "on" in French bon, sometimes even like "on" in English "on."  So I write the name online as Pająkiewicz, pronounced roughly "pah-yonk-YEAH-veech," but of course in Polish that second A would have a tail under it, not a tilde after it.

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 60 Polish citizens by this name. They lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 8, Jelenia Gora 3, Katowice 4, Opole 3, Poznan 6, Walbrzych 15, and Wroclaw 21. 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.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. The first part of the name comes from the noun pająk, "spider," and the -ewicz part means "son of." So the name means literally "son of the spider," and probably began as referring to the son of one nicknamed "spider," perhaps because he reminded people of a spider, perhaps because he was associated with spiders in some other way.

As for Kurowice, there are several places by that name in Poland. I'm afraid your only hope is to find some document that specifies which one is the one your ancestors came from -- maybe a letter with an address, or a form that asks for place of birth. By itself, Kurowice just doesn't tell you enough to go on.

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 "Kurowic" as the place you're looking for, select "Poland" as the country to be searched, and select "All towns starting with this precise spelling." Click on "Start the search," and after a moment you'll see a list of various places in Poland with names starting Kurowic-. For each, 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.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

PAWLISZYN - PAWŁYSZYN

Pawlyszyn is the name I am researching.........late of Przemysl. Poland.

Pawlyszyn is actually a Ukrainian name -- which is not at all unusual. Przemysl is near the border with Ukraine, and we see a lot of mixing of Polish and Ukrainian names in that area. But the -yszyn suffix is distinctively Ukrainian (except that's a Polish way of spelling it).

This name is formed by taking the Ukrainian first name Pavlo (Paul), adding the suffix -ykha (woman of, wife of) and the suffix -yn (son of). The guttural -kh- turns into an "sh" sound when the -yn suffix is added. So it breaks down to "son of Paul's wife." Names ending in -ishyn or -ishin or -yshyn or -yshin (or as Poles spell it, -iszyn or -yszyn) are quite common in Ukrainian, whereas there is nothing quite like this in Polish. So while the family may have come from an area within the borders of Poland, and the spelling of the "sh" sound as -sz- is definitely Polish, there was at least some Ukrainian blood somewhere along the line, or this name would not have taken this form.

In Polish Pawlyszyn would be spelled not with plain L but rather with the L with a slash or crossbar, which is pronounced much like our W. So Pawłyszyn would sound like "pahv-WISH-inn." 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 43 Polish citizens by that name. They lived in the following provinces: Elblag 3, Jelenia Gora 2, Lublin 1, Lodz 2, Olsztyn 14, Ostrołęka 2, Slupsk 19. 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.

No Pawłyszyns were listed as living in Przemysl province as of 1990. This could be due to missing data -- data was lacking for about 6% of the population -- or it could be due to post-World War II forced relocations of many, many Ukrainians from east to west. In other words, most Pawłyszyns may have lived in the east and southeast before 1939, but by 1946 many of them had been forced to pack up and move west. Which makes tracing families these days that much harder.

A name meaning the same thing is Pawliszyn, pronounced "pahv-LEE-shin." The only difference is that the L is pronounced like L, not W, and the vowel after it sounds like "ee" instead of the short "i" spelled Y by Poles. In effect, this is the same name, just pronounced and spelled a little different. As of 1990 there were 643 Polish citizens by that name, living all over the country, but with 18 of them in Przemysl province. As I said, I have no data such as first names or addresses; but it proves this name, at least, still survives in the Przemysl area.

Since Ukrainian names developed a little differently, and are usually spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet, any Ukrainian name is essentially being written in a foreign alphabet when spelled by Poles or others who use the Roman alphabet. Thus Polish Pawłyszyn and Pawliszyn might be two different ways of spelling the same Ukrainian name, which would look kind of like this in the Cyrillic alphabet: Павлішин

The letter И in Ukrainian sounds like short i (which Poles spell Y); but in Russian it sounds like "ee" (which Poles spell I). This causes a lot of spelling confusion.

My point is simply that as you do your research, keep an eye open for Pawłyszyn and Pawliszyn. The spelling difference doesn't necessarily mean much. It could be nothing more than a slight difference in how Poles tried to represent in the Roman alphabet a name originally written in the Cyrillic alphabet -- and when that happened, there was room for variation in spelling. So you might see it spelled Pawłyszyn one time, Pawliszyn another.

So to sum up, whichever way it's spelled, this is a name of Ukrainian linguistic origin meaning "son of Paul's wife." As such, it offers little in the way of specifics on where a given family came from.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

PIĄTEK - PIONTEK

Would it be possible to receive any information on the origination/meaning/history of the name Piontek.

I live in Yorkshire, England, and only know of family members with this name. I know that my paternal grandfather came across from Poland, via Germany in WW2, but unfortunately, I am no longer in contact with him to ask him such questions.

Piontek is pronounced roughly "P'YON-teck" in Polish, and is an alternate spelling of the name I represent as Piątek online. The Polish nasal vowel written as an A with a tail under it and pronounced much like "on" in French bon; the nasal E written as an E with a tail under it and pronounced much like "en". So Piontek is a reasonable phonetic spelling of Piątek, and in fact one may see the name spelled either way, even in Poland. But the form with the nasal vowel is the standard one.

The name comes ultimately from the root piąty, "fifth." At one time Poles counted the days of the week starting with Monday, so that Friday was the "fifth day," and piątek means literally "little fifth one," so that's the name they gave Friday. As a surname Piątek began as a sort of nickname for one associated with Friday -- he might have had some particular duty to perform on Fridays, or was born on a Friday, something along those lines. I can't rule a connection with the meaning "fifth," so that Piątek might have been a name given the fifth child of his parents; but generally we'd expect the primary association to be with the word for Friday.

This is a rather common name in Poland. 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 19,796 Polish citizens named Piątek. They lived all over the country, so a family by that name could have come from anywhere.

There were 2,018 who used the spelling Piontek, with particularly large numbers in the region of Silesia in southwestern Poland, mainly the provinces of Katowice, 971, and Opole, 409. I suspect the spelling is common there because that region has a particularly strong German influence, and Germans can make no sense of the Polish nasal vowels, so they usually spell them phonetically as ON (for Ą) and EN (for Ę). This spelling is, however, found in other parts of the country as well, just not so frequently.

In a specific family's case one might find the name spelled either way. In other words, you may find your ancestors listed as Piontek or Piątek, and the difference would not necessarily suggest anything reliable in terms of family connections. Not all Pionteks would necessarily be related, and many whose name was spelled that way in the past probably go by Piątek today. Piątek and Piontek are simply two different ways of spelling the same name, and spellings in the records were often inconsistent.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

STACHOWIAK

... I have recently become extremely interested in researching my family history and the history/meaning of my surname.

At this time I do not know anything about my surnames other than -owiak possibly means "son of".

Stachowiak would sound roughly like "stah-HOVE-yock," except the Polish CH is a bit more guttural than English h -- closer to 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 the suffix -owicz means "son of," and Stach is an ancient nickname that developed from various Polish names beginning Sta-, especially the first name Stanisław; so the name means basically "son of Stach" or "one of the kin 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 Stanisław, 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 Stachowiak, 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."

As of 1990 there were 13,372 Polish citizens named Stachowiak. They lived all over the country, with some concentration in the western provinces of Bydgoszcz, 848, Kalisz, 765, and Poznan, 5,200. So while people named Stachowiak live everywhere in Poland, they are especially common in the western part of the country.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

ŻEBROWSKI

Do you have any info on the meaning and origin of the name Zebrowski?

My family is from the northeast near Białystok. A village called Grabowo

In Polish this name is usually spelled with the first Z dotted. Żebrowski is pronounced roughly "zheb-ROFF-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 10,150 Polish citizens by that name. They lived all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the following provinces: and Łomża 973, Olsztyn 551, Ostrołęka 1,637. There were 147 by this name in the province of Białystok. So the name is concentrated to a significant extent in the northeastern part of Poland. 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.

There were also 109 Poles who spelled it Zebrowski, no dot over the Z, pronounced more like "zeh-BROFF-skee." However, it's not clear how many of them really spelled it that way, and how many of those 109 were really Żebrowskis, but the name was keyed in wrong. There are, however, some parts of Poland where people tend to take Ż in the standard form of the language and turn it into plain Z. So some of those Zebrowskis may really spell and pronounce it that way. In general, however, we're justified in figuring that the form with plain Z- is probably just a variant of the standard form with Ż-.

Names in the form X-owski usually mean "one from X," that is, from a place with a name beginning with the X part, which may or may not have various endings added. As a rule we'd expect this surname to refer to a family's connection with a place named Żebrowo or Żebry or something of that sort. If they were noble, they owned an estate there at some point centuries ago; if they were peasants, they lived and worked there at some point.

The problem is, there are several places in Poland with names that qualify. There is a Żebrówka near Siedlce in southeastern Poland, and there are several places named Żebry or Żebry + a second name in the areas of Ostrołęka and Łomża. This is consistent with the large number of Żebrowskis in northeastern Poland, near those towns. It all suggests that the surname usually means "one from Żebry" -- but the problem is, which Żebry? There's no way to tell based on the name alone. Only detailed research into the history of a specific family may uncover information that establishes which Żebry your particular Żebrowski ancestors took their name from.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

LIEBOWITZ

I was perusing your site in search of some information on my last name, Liebowitz. I saw that the ending -owicz means "son of" and am assuming that -owitz is an Americanized version of it. Is this a reasonable assumption?

You're close. The -owitz form is associated mostly with German, either directly or by way of Yiddish. An English-speaking person who heard the ending -owicz and tried to spell it phonetically would tend to write -ovich or -oveech. But Germans have a tendency to turn -owicz into -owitz (pronounced roughly "oh-wits"). This may just be a German tendency for no particular reason; or it may go back to early contact with Poles, who originally tended to use suffixes -ic ("eets") and -owic ("oh-veets"), and only later, due to Belarusian influence, changed the final sound from -c ("ts") to -cz ("ch").

I've never had a chance to find out WHY -owicz became -owitz under German influence, and my speculation above may be completely wrong. All I know is that you do often see Germanized forms of Polish names with -owitz (less often as -owitsch, even though phonetically that is more accurate).

However, Lieb is not a first name I have ever heard and it is not listed on behindthename.com, an exhaustive but surely incomplete listing of first name etymologies. Is "lieb" perhaps another word in Polish, a noun or adjective? And if so, how can the "son of" ending be reconciled with this? Or perhaps "lieb" is a modified spelling of "leib" (e.g. Annie Leibovitz) which has some other signficance?

LIEB is a German adjective meaning "dear, beloved," and it appears in first names, especially associated with Jews, either in German spelling or modified by Yiddish influence. So we see the feminine first name Liba or Liebe, masculine first names Liber or Lieber, Libman/Lipman or Liebmann/Lipmann, and so forth. (Note that Germans spell the "ee" sound as -ie-, but in Yiddish it is spelled with the vowel yodh, usually rendered in our alphabet as -i-; so Yiddish Liber is pronounced just like German Lieber).

As I said, these names tend to show up mainly among Jews. It wouldn't surprise me if you see them occasionally among Christians -- it would be natural for any people to call a child a name meaning "dear one," after all. Still, when I have seen names with Lieb- or Lib-, they most often turn out to be borne by Jews.

In any case, LIEBOWITZ is presumably a German version of LIBOWICZ, "son of Lib or Liba" or some similar first name deriving, directly or through Yiddish, from that Germanic root meaning "dear, beloved."

I should add that confusion is possible with another first name used exclusively by Jews, Leib or (as Poles spell it) Lejb, pronounced roughly "lape" as if rhyming with "tape." This is an ancient Hebrew name from the Bible (Genesis 49:9), and strictly speaking has nothing to do with those much less ancient Germanic names from the root meaning "dear" that I mentioned above. But factor in dialect variations, human error, and other factors, and is entirely possible that LEJBOWICZ, "son of Lejba," might sometimes end up being rendered LIEBOWITZ. It's not "correct," but many of the things you run into with surnames are not correct.

Thus for instance I believe the surname of Annie Leibovitz is Jewish and means "son of Leib." If everyone was an expert on languages and names and no one ever made a mistake, it would be regarded as completely distinct from Liebowitz, not to be confused with it. But in fact the names are often confused, and it's easy to understand why.

For more background info on Jewish names, there are several good files at this site: http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/#Names

To sum up, names ending -owitz are usually German or Yiddish versions of names Poles use with the ending -owicz (and Russians with -ovich, although of course they spell it in the Cyrillic alphabet). The name you're asking about should generally mean "son of Lib or Liba," referring to an ancestor with a given name derived from the German root meaning "dear, beloved" and used in a number of given names popular historically among Ashkenazi Jews. But due to the similar sound and spelling it can easily be confused with LEIBOVITZ or LEJBOWICZ, "son of Leib," which is an ancient Hebrew name associated with Judah.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

TRIKOWSKY

I have a looking for some sort of background information on my surname. It is TRIKOWSKY. I have been able to trace the name back to a small village in what was Bessarabia Russian. It was an area of Germans born in Russia. My confusion lays in the name itself I am finding conflicting information of the origins of the name .Is it originally from Poland then possibly they migrated into Russia or is it a Russian name. One last twist is that my family has always spoke German and consider themselves German. But when I started digging around I began to have questions. Most of the very few people I have found to posses the name lived in Germany but I was not able to contact them. Really what I'm looking for here is whether my name is Polish, Russian, or German

The first thing we have to be clear on is that ethnic identity may have nothing to do with a name's linguistic origin. If you go back to your 128 closest ancestors and it turned out 127 of them were Poles but 1 was German, his name might be the one you'd happen to inherit. So even though in this hypothetical case you are by blood 99% Polish, yet your name would be German. This subject gets very complicated, but I want to make clear from the start I'm talking about what LANGUAGE the name originated in.

We can scratch German -- it is definitely not of German linguistic origin. That ending spelling -owski or -ovsky or -owsky originated in a Slavic language, not a German one. Talking about a German named Trikowsky is like talking about a Swede named Yamaguchi; the two don't go together. Now since people can and do travel and relocate, you might have a Trikowsky living in Germany -- in fact, it's not at all unusual to find Germans bearing Slavic names, since the Germans and Slavs have been mixing and mingling for
centuries. And as I say, it's possible 99% of a Trikowsky's ancestors were German. But the name is not.

It's tougher saying whether the name is Polish or Russian, because many, many names and other words are similar in the various Slavic languages. From the form alone it is often difficult or impossible to tell whether a specific name is Polish or Czech or Russian or Ukrainian.

However, of all the Slavs, Poles are the ones most likely to bear a name ending -owski or -ovsky or -ovsky. The formation X-owski is one that most often originated among Poles. Thus the composer Tchaikovsky seemed to be as Russian as they come; but his name appears to be a Russified version of Polish Czajkowski, meaning "of or from Czajki or Czajkowo" or some other place with a name beginning Czajk- (as Poles spell it) or Tchaik- (as we spell the Russian version in our alphabet). So somewhere in his ancestry there was probably a Pole or Ukrainian who either came from or owned a place with a name beginning that way.

I would be lying if I said all names in the form X-owski or X-owsky were Polish. You do see Ukrainians and Belarusians with names of that sort. But they tend to be rarer, especially among Russians. They tend to use just the ending -ov or -ev, with any -ski added. You can read more about this.

All things considered, I'd say TRIKOWSKY is the name Poles spell TRYKOWSKI, pronounced roughly "trick-OFF-skee." Poles normally avoid the combination -RI-, preferring -RY- (but Russians have no problem with the combination (-RI-). Also Poles never spell it -sky, always -ski.

But if you look at the name and sound it out, you'll realize TRIKOWSKY and TRYKOWSKI are just slightly different spellings of the same name. Inconsistent spelling of names is extremely common when dealing with people from central and eastern Europe; it doesn't pay to get too hung up on spelling, better to deal with the sounds involved. This name could show up in records as TRYKOVSKY or TRICKOFFSKE or TRIKOWSKY, etc. But the standard Polish spelling is TRYKOWSKI. I suspect TRIKOWSKY is a Germanized version of that name, which would look kind of like this in the pre-1917 Cyrillic alphabet: T P N K O B C K I N

The 3rd letter looks like a backwards N, and the final letter looks like a backwards N with a little curve over it. The other letters look just like ones we use, but P is like the sound we write R, B is like our V, and C is like our S.

While frequency and derivation of this name in Poland is not directly useful to you -- since your ancestors seem to have been Poles who resettled in Bessarabia (which was not uncommon) -- such data can sometimes be helpful. 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 and is now online as a searchable database at http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/indexslo.html), there were 283 Polish citizens named Trykowski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 31, Elblag 28, Gdansk 38, and Torun 87. 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 the name shows up most often in northcentral to northwestern Poland. I have no data for Bessarabia or any other country, so I can't give you any ideas on how common the name may be there.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it can come from the root seen in the noun tryk, "an ungelded ram," and in the verb trykac, "to butt with the forehead." Names in the form X-owski mean literally "of the _ of X," where the blank is filled in with something so obvious it didn't have to be spelled out -- usually "kin" or "place."

So TRYKOWSKI probably started out meaning either "of the kin of the ram" or "one from the place of the ram." The Tryk part may have been a nickname of an ancestor who raised rams or reminded people of a ram, or something along those lines. Then Trykowski would have been the way people referred to his kin or to people who came from a village or settlement or farm he owned or founded. It's quite possible the family got the name in Poland, then later moved to Bessarabia. As I said, that was not particularly uncommon; we find names of Polish origin all over that whole area.

Copyright © 2003, 2004 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
    

... Just found your page...very interesting. If you could, tell me anything you can about my maiden name Wojtkiewicz.

The -ewicz suffix means "son of," so Wojtkiewicz means "son of Wojtek, Wojtko," something like that. The first part of the name could come from two sources: it can be a nickname for a person named Wojciech, meaning basically "son of Wojciech"; or it can come from the term wójt, an official who was a sort of village headman. So the name means either "Wojciech's son" or "the wójt's son." It is a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were at least 2,624 Poles named Wojtkiewicz.

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

... I was just wondering if you would be able to search for the name Pryla. I was told by my grandfather that the correct spelling is Prywa. I've never met or heard of anyone with that name besides my immediate family and have been very interested in finding out why. I wonder if I'm the last male able to carry on the family name?

Reading those first two sentences, I wonder if the story got mixed up a little? Saying the name Pryla should be spelled Prywa is kind of hard to explain -- but it makes perfect sense to say the name Pryla should be pronounced Prywa. That would mean the original Polish form was Pryła, where ł stands for the Polish l with a slash through it, which is pronounced like our w. So maybe your grandfather meant it was originally Pryła, pronounced "PRI-wah" (the first syllable sounds like the start of the word "prim"); or maybe his parents told him that and it got confused somewhere along the line... In Polish Prywa would be pronounced "PRI-vah," and there's no reason that should be spelled Pryla; but as I say, Pryła pronounced "PRI-wah" makes perfect sense.

All these names appear to be related to an old Germanic first name Bryl or Brill or Prill. I can't find anything on what that name might have meant, but it was a name used among Germans and Poles hundreds of years ago. So the surname Pryla or Pryła would mean basically just "Pryl's son."

As of 1990 there was no one in Poland with the name Prywa, but there were 50 Polish citizens with the name Pryła. They lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz (33), Gorzow (3), Katowice (6), Torun (7), Zielona Gora (1). There were also 15 named Pryla (no slash through the l and pronounced like an l), living in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz (10), Elblag (5). I'm afraid I have no further details such as first names, addresses, etc.

If you wanted to try to get addresses, there's only one way I know of to try: have someone search the telephone directory for the province in question. This is not a sure thing, phones in private homes are far less common in Poland than here. But a search of the Bydgoszcz province phone directory, for instance, might turn up one or two Pryła's and give you their addresses; you could write (the letter would almost certainly have to be in Polish) and see if there are any connections...

As you can see, it's not an easy way to do things, and there are no guarantees. But I know no other way to try to connect with relatives in Poland, unless your research has already allowed you to establish exactly where they came from.

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

I was also curious about my family name of Romanczuk. I found the site to which you directed [name deleted] with the maps. It is fascinating. Unfortunately, I don't know Polish although I am a French teacher. Is there a way to find a translation of that page?

Romanczuk in Polish can be spelled two different ways: with plain N, pronounced roughly "rome-ON-chook," or with accented N, pronounced roughly "ro-MINE-chook." While they mean essentially the same thing, "son of Roman," one is a lot more common in Poland than the other. You can see the maps on these pages:

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/romanczuk.html

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/roma%25C5%2584czuk.html

I know of no way to translate the Polish pages into English. Google and others have translating tools; sometimes they work fairly well, sometimes they're downright pathetic. I doubt they’ll help much here, so I’ll summarize the relevant info for you.

The spelling with accented N was borne by 3,515 Polish citizens as of 2002, while the version with plain N was borne by only 43 (and you have to wonder how many of those were misspelled and should have had accented N). In either case, the name is most common in the areas along the eastern border of Poland with Belarus and Ukraine. For instance, the largest numbers of Romanczuks with accented N lived in the county of Tomaszów Lubelski, 241. In municipal Bialystok county, there were 203; in Sokołów Podlaski county 165; in Hajnówka county 156, and so on.

Note that on the maps, if you position your cursor over a county, its name appears. That's how you tell which is which.

There is a reason for that concentration near the eastern border. Surnames ending in -uk or -czuk almost always originated among the Eastern Slavs who live in the general areas of Poland's current eastern borders. The -uk ending is characteristic of surnames that developed among speakers of the language that eventually developed into modern Belarusian and Ukrainian. Centuries ago, those languages were less differentiated than they are now, and it can be pointless trying to decide whether a name was of Belarusian or Ukrainian origin. We usually just say it's East Slavic, except that classification includes Russian, and the -uk names developed east of what is now Poland and west of what is now Russia.

The ending, whether in the form X-uk or X-czuk, meant basically "son of X." So Romanczuk, with or without the accent on the N, just meant "son of Roman." That's a fairly common first name in eastern Poland and western Belarus and Ukraine, so it's no surprise we find people by this surname all over eastern Poland. If we had comparable sources of data for Belarus and Ukraine, we'd probably find the name is quite common in those countries, maybe more so.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no source of comparable data for Belarus and Ukraine. But it can be instructive to key in the Cyrillic spelling of Romanczuk (since Belarus and Ukraine both use the Cyrillic alphabet), Google it, and see what Websites it appears on. The Cyrillic spellings of ROMANCZUK are РОМАНЧУК for the name with plain N and РОМАНЬЧУК for the version with accented N. The Google search brought up lots of Russian Websites, probably because the Russian and Communist Empires incorporated so many Belarusians and Ukrainians into Russia; many Belarusian sites are actually in Russian, not Belarusian. But I notice quite a few sites registered in Belarus (.by) feature the name as well.

If your system can display Cyrillic characters, you might find it interesting to look at the Google results:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS312US312&q=%d0%a0%d0%be%d0%bc%d0%b0%d0%bd%d1%87%d1%83%d0%ba

If that link doesn't work, maybe this TinyUrl will:

http://tinyurl.com/ygtgaa6

That’s for РОМАНЧУК. I also Googled РОМАНЬЧУК, and it also shows up quite often on Russian sites, as well as Belarusian. I'm a little puzzled it doesn't appear more often on Ukrainian sites, but maybe that particular name is more common among Belarusians than Ukrainians.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8C%D1%87%D1%83%D0%BA&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLL_en

If that link doesn’t work, try this one:

http://tinyurl.com/ygddcs5

In any case, that's about all I can tell you.
 

Copyright © 2009 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

...Interested in knowing if you have any information on Wieszcholek or Wierzcholek.

Wierzchołek (ł stands for the Polish l with a slash through it, pronounced like our w) is the standard spelling of the name, but it might also be spelled Wieszchołek because the Polish rz in that particular position is pronounced the same as Polish sz, like our "sh" -- the name would sound to us roughly like "vyesh-HOE-wek." This name comes from the Polish word wierzchołek, which means "top, summit, peak." It might have been used as a nickname for someone very tall, or perhaps it referred to where someone lived, near the top of a hill -- with names that originated centuries ago we can't always tell exactly what they meant, only make reasonable guesses.

This is not a very common name, as of 1990 there were only 64 Polish citizens named Wierzchołek, living in the following provinces: Bielsko-Biala 1, Jelenia Gora 1, Kalisz 35, Nowy Sacz 1, Opole 2, Rzeszow 11, Wroclaw 13. They're kind of spread out -- Kalisz and Wroclaw provinces are in southwestern Poland, Rzeszow in southeastern, so there doesn't appear to be any helpful pattern to the distribution. Unfortunately the data I just gave is all I have, I don't have access to first names, addresses, or any other info that might help you get in touch with the Wierzchołeks in Poland.

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

...Can you please give me a general meaning of my family's name, Szczudlo?

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Szczudło is an established Polish name (the name sounds like "shchood-woe"). It comes from the term szczudło, "crutch, wooden leg," and appears in Polish records as early as 1407. Presumably an ancestor got this as a nickname because he used a crutch or wooden leg, and the name stuck. It is a moderately common name, as of 1990 there were 1,051 Polish citizens named Szczudło, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Czestochowa (57), Katowice (157), Krakow (234), and Pila (76), and smaller numbers living in virtually every province. This suggests the name is most common in southcentral Poland, but is not restricted to that region.

... Another variation of the name that has cropped up is Szczudlowski.

Yes, obviously that name comes from same root, but you want to be very cautious about concluding that Szczudło and Szczudłowski are variations of the same name. They both come from the same root, and in a rare cases the same family might have gone back and forth between the two versions before settling on one. But in most cases they prove to be different and unrelated in any way except linguistically. The -owski suffix usually refers to a connection with a place name; in this case, you'd expect it to mean "person from Szczudłow, Szczudłowo, Szczudła," something like that. (I can't find any such place on my maps, but that probably means it was too small to show up on them). The place, in turn, would take its name from that root szczudło, perhaps because they made wooden legs there or sold them, something. So the two surnames are related in meaning and origin, but in most cases families bearing them would not be related.

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

... I would simply like to ask if the surname Reetz is a Polish name. I have learned that there is an area of Poland by this name.

In Hans Bahlow's Deutsches Namenlexikon he lists Reetz and says it is a Slavic place name in the Prignitz area and east of it; he says there was also a Reetze near Luechow. So this is one of many names that started out Polish or Czech and became Germanized -- there are a great many such names, especially in western Poland and eastern Germany. After all these centuries it is hard to say what Reetz started out as in Polish; another of my sources lists a village called Reetz by the Germans which the Poles call Recz (near Choszczno in Pomerania), and there was another called Reetz which the Poles call Rzeczyca Wielka (near Miastko in Pomerania). So there isn't just one place I can point to and say "This is Reetz," and thus there isn't one Polish surname I can give as the equivalent of German Reetz. But the Polish equivalents would probably start either Rec-, Recz-, Redz-, Rzec-, Rzecz-, or Rzedz-.

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

I have just started looking into my family history, and would appreciate your research, as your schedule permits, into the Pogorzelski surname.

Unfortunately, there is no one left on this side of my family to help with detail, so I was hoping your research may guide me to a starting point on a possible town.

I can certainly understand your hope, and it's worth a try! But surnames very seldom offer any useful clue whatever as to where a specific family came from. Polish surnames are no different from English surname -- most are too general in nature, or too common, or too rare. Even when they come from place names, as these two probably do, the problem is there are too many places with names that fit. With most Polish surnames you're very lucky if you find a concentration in a specific province or region; a specific town is usually too much to hope for. Still, it can't hurt to take a look at the data.

Pogorzelski is pronounced roughly "po-go-ZHEL-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 5,620 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over Poland, with some concentration in the northeastern part of country, near Białystok and Ostrołęka and Warsaw.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. It comes ultimately from the root pogorzały, "one who's lost his property in a fire, one who's been burned out," from the root gorz-, "burn, fire." So it could just mean "kin of the one whose home burned down." But it can also refer to a family's connection with any of a number of places with names beginning Pogorzal- or Pogorzel-, which probably got that name because they burned down at some time or another centuries ago. There's no way to tell which particular village is relevant in a given case without detailed research into that specific family's history. About the most we can say is that the name usually means "one from Pogorzałka, one from Pogorzel, one from Pogorzelec," etc.

I wish I could tell you more, but I find it cruel to mislead people with false hopes that will inevitably be dashed. Best to tell you what I can, hope it helps you a bit, and let you proceed from there.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

...The question: How common/uncommon is Bielatowicz? ( I assume it's root comes from "white"). Do you have any data on the surname? Is it isolated to this area of Tarnow? (Honestly I've been searching for this name as a present day surname with little luck anywhere)

Bielatowicz means "son of Bielat," and yes, that name is connected with the root meaning "white"; it may have referred to a person who had a pale complexion, or white or fair hair, something like that. There were 366 Poles with this name as of 1990. As for distribution, it isn't absolutely isolated in the Tarnow area, but that's definitely the most likely area to find it. Here are the figures, broken down by province: Białystok (5), Gdansk (8), Katowice (12), Koszalin (10), Krakow (38), Legnica (6), Lodz (3), Nowy Sacz (5), Poznan (1), Rzeszow (24), Tarnobrzeg (2), Tarnow (250), Torun (2).

I notice that the name Bielat itself is a little more widely spread; there were 667, with 207 of them in Tarnow province, 92 in Kielce province, and 78 in Tarnobrzeg province, and no other province having more than 50. This means we can't assume all Bielatowiczes originally came from Tarnow province, that's stretching the data a little farther than it will allow. But I think it is fair to say that most Bielatowiczes, and an awful lot of the Bielats, must surely have their roots in the southeastern part of Poland, with particular concentration in the Tarnow area.

I hope this is good news for you -- so often I have to tell folks, "Sorry, your name's common and there's no hint on any area you should concentrate on." At least with this name the data is pretty suggestive.

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

... I am curious about the name Sala. I am aware that it means "hall, meeting place, salon," etc. in several languages, so I assume that it comes from a common root -- perhaps Latin. It does not appear to be a very common Polish name and seems to be more common as an Italian name -- even as the name of several Italian towns. Could it be that there was some migration from Italy to Poland? I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this subject if you have the time.

Your ideas on this name can be right, but there are a few things I should add.

Sala certainly can come from the Romance root meaning "hall, meeting place." This word exists in Polish, too, with the same basic meaning. So while it's certainly true there were Italians who came to live in Poland -- and we do find Italian names mixed in among the Polish ones -- that doesn't mean people in Poland named Sala are of Italian descent. They might be, but they might have gotten their name from an Italian word that came into Polish, rather than from Italian people who came into Poland.

Also, Sala originated in other ways. In fact, for most Poles named Sala the surname probably started out as a nickname for Salomon (Solomon). Sala would be a little like Sol or Sal in English, with the final -a in many cases meaning "of Sol, of Sal" and thus referring to Sal's children. In Kazimierz Rymut's book on Polish surnames, the "Salomon" connection is the only one he mentioned for Sala; in my book I added the possible link to the noun meaning "hall, room" because I thought it might be pertinent in some cases and thus was worth a mention.

By the way, as of 1990 there were some 4,502 Sala's in Poland, living all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (343), Katowice (378), Kielce (717), Krakow (678), Rzeszow (203) -- this is an interesting pattern, it appears the name is most common in southcentral Poland, with some spillover to the southwestern and southeastern part of the country. However, there is virtually no province that doesn't have at least a few Sala's in it.

Anyway, that's a little info on this name. Your ideas about an Italian connection are plausible and may well prove correct in some cases; and as I said, there definitely were Italians who came to live in Poland. But for most Poles the connection with the name Salomon would probably prove to be relevant.

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

... I say, could you possibly advise us on the frequency of the name Dubilas in Poland? We are doing research for some long-lost relatives in Argentina, whose grandmother was a Dubilas. Quite an unusual name, I believe, and it doesn't sound particularly Polish. Maybe Lithuanian?

As of 1990 there were 107 Polish citizens named Dubilas, living in the provinces of Lodz (87), Piotrkow (19), and Zielona Gora (1). In this case, too, there appears to be a strong connection with Lodz province --Piotrkow province is just south of Lodz province, so we are talking about a very small, specific area in the center of the country.

Dubilas is an interesting name, because dub and las both make sense as Polish words -- dub- is a root meaning "nonsense, idiocy," and in other Slavic languages means "oak" (in Polish "oak" is dąb), and las means "forest, woods." So you'd think Dubilas would mean "oak forest" -- and yet the expression doesn't seem to exist in Polish, I couldn't find anything on it! You might be right that the name sounds Lithuanian, there is a word in Lithuanian dobilas meaning "clover," also "sweetheart."

I don't have a lot of information about Lithuanian names, but you might write to Dave Zincavage. Dave is interested in Lithuanian names and has some books that may give some additional information about the name, whether it appears in Lithuania, how common it is, etc.

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

... Could you please tell me the meaning of the surname Bejger and an approximate location for this name. A possible original spelling of this name is Bejgier or Bejiger...

This sounds and looks like a German name that has been somewhat polonized; there are and long have been a great many ethnic Germans who came to settle in Poland, German names are very common there. I can't quite tell what the original German spelling would have been, it might have been Beiger or Beuger or several other possibilities. It only matters because I can't really tell what the name meant originally without knowing what its German form was... As for Bejger vs. Bejgier, Polish spelling rules say -ge- is not a permissible combination, it has to be -gie-; so Bejger is closer to the original German form, Bejgier has been a bit more polonized because that spelling rule has been applied. But they are the same name, just spelled differently. Bejiger is almost certainly a misspelling or error in copying.

As of 1990 there were 628 Polish citizens named Bejger, scattered in small numbers all over the country, but with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (65), Torun (201), and Wloclawek (156), all in northwestern Poland and in areas that were long ruled by Germany and have many, many descendants of Germans living there... Bejgier is less common, there were 228 Poles by that name, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgodszcz (16), Jelenia Gora (16), Łomża (20), Torun (43) and Wloclawek (70). Again, these areas are almost all in the former German partition, lands ruled by Germany from roughly 1772-1918 or, in some cases, 1945.

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

... I would like to learn more about the surname Ruszkowsk. If you have information or can recommend sources, I would be most appreciative.

Names ending in -owski usually started as references to place names, often ending in -y, -i, -ow, -owo, etc. So we would expect Ruszkowski to have meant "person, family associated with a place called Ruszki or Ruszkow or Ruszkowo." My Polish atlas shows 14 villages named Ruszki, Ruszkow, Ruszkowice, or Ruszkowo, and the surname could have gotten started as a reference to any one of them. As is often the case with a surname coming from place names applying to more than one place, the surname Ruszkowski is moderately common in Poland; as of 1990 there were some 3,820 Polish citizens by that name.

So unfortunately the name gives no clue as to a specific part of Poland the Ruszkowskis might have come from. However, if you have some luck with your research and find your ancestors came from a specific area, and then find a Ruszki or Ruszkowo near there, chances are excellent that is the place the family was named for.

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

... Can you tell me about my maternal ancestory names, Kosel and Koprowski?

Koprowski comes ultimately from the roots koper, "dill," or kopr, "copper." But usually names ending in -owski derive from place names, so we would expect Koprowski to mean "person or family associated with Kopry, Koprow, Koprowo," something like that. I can't find any places by those names in my atlas, but that may just mean they were too small to show up, or have had their names changed, or have since disappeared or merged with other villages -- it's not uncommon to come across surnames derived from places of names we can't find any more. As of 1990 there were some 4,921 Polish citizens named Koprowski, so it's a pretty common name.

Kosel isn't necessarily Polish in origin, but if it is Polish it probably comes from the roots kos, "blackbird," or kosa, "scythe." As of 1990 there were 331 Polish citizens named Kosel, scattered all over Poland but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (99), Łomża (33), Radom (31). I can't see any pattern to the distribution (and, since many people ask, I should explain I don't have access to any further data such as first names or addresses). The similar name Kosela is more common, there were 913 Poles by that name.

I should add that I recently received a book on Polish names of German origin, and it mentions Kosel as a Germanized form of a Slavic name, from Polish Kozieł or Czech Kozel, presumably from the root kozioł, "goat." It also says the name can come from a number of places in Silesia called Kosel, of which the largest was Kosel, now called Koźle, in Opole province -- here again a connection with the root meaning "goat" appears to be relevant. So the name could be Polish from the roots for "blackbird" or "scythe," but in a lot of cases it's probably a Germanized form of a Polish name from the word for "goat."

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

... I saw your 'Notes on Polish Surnames' on the internet. I'm a (VERY) beginner at researching my family heritage. I know, for example that my great-great and great grandfathers lived in Slonim, Poland in the mid to late 1800's. The names that I have are as follows:

Mishel Charlap - son, Yosef (Joseph Charloff/Charlaff) who married Sarah/Sara. They had a son, David Charlaff (dates believed to be 1878-1944).

The names you mention lead me to believe we're dealing with Jewish ancestry, correct? This does matter, because while there is obviously considerable overlap in research methodology for Jews and Christians from Poland, there are also factors that can make the practical issues involved very different. Just for example, most Polish Gentiles had surnames by the 1700's, often a century or two earlier, whereas most Jews living in the Commonwealth of Poland (which included modern-day Lithuania, western Ukraine, and Belarus, which is the country Slonim is in now) did not take surnames until required to by authorities in the 1800's. This means that Jewish surnames were given during a period for which many historical records still survive, so we can trace them back sometimes and say things much more definitively about them than we can about Christian surnames, many of which were established long before the earliest surviving records.

If I'm right and the family was Jewish, I recommend using the library to try to get a look at two books. One is Alexander Beider's A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, ISBN 9626373-3-5, published 1993 by Avotaynu -- you can learn more about it by visiting Avotaynu's Web page at www.avotaynu.com. Beider mentions this name under the spelling Kharlap (as a phonetic rendering of the Cyrillic spelling); he also mentions it in his book on Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (spelled there as Charlap because of Polish phonetics), and the info in both books is similar, but the Russian book has extensive introductory comments more relevant in your case. Beider briefly discusses the origin and meaning of the name, and gives references that tell "about the story of this family."

Another book that might prove very helpful to you is the just-published Jewish Roots in Poland by Miriam Weiner, 1998, ISBN 0-96565-080-4. For more info see the Web page at www.rtrfoundation.org. It is a wonderful book, enormously helpful for doing research in Poland. Since your family appears to have come from what is now Belarus, it would be less helpful, but might still prove very useful.

Both these books are expensive, that's why I recommend trying to get a peek at them through a library; you may find them well worth the money, but it'd be best to see them and know first. Weiner's book is $50 + $8 shipping, Beider's is $75 + shipping (right now I can't find the catalog, so I don't know how much shipping comes to).

Beider's book suggests strongly that there is some real info available about the Charlap family, so I really think you want to get a look and see about following it up. A lot of times I have to tell people there probably isn't much material on their specific families -- in your case it just might be otherwise. I hope so, and good luck!

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

...I am researching my family's roots and would like to know if my surname means anything. My ancestor was born in Zrenica, Posen and had the following variations of the surname: Harlos, Harłos, Charłos.

The variations all make sense: in Polish h and ch are pronounced exactly the same, kind of like our h but a bit more guttural, and we often see names spelled either way without it necessarily having any significance. The ł is pronounced like our w, so the name would sound like "HAR-wose" (rhyming with the Spanish name "Carlos") -- and we often see it and the normal l confused, partly because in some regions of Poland there was a preference for one over the other, partly because foreigners are confused by the ł and often just write it as l (e. g., when Poles emigrated).

This is not a very common name in Poland. As of 1990 there were only 4 Polish citizens named Harłos, 2 living in Poznan province and 2 in Zielona Gora province (I'm afraid I don't have access to further data, such as first names or addresses). There were 13 named Charłos, 6 in Gdansk province and 7 in Leszno province.

None of my sources discuss this name, so I'm left to look in dictionaries for terms that might have been its source. I note that in Polish there is a root charł- that means "poor person, beggar, wretch"; I also see there's a Ukrainian root that Poles would spell the same way and means the same thing. So while the words beginning with charł- are not all that common, they do exist, and they refer to a poverty-stricken person, a wretch, a beggar; and it seems likely Charłos is a name deriving from that root. While -os is not one of the more common suffixes we see added to Polish roots to make names, it's hardly unheard of, either.

All in all, that's the best guess I can make -- that the name comes from some rather rare words that all means basically "person who was poor and having a very tough time of it."

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

[Note: Mr. Grajewski's original note, asking about his surname, was in Polish. My answer, in Polish, is followed by a translation in English.]

Szanowny Panie Grajewski! Nazwiska na -ewski i -owski zwykle wskazuja na zwiazanie z nazwami miejscowosci, wiec Grajewski prawdopodobnie znaczy "osoba lub rodzina pochodzaca z Grajewa lub Grajowa" -- z miasta "Grajewo" w woj. lomzynskim, lub ze wsi "Grajewo" w woj. suwalskim, moze byc takze "Grajow" w woj. krakowskim. Jest takze mozliwe, ze inne miejscowosci istnieja lub kiedys istnialy, z nazw ktorych to nazwisko moze pochodzic, ale takich nie znalazlem w atlasie. Polski uczony dr. hab. Kazimierz Rymut pisze w Nazwach miast Polski, ze nazwa miasta Grajewa w woj. lomzynskim pochodzi z nazwy jeziora, nad ktorym miasto powstalo. Ta nazwa byla staropruskiego pochodzenia, a Polacy przejeli ja w formie "Grajwo, Grajewo" (1577 r.).

W 1990 r. bylo 2,756 polskich obywatele o nazwisku Grajewski. Mieszkali w nieomal wszystkich wojewodztwach, z wiekszymi liczbami w tych woj.: warszaw. 107, bialostock. 119, bydgosk. 260, gdansk. 210, katowic. 110, poznan. 288, suwal. 313, torun. 189, i wroclaw. 98. -- Z tego wynika, ze to nazwiska wystepuje rzadziej w Malopolsce, a czesto w innych czesciach Rzeczypospolitej.

[English translation:]

Dear Mr. Grajewski,!

Names ending in -ewski and -owski generally indicate a connection with the names of localities, so Grajewski probably means "person or family from Grajewo or Grajów" ? from the town of Grajewo in Łomża province, or from the village Grajewo in Suwalko province, possibly also Grajów in Krakow province. It is also possible that other places exist or once existed from whose names this surname could derive, but I found none in the atlas. The Polish scholar Prof. Kazimierz Rymut wrote in Nazwy miast Polski that the name of the town of Grajewo in Łomża province comes from the name of the lake on which the town developed. That name was of Old Prussian origin, and Poles transformed it into the forms "Grajwo, Grajewo" (1577).

In 1990 there were 2,756 Polish citizens named Grajewski. They lived in almost all provinces, with the largest numbers in those of Warsaw (107), Białystok (119), Bydgoszcz (260), Gdansk (210), Katowice (110), Poznan (288), Suwałki (313), Torun (189), and Wroclaw (98). From this it appears that this name appears more rarely in Malopolska and more often in the other parts of the Republic.

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

... I saw your message on the Polish Genealogical site. If you have the time I need some help. Our family name is Wojton. My father emigrated from Poland around 1922-24 from a town/village called Janow. The problem is I don't know what province. Mapquest shows 20 "Janow" listings in present day Poland. I thought that maybe you might be kind enough to tell from the surname where I should focus my search. I thank you in advance for your help.

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to help at all -- so often with Polish surnames there is no real clue to the specific area they came from, and as you've discovered, there are lots of Janow's. But I looked up the name, and there is some info that might be helpful. Here's the distribution by province for the 428 Wojton's living in Poland as of 1990:

Wojton 428: Bydgoszcz 5, Czestochowa 3, Gdansk 10, Jelenia Gora 6, Kaliz 2, Katowice 32, Kielce 190, Krakow 5, Krosno 3, Legnica 7, Lodz 6, Olsztyn 13, Opole 6, Pila 7, Piotrkow 10, Płock 13, Przemysl 4, Radom 6, Rzeszow 66, Sieradz 2, Skierniewice 1, Slupsk 1, Szczecin 3, Tarnow 6, Walbrzych 7, Wloclawek 9, Wroclaw 5.

Obviously you may be unlucky and your Wojton's might have come from one of those provinces with only 2 or 3 -- but if you play the odds, it seems the most likely place to start is Kielce province. With 190 of the 428 Wojton's (almost half), chances are reasonably good that's where your Wojton's came from. I notice there are at least 2 Janow's in Kielce province, but at least searching them might be a manageable job... If you have no luck there, Rzeszow province, with 66, seems like the next place to try.

I wish this data could have simplified your task a lot more, but at least it might be some help. Now you know focusing on a Janow in Kielce province is more likely to pay off than looking in, say, Tarnow province. You still may have a lot of work to do, but I hope maybe this will save you some trouble.

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



 

... Thanks so much, William, for your translations of my ancestral surnames. I just recently ordered your book from the PGS. I also thank you for listing some village names that I will definitely look into to see if great-great- greats came from perhaps these other villages.

I'm glad my info helped, and I hope you find the book even more helpful. I like the idea of the book and Web page because they complement each other. In the book I didn't have room for a lot of info on individual names, so I discussed background info at length; on-line I don't have time for a lot of background info but I can discuss individual names in more depth. Put them together and I think you have a pretty good source of information... As for the villages, they are crucial -- Slavic names seldom contain enough info in them to tell you exactly where they originated, but if you can match them up with a specific area, your chances of hitting paydirt are much better.

Could you possible look at two other surnames? They are: Levitsky...

The name Lev/Lew is definitely part of the picture. Actually the name Levistky could get started several ways, but the most likely way in most cases is this: a fellow named Lev has sons, who are called Levichi or Levitsy (the suffix just meaning "son of"), and then places associated with them end up being called Levichi or Leviche or Levitsy or Levitse, then people who come from there are called Levitsky (Polish spelling Lewicki). So usually Levitsky would break down as meaning "person associated with or coming from the place of Lev's son." It wouldn't have anything to do with the city of Lviv, in fact most likely you're looking for a village named Levitsy, Levitse, something like that.

... 2. Brutka (Ukrainian surname) from Strilbychi, Ukraine. My cousins pronounce it : Brit-ka (first syllable is stressed and has a short i sound). I dont know its original Cyrillic spelling, but it would have to be pronounced either: Britka or Brutka (Broot - ka).

I can't find anything under the Brut- root. There is a Ukrainian root that would be rendered bryt- in the Roman alphabet, meaning "shave, shaved" -- in Cyrillic it looks like this:  БРИТ-

Names from this root would be pronounced with a short i sound and stress on the first syllable. It seems plausible this root could be related to the name, "Brytka" may have originated as a nickname given to a person who was clean-shaven -- that would set him apart, which is how nicknames got started -- and eventually the nickname might have stuck as a family name... Anyway, that's the only thing I can find that appears likely to be relevant.

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

... Interested in any information on the surname Wozniak. It was my paternal g-grandmother's maiden name.

This is a very common name in Polish, as of 1990 there were 81,390 Poles named Woźniak. The root is woz, wagon, cart, and woźniak is a term meaning "saddle horse." This surname would probably be much like "Carter" in English, referring to a fellow who drove a cart. It might also be connected to woźny, a court crier or beadle, but in most cases I expect it's linked to the meaning "carter."

... Do you have any information on Dygton?. I am not absolutely positive of the spelling. It appears to be one of my paternal g-grandmothers. I think she was from Tarnow.

There was no record of anyone by that name in Poland in 1990, and I must say it doesn't even look "right" to me -- I have to suspect the spelling has been mangled. If the spelling's right, none of my sources give any info on the name.

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

...If you would be so kind i would like information on the surname "Strzelecki..."

As for the name Strzelecki, in 1990 there were 11,467 Polish citizens by that name; they lived all over the country, with some of the larger numbers appearing in the provinces of Warsaw (1,061), Bydgoszcz (540), Katowice (620), Kielce (539), Lodz (714), Poznan (476), Radom (473), Torun (583), and Wloclawek (607) -- in other words, the name appears to be fairly evenly distributed, with no obvious concentration in any one part of the country.

The root this name derives from is strzelec, "shooter, marksman," referring to someone who shoots a gun or, in older times, a bow and arrow. The name Strzelecki could come directly from this noun, thus meaning "[person or kin] of a marksman." Also, there are a some 20 or more villages named Strzelce and at least one Strzelec, and the name could also refer to an association with those places, thus "person or family from Strzelce or Strzelec." So this name probably arose independently in many different places, thus there is no such thing as one Strzelecki family -- the name is borne by many separate families, coming from different parts of Poland.

Common names such as this present their own problems -- it's not hard finding Strzelecki's, but you can't assume they're related to your ancestors; rare names have different problems -- it's hard to find info on them, but if you do, chances are they are relatives. Some Strzelecki's may be of noble descent, since surnames taken from place names originated when nobles took a last name from the name of the estates they owned; but in other cases Strzelecki's are probably descendants of peasants who worked on those estates. Only detailed research will establish which case is relevant to your ancestors.

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

... Is the name Niziolek in your book or do you have any references to it -- family trees, immigrants about 1900, locations in Poland etc. If so let me know, I may be interested in your book.

It is mentioned, but no name is discussed in great detail -- there just wasn't room in the book, instead I concentrated on giving an extensive list of names, tell what basic root they come from, and say what kind of names they are. Then readers can go to the first half of the book and read the chapters that give more info on how names of that sort arose. So if you want anything detailed, I'm sorry, I just didn't have room for it. What I give is basically this: Niziołek (the ł is pronounced like our w) comes ultimately from the root niz- meaning "low, short." One Polish name expert links it with the term niziołek meaning "imp, sprite." It is a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 3,429 Poles named Niziołek, and another 2,592 named Nizioł, which is the same root without the diminutive suffix -ek.

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

... I happened to come across your links site, and was just wondering if you had any info on the name Kolacki, I didn't see it in your list, that is my grandfathers name, he came from Warsaw, I am trying to trace some lineage back to poland, but so far have not had any luck, any info on the name would be greatly appreciated, thank you

Kołacki (the ł is pronounced like our w) is a moderately common name. As of 1990 there were 1,179 Poles by that name, living all over the country; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (130), Konin (116), Leszno (71), Lodz (73), Poznan (217), Szczecin (64) (there were 40 living in Warsaw province).

Determining what the name comes from is pretty difficult, because there are several possibilities. It could come from kołacz, "cake, wedding-cake" -- if you've ever heard of the Czech pastries called "kolaches," it's basically the same thing -- or it could come from kołat, "noise, din." Without any really solid info to go on, my guess is that it comes from a place-name, meaning "family from __." The problem is, there are several places that qualify, for instance, the villages of Kołata and Kołatka in Poznan province. Those 217 Kołacki's in Poznan province probably got their name from there. However, it's harder to say exactly what place a Kołacki in Warsaw would get his name from.

I know this doesn't really help you much, but it's so often that way with Polish names. You often can't point to one origin and say "This is definitely it." And I'm afraid this is one of those names.

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

... I have just begun a search of my family name. What info I have is very limited. I have researched only a handful of Budrewicz's in America and have had contact via the internet to a Budrewicz in Poland who explained that the name was not widespread to say the least there. I would appreciate any info that you could give me...

The suffix -ewicz means "son of," so the name means "son of Budry, Budre, Budrus" something like that. So the question is, what does that root budr- mean? Ancient records mention a first name Budrys or Budrus which comes from Lithuanian budrus, "alert, watchful"; also in Polish budrus is a term meaning "a Lithuanian." So the name means "son of Budrus" = "son of the alert one," or else "son of the Lithuanian." It is not at all unusual, by the way, to see "Polish" surnames that are connected in form or meaning with Lithuanian names or words, and vice versa.

All things being equal, you'd expect to find a name like this most often in northeastern Poland, near the border with Lithuania (in fact, there is a village Budrowo, from the same root, in Suwałki province, which is in that area). However, over the course of time people have scattered quite a bit; also after World War II millions of people were forced to relocate from the areas east of modern Poland to the western part of Poland, so we find Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian names scattered all over Poland. As of 1990 there were 644 Polish citizens named Budrewicz, and they were literally all over the country. The provinces with the largest numbers (more than 30) were: Warsaw (40), Elblag (47), Gdansk (40), Jelenia Gora (34), Olsztyn (52), Slupsk (36), Suwałki (31), Szczecin (45), and Wroclaw (54). Most of those provinces are in northern Poland, but I see no really useful distribution pattern there; it's a shame we don't have data from before World War II, when things got mixed up so badly.

By the way, the Lithuanian form of this name would be Budrevicius or something similar. You might want to contact Dave Zincavage to ask if he has any sources that shed light on the name and whether it's found in Lithuania. He is quite interested in Lithuanian names and might be able to add something to what I've given.

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

...Hello, I am researching my father's family name Hechlinski (Chechlinski originally I think. I am having a lot of trouble finding out anything about this name...

Since Polish ch and h are pronounced exactly the same (kind of like "ch" in German "Bach"), either spelling is possible. But as of 1990 there were only 13 Poles who used the spelling Hechliński, living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (8), Gdansk (3), and Katowice (2). On the other hand there were 109 Polish citizens named Chechliński, living in the follow provinces: Warsaw 16, Gdansk 4, Jelenia Gora 3, Katowice 9, Koszalin 3, Krakow 9, Lublin 41, Lodz 5, Nowy Sacz 2, Poznan 4, Rzeszow 2, Tarnobrzeg 6, Zamosc 5. These suggests a concentration in southeastern Poland (Lublin, Rzeszow, Tarnobrzeg, and Zamosc provinces) but shows that it is found elsewhere.

According to the Polish name expert Kazimierz Rymut, the ultimate origin of the surname is the verb chechłać, "to drench or to cut with a blunt instrument," but it also is connected with place names such as Chechły and Chechło -- those place names derive from the verbal root by way of the old word chechło, "damp meadow, damp area." There are quite a few villages by those names, so without very detailed info on your family I can't suggest which of them your particular ancestors were named for. But it probably suggested origin from a place with a name beginning Chechl-, and that place in turn got its name from the fact that it was situated on damp, marshy ground.

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

...I recently found your web site through a link from genealogy search web site. After reading your page I thought perhaps you could help me. I am trying to find information on the Polish surname Buruffski. The name belonged to my maternal grandfather (who I never knew)...

As of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Buruffski, and that spelling looks all wrong to me. Most likely the spelling was changed at some point, to make it easier to pronounce; this may have happened during the course of emigration, or it may have happened while your ancestors were still in Europe. If, for instance, they lived in the areas ruled by Germany about 1772-1918 the Germans, who tried to wipe out the Polish culture and language, may have changed it without asking. In any case, that spelling is not likely to be the correct original spelling, which you will probably need to get anywhere with your research. The question is, what was the spelling? I can't be sure, there are many possibilities. The two most likely, from a phonetic point of view are Burowski or Borowski -- the first is pronounced something like "burr-OFF-skee," the second like "bore-OFF-skee." It's not hard to see how either could be mangled into Buruffski. Going by numbers alone, Borowski is the more likely choice: as of 1990 there were 24,889 Poles named Borowski, living all over the country, as opposed to only 84 named Burowski (of whom 55 lived in Krakow province, and a few scattered here and there in other provinces). In some ways, that first syllable of Buruffski suggests it was Burowski, and that might be easier for you -- the other name is so common it's hard to get anywhere with it. Still, with names you really can't jump to conclusions, sometimes you look at the original form and what it ended up as and you're left scratching your head and wondering "How on earth did it get changed to that?"

I'm afraid you'll have to try to find some other records that give the names and especially the place of birth in Poland for your ancestors - the surname alone just doesn't give you enough to go on. That's usually the case, by the way, folks often contact me hoping I can give them a hot clue that'll take 'em right where they need to go. Usually I have to disappoint them (and I hate disappointing people). Still, better to tell the truth than encourage them with false hopes that will inevitably be dashed!

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

...My name is Anthony Dankowski... Is Dankowski a common Jewish name? And what does Dankowski mean? I do not know anything about my grandparents but I am told they were killed during the war...

Names ending in -owski usually started as a reference to an association between a person and a particular place, and the names of those places generally end in -i, -y, -ow, -owo, etc. I would expect Dankowski to mean "person from Dankow, Dankowo," something like that. There are at least 8 villages named Danków, plus several more named Dankowice that the surname could conceivably derive from. So unfortunately the name Dankowski does not narrow things down much, families coming from any or all of those places could end up being called "Dankowski." The names of those places, in turn, come from names meaning "of, belonging to Danek or Danko," and would refer to some connection between the place and men named Danek or Danko who owned them, founded them, were prominent in them, etc. Danek in turn is a nickname or short form of such first names as Daniel and Bogdan.

Dankowski can be a Jewish name, but it doesn't have to be; Jews or Christians could have a first name Daniel or Bogdan (which means "God-given" and is thus a Slavic translation of Hebrew-based Biblical names such as Nathaniel or Jonathan), so a "Danków" or "Dankowo" could be a place where either religion lived, and thus Dankowski could be a name used by Christians or Jews. There just isn't anything about the name that gives a clue either way. There are some names that by their very nature are unlikely to be borne by Jews or Christians, but this isn't one of them. As of 1990 there were 2,539 Polish citizens named Dankowski, living all over the country. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (233), Poznan (268), Torun (173), and Wloclawek (324), so the numbers are particularly large in north central and west central Poland; but those are provinces with large populations anyway, so I don't know that there's much to be concluded from that pattern.

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

... looking for the surname Goletz. Have looked for it but haven't found it. Talked to parents and they think it came from Golec. Can you help me?...

Well, I can help a little. Goletz is indeed a German or English spelling of the name Poles spell Golec (the Poles pronounce c as ts or tz), so your parents are probably right about that. As of 1990 there were 16 Polish citizens who spelled their name Goletz, as opposed to 6,474 named Golec, so it seems likely the spelling change took place after your ancestors left Poland; it makes sense they would change it so people around them would have an easier time knowing how to pronounce it... The 6,474 Poles named Golec lived all over Poland, with particularly large numbers in the provinces of Katowice (733), Opole (467), Tarnobrzeg (564), and Tarnow (593); I see no pattern there, apparently the Golec's are not particularly concentrated in any one area. The root of this name is gol-, meaning "bare, naked." Specifically, golec is or was a term meaning "naked person, poor person," in the sense of one so poor he couldn't afford clothes. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there are a lot of words in Polish meaning the same basic thing, so we have to figure there were plenty of folks so poor they went nearly naked. (As best we can figure, my wife's ancestors' surname, Holochwosc, means basically "bare- assed"!). This may not be the most complimentary of names, but believe me, when you start looking at the meaning of Polish surnames, this is a long way from the worst I've seen!

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

... I understand my family name Mosiniak is a rather uncommon name in most places in the world. Can you tell me something about it ? Or a place to look? I have read your book on surnames.

Mosiniak is not an overly common name in Poland, only some 161 Polish citizens bore this name as of 1990. The root of the name is Mos-, which is like a short form or nickname for such first names as Mojsław (literally "my glory") and Mojzesz (Moses). Poles often took the first couple of sounds from a name, dropped the rest, and added suffixes. Thus Mos- could arise from Mojslaw or Moses, then Mosin would mean "of, belonging to Mos)," then -iak probably means "son of." So to whatever extent you can translate the name, it would mean something like "son of, kin of Mojslaw or Moses." That may seem kind of fuzzy, but names are that way -- what does "Ted" mean? It's just a short form of a name, "Theodore," which did originally mean something ("gift of God" in Greek), but by the time the nickname "Ted" arose no one associated any meaning with it any longer. Same with this Polish name: it just means "son of Mos, son of Mosin, Mosin's kin."

There is also the possibility it might refer to a place: -iak with a form of a personal name usually means "son of," but sometimes it's use with place names. There is a village in Poznan province named Mosina, I can't rule out the chance that Mosiniak started out meaning "person from Mosina." The chances are good enough to be worth mentioning.

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

... I am interested in finding out about my family's history. All I know is that my parents came from Poland to the US about 1950. My maiden name is Plech. My mother's maiden name is Zarobski. If you could give me some information about my surname, or how to find out more about my Polish history, I would appreciate it.

With Plech it depends on what the original Polish spelling was. If it was Plech, Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions this in his book as deriving from the noun plech, "cuirass" (a certain part of armor, if I remember correctly). If it was Plecha, it could come from that root, it might also come from the term plecha, "bald spot, bare spot." If it was Płecha (with ł which sounds like our w), then it probably comes from the root płcha, "flea." As of 1990 there were 476 Poles named Plech, 76 named Plecha, and 460 named Płecha.

Zarobski is a bit of a puzzle. It's not a very common name -- in 1990 there were only 33 Zarobski's living in Poland, most of them (25) living in Lublin province in southeast Poland. The name might refer to a village or community named Zarob, Zaroby, something like that, or it may come directly from the verb root zarobić, "to earn, merit." None of my sources mention it, so that educated guess is about the best I can do.

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

...Hello my name is Ben Rosen I have been doing my family tree and I was wondering if you know any informaion about the last name Rosen or Wallach. I can't find much stuff on either, I believe Wallach is either Russian or Polish and Rosen is German or Russian not sure.

Rosen and Wallach are both originally of Germanic (Yiddish) linguistic origin, meaning "rose" and "foreign" respectively, but there were lots of people with those names who lived in Germany, Poland, Russia, all over eastern Europe. One problem is that both names were so common that it's hard to really pin anything down without detailed info one exactly where the specific families involved came from. There are three books you might be able to access through the library that will tell you more. One is Benzion Kaganoff's A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History, Schocken Books, NY 1977 -- I believe a new edition has recently been put out, but don't have the relevant publication info handy. Still, with any luck you should be able to find a copy thru a library. Kaganoff gives good explanations, his book is very readable and not too expensive, but sometimes his derivations are suspect.

More accurate, but less readable and considerably more expensive, are Alexander Beider's two books, A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland and A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire." For more info on them, see the Webpage of Avotaynu, Inc. at www.avotaynu.com. Either book gives good background info, as well as some specific data on where people with particular names lived and what the names meant. With these books I would definitely recommend trying to get a look at them through a library or genealogical society -- you wouldn't want to spend the money to buy a copy unless you've seen first whether it's worth it to you. But they do have some really good info.

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

...I feel so lost. I have been doing genealogical research for 26 years, mostly in this country. I avoided the Trochowski branch for a lot of reasons. Now that everyone who resisted my efforts to connect with the "old" country is dead I can start really from scratch. Any info on the name Trochowski (Trohoski) would be helpful. I know my g-grandfather settled in Erie, PA and died there.

Names ending in -owski usually originated due to some link between the family and a place name, generally ending in -ow, -owo-, -y, something like that. I can't find any villages named Trochy or Trochowo on my maps -- there are probably such places but they are too small to show up. In any rate, that's what the surname most likely comes from -- it meant "person from Trochy/Trochowo." The place, in turn, probably got its name from the root trocha, "small, little." As of 1990 there were 509 Polish citizens named Trochowski, scattered all over Poland but with significant concentrations in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (144), Elblag (36), Gdansk (222), and Torun (33). These are all in a relatively small region, the northcentral part of Poland, in areas long ruled by the Germans.

If your ancestor settled in Erie, PA, you might want to investigate the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, 8 Lyle Rd, New Britain CT 06053. They have a number of members in Pennsylvania, they might be able to help you make some contacts that would prove useful. The Polish Genealogical Society of America is also pretty big in Pennsylvania, and has a lot of members from the part of Poland the Trochowski's live in -- you can learn more about the PGSA at their Website, www.pgsa.org.

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

...HI, My last name is Kusmisz. My family is from Poland (Warsaw and Kaszimierz). The last name may have been changed, originally being Kaszimierz. Uncertain. Any info is appreciated, or help with how to find any information on my Polish relatives or where the name derives...

There are a couple of other names Kusmisz could conceivably come from, but if you have reason to believe it was originally Kaszimierz, that is certainly plausible. Actually the standard Polish spelling is Kazimierz, and it's an ancient Slavic name dating back to when the Poles were pagans and gave their children names formed by joining two root-words to express a kind of hope or prophecy for their children. So Kazimierz comes from the root kazi-, "to destroy" + mir, "peace" -- thus naming a child Kazimierz was expressing the wish that he would grow up to be a destroyer of peace, i. e., a great warrior ("peace" as ancient Slavs thought of it was not necessarily the wonderful thing we consider it, they gloried in war).

Kazimierz is an extremely popular first name in Poland, and has been for a long time -- it's one of the few Polish names that is even used in English, in the Latinized form Casimir. It is not all that common as a surname -- as of 1990 there were only about 202 Polish citizens with Kazimierz as a surname. But other names formed from it are extremely popular -- for instance, Kazimierczak (5,095), Kazmierczak (28,198) [both of which mean "son of Kazimierz"), and Kazmierski (5,240). The latter basically means "of, pertaining to, belonging to Kazimierz," and in many cases probably means "coming from Kazimierz" -- there are several places by that name in Poland.

So to some extent the questions in your case are, what was the original form, and when and where was it changed? As of 1990 there was no Polish citizen with the name Kusmisz, and only 8 with the name Kusmirz (in this case the RZ and SZ are pronounced the same, like our "sh"). I think you'll have to answer those questions before you can make much progress. Part of the problem is, surnames from this name are too common for the name itself to do you much good.

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

...You were so very helpful when I asked about my Puchiks, Moizuks, Judyckis etc, that I wondered if you could assist me with the origins and meanings of two more names: Olshefski and Stypulkowski...

Like most surnames ending in -owski, both of these are probably derived from place names. Olshefski is an anglicized spelling of Polish Olszewski, which is pronounced roughly "ol-SHEF-skee," so that spelling in English makes sense. The list of villages this name could refer to is pretty long, as there are quite a few villages named Olszew, Olszewka, Olszewo, so it's not surprising there are a lot of Olszewski's in Poland -- as of 1990, some 44,638, living all over the country! The root of the place names, in turn, is the word olsza, "alder tree." So Olszewski means basically "person from the place(s) associated with alder trees."

Stypułkowski appears to derive ultimately from the root stypuła, "drumstick," and there are several villages with compound names, "Stypułki" (literally "little drumsticks") + a second name, e. g. Stypułki Borki, Stypułki Giemzin, etc., in Kobylin Borzymy and Sokoly parishes of Łomża province; there may be more elsewhere, too small to show up on my maps. It's hard to say exactly why these villages got that name, perhaps there was a geographic feature that looked like a drumstick, or perhaps there was a family in the area that made drumsticks, or perhaps the places belonged at some point to a person with the nickname "little drumstick" -- the names probably originated centuries ago, so it's tough to say just how they got started. In any case, Stypułkowski would mean roughly "person from the place associated with little drumsticks," or just "family from Stypułki."

As of 1990 there were 1,636 Polish citizens named Stypułkowski, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (176), Białystok (344), and Łomża (551). The concentration in northeastern Poland is enough to make me wonder if most of the Stypułkowskis did, in fact, come from the area of those villages I mentioned above, and then spread out. I don't know if that's true, or if there are other Stypułkis in other parts of the country, too small to show up in my sources.

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

...Could you please research my family name Klevinski. My father thinks the original spelling started with "Ch". My grandfather came to America from Poland around 1890. Thank you in advance for your help.

The problem here is trying to figure out what the original form of the name was in Poland. The v is wrong because Poles don't use v; but that's not a big problem, Polish w sounds like v and thus is often spelled as v by non-Poles. So we can say Klewiński is the way the name would be rendered by Poles. But what about the first letter? Your father could be right, non-Poles often had trouble with the guttural ch or h sound in Polish and turned it into k, which is the closest sound in English. So we might be dealing with Chlewiński.

But Klewiński is a recognized Polish name -- as of 1990 there were 72 Poles named Klewiński, living in the provinces of Warsaw (18), Bielsko-Biala (5), Gorzow (16), Jelenia Gora (1), Leszno (3), Lublin (6), Olsztyn (22) and Opole (1). There's no recognizable pattern to this, they're scattered all over the country. But the point is that this name is possible. It derives most likely from Klewe, a German place name, and generally Klew- in German comes from a short form of the first name Niklaus (Nicholas); there is a village Klewinowo in Białystok province.

If the name was originally Chlewiński, it comes from the root chlew, "pigsty." There were 238 Poles named Chlewińskias of 1990, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Olsztyn (40) and Pila (52), in northcentral Poland, the area formerly called Prussia and ruled for a long time by the Germans.

So either name is possible, and there's really no way I can tell you for sure which is right in your case. I guess you'll just have to hope you can find some record (immigration and naturalization papers, ship passenger lists, parish records in this country) that will establish what the original form was and where the family came from.

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

...I have been trying to find information on my maternal grandmother. She was said to be polish. Is the surname Jamrozy Polish?...

Yes, Jamroży is Polish (ż is the dotted z, pronounced like "s" in "measure"). It is actually a polonized version of the first name "Ambrose," in Latin Ambrosius. In Polish the standard form of this name is Ambroży, but in medieval Polish records we also see it in the form Jamroży (pronounced "yahm-ROZH-ee"). It was back in that same time period it began to be used as a surname, also; and although it is seldom seen as a first name anymore (as I said, Ambroży is the standard form of the name these days), it has survived as a surname. In 1990 there were some 1,045 Polish citizens with the surname Jamroży (and 4,399 named Jamro'z, from another form!). There doesn't seem to be any particular pattern to where they lived, so we can't say this name is more likely to come from one part of Poland than another -- but that's usually the case with surnames derived from first names.

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

...Yes, I have an odd surname. The name Scislaw has NOT been changed, shortened, etc from Poland to the US. (I have seen marriage documents-1890s- in Zuromin Poland for the name Scislaw.)

The name has a mark over the Cap "S" or "c" (sorry I can't remember) and a slash through the "l". My grandmother pronounced the name "Shish Waff" or "Chish waff"

The ONLY time I have ever seen the name in any form is from the town of Mstislav in Russia today. In the 1700s when Poland owned it...it was shown on a map as Mscislaw (same accent marks as mine...but with an M). I don't know if that means anything but I do know that Mstislav is a first name and not a surname....but then again, there is an M in front... ANY CLUES???

This is an unusual name, no question, and I'm glad you've done a good job of documenting it. Your grandmother's pronunciation is fairly accurate -- in standard Polish the name Ścisław (spelled as you indicate) would be pronounced roughly "SHCHEES-waff," and could very easily be pronounced in everyday use as your grandmother did.

As of 1990 there were only 9 Polish citizens with the surname Ścisław. They lived in the provinces of Ciechanow (8) and Torun (1). Unfortunately I do not have access to further details such as first names and addresses, but at least we know the name has not died out in Poland -- and if you ever do find a Ścisław in Poland, chances are excellent he/she is a relative!

The name could fool us because it looks and sounds like a couple of the ancient pagan Slavic names formed by joining two roots to create a kind of name of omen or prophecy for a child. You mention Mścisław (in Russian "Mstislav," there is a famous Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich), from the roots mści-, "avenge" + -sław, "glory," thus meaning "one famed for taking revenge." But in that name the M- is such an integral part of the meaning and the name that it would be rare for it just to drop off. So it probably has nothing to do with your name... There are other names such as Czesław, but these, too, probably have nothing to do with your name.

What is likely is that this name derives from the root ścisł-, "compact, dense, exact." There are several common names from this root, including Ścisło, Ścisłowski, etc. Name expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions these and others, including Ścisławski (24 Poles by that name as of 1990), as coming from that root -- he does not specifically mention Ścisław, but if Ścisławski derives from it, it's a good bet Ścisław does, too. The suffix -aw- is adjectival, and we often see it added to roots (e. g., Bielawa < bial-, biel-, "white"). So strictly from a linguistic point of view the name probably originated as meaning "person with a compact, dense body," thus someone who was short and thick and powerful. Ścisło is a more common one meaning the same thing.

There is also a plant in the myrtle family called ścisławin, Latin name beaufortia. I'm not familiar with it, but I'll bet it got this name because it grows thick and dense. It might be connected with your name, but not necessarily -- I mention it only because it proves that names can be formed from the root ścisław-.

So I can't be 100% certain, but it is very plausible that this is a variant of other names from the same root that happen to be a bit more common. There is nothing odd or strange about a Polish name formed by taking a root such as ścisł- and adding the adjectival suffix -aw. This is all perfectly natural and plausible, and that's my opinion as to how the name was formed. I could be wrong, but my gut feeling is this is right.

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

...noticed you had information on Czyzewski and Malewicz. I was wondering if the info for those names are the same for Ciszewski and Malewicki? If not, do you have any info on these names you can share with me?

The Malewicz info would be very similar -- this means basically "son of the little guy," or perhaps "son of Mal" with Mal being a short form of a longer name such as Malomir. This is a moderately common name, with 1,113 Poles by this name as of 1990. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (109), Białystok (117), Bydgoszcz (173), Gorzow (82) and Szczecin (82). I really don't see much in the way of a pattern to the distribution, which makes sense -- a name like this could got started anywhere Polish was spoken and there were short guys who had children!

Czyzewski comes ultimately from the root czyz, "green finch, siskin," but more directly from a place name such as Czyzewo, Czyzew, etc. -- and there are a lot of those. As of 1990 there were 10,543 Poles named Czyzewski, living all over the country. So I'm afraid it's one of those names that's too common to help much. It can help in one way, however: if you do good research and pin down the part of Poland the family came from, and you notice there's a place called Czyzew or Czyzewo nearby, chances are good that's the particular village the name derived from in your case.

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

...Could you please provide any available information on the following names: Ampuła and Mydło?...

As of 1990 there were 167 Polish citizens named Ampuła, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (25), Ciechanow (24), and Kalisz (60). It apparently comes from the noun ampuła, from Latin ampulla, a container used in church for wine or water at the Eucharist. In more modern Polish ampuła means the same thing as the English term "ampoule" or "ampule," a small glass vial. It's tough to say how a person would get this surname -- perhaps the family made or sold such items? Or I suppose it could be a nickname based on a person's shape. Without going back several hundred years to the time and place of the name's origin, it's a little tough saying exactly how it got started.

Mydło is a moderately common name, as of 1990 there were 472 Poles named Mydło. It comes from the noun mydło, "soap," perhaps indicating a person who made or sold soap, or maybe even a nickname for a very clean person. Poles by that name live all over the country, but there is a definite concentration in the provinces of Olsztyn (80) and Ostrołęka (192) in north-central and northeast Poland.

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

...About the only information I have on them is their last name. If you could find the time to research these 2 names, I would appreciate it very much: Felenak and Stanczewski...

The name Felenak is either slightly misspelled or else very rare -- as of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Felenak. There were 62 Poles named Felenczak, and 640 named Feliniak. It could be the name was Felenak and as such was a pretty rare variation of a name such as Feliniak, or perhaps somewhere along the way the spelling was accidentally changed. Either way, names beginning with Felen- and Felin- come from nicknames or short forms of such Polish first names as Feliks (Felix) or Felicjan (a name seldom used in English, we'd probably spell it Felician). Poles often took the first syllable of a popular first name, dropped the rest (much as we turned "Theodore" into "Ted") and added suffixes. Felenak or Feliniak would both mean something like "son of Feliks or Felicjan." Unfortunately none of these names shows any particular distribution frequency, so I can't suggest a specific part of Poland where this name is most likely to be found -- it could show up almost anywhere.

Stanczewski also derives ultimately from a short form of a first name, in this case Stanisław (in English and Latin Stanislaus), often abbreviated by Poles as Stan or Staś; a name such as Stanczak or Stanczyk means "Stan's son," so that may be where the -cz- comes from. However, names ending in -ewski usually derive from a place name such as Stanczewo, something like that, and those places names in turn meant "Stan's son's place," referring perhaps to a man who once owned or founded the village. So Stanczewski probably started out meaning "person or family from Stanczewo, i. e., Stan's son's place." I can't find any such place on my maps, but most likely that just means it was too small or has since changed its name or been absorbed by another village. As of 1990 there were 242 Poles named Stanczewski, with the largest numbers showing up in the provinces of Pila (70) and Torun (39) in northcentral Poland. There were another 263 named Stańczewski, with larger numbers in the provinces of Tarnow (26), Torun (43), and Wloclawek (36).

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

...Could you tell me the name origins for my great grandparents names? Sztukowski and Makowski...

Names ending in -owski usually derive from a place name the family came from or was otherwise associated with. Typically, those place names end in -ow or -owo, although there are other possibilities. Thus Makowski means "person or family associated with Makow/Makowo"; if the family was noble, they probably owned the estate or village at some time, and if they were peasants, they probably lived and worked there. There are several Maków's and at least one Makowo in Poland, so it's tough to tell which of them your particular Makowski's might have come from. As is usually the case when a surname can come from several different place names, Makowski is a very common name in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 25,340 Poles by that name, with no apparent concentration in any one part of the country. Warsaw province has the most, with 3,155, but virtually every province has at least a few hundred Makowski's living in it. The ultimate root of the name is mak, which means "poppy," so that "Makow" or "Makowo" may have started out meaning "the place with lots of poppies." In some cases it can also come from short forms of first names such as Maksym and Makary, kind of like our English nickname "Mack"; in those cases Makow or Makowo meant "Mak's place." So Makowski means either "person from Mak's place" or "person from the poppy place."

Sztukowski is less common, though still not rare; as of 1990 there were 1,011 Polish citizens named Sztukowski. The largest numbers lived in the provinces of Kalisz (378) and Suwałki (232), with much smaller numbers in virtually every other province. The interesting thing is, I can't find a place named Sztuków or Sztukowo or even Sztuki on the map, which surprises me. Of course, there could be several little villages by this name, too small to show up on maps or in gazetteers, or there may be one or more places that used to have this name and changed it, or were absorbed into other communities -- since surnames typically originated several centuries ago, a lot can change and make it hard to find the place referred to. The ultimate root of the name is sztuka, "piece, part," from German Stueck.

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

...I was wondering if you can help me to find out a little more about the origins of my last name: Drwięga. I'm from Poland and I know that most of my family came from city Sanok in eastern Poland...

I'm surprised to find that none of my sources mention Drwięga -- as of 1990 there were 669 Polish citizens by that name, so it is hardly a rare name, and I would have expected that somebody would have written about it. Your link to Sanok does make sense, in that of those 669 Drwięga's, 383 lived in the province of Krosno. The others are scattered in small numbers all over Poland, with no other province having more than 40.

That information may be a little help, but I'm afraid I just cannot find anything else. This is a case where I recommend writing to the Pracownia Antroponimiczna Instytutu Jezyka Polskiego in Krakow, especially since you can probably write them in Polish, and letters in Polish are easier and quicker for them to answer. They don't do genealogical research, they just do research into the origins of names; from what others tell me, it's rare to pay more than US$20 for their analysis, and I have heard from many who were very happy with their work.

I'm sorry I could not help you, and I hope the scholars at the Pracownia can. If you do write them and they provide a good answer, I would be very interested in hearing what they say, so that I could include this information in the next edition of my book -- and thus pass the information on to other people with Drwięga ancestors!

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

...We are just beginning our search for the location of the town where our Father was born: Uscilug, Wolyn, Poland in 1905--family name Soroczynski...

Uscilug is now called Ustilug, and it is in Ukraine (Wolyn is the Polish name of a region of Ukraine, called Volhynia in English); it's about 120 km. north of Lvov (Ukr. name L'viv).

Soroczyński comes from the root soroka, "magpie"; the root is the same in Polish and Ukrainian. Specifically, names ending in -iński or -yński usually refer to a family's connection with a town or village, so that I would expect this name to mean "family from Sorocko, Soroczno," something like that, and those names in turn would mean "place of the magpies," i. e., an area notable because there were a lot of these birds around. I can't pin it down as to which particular village the name refers to because there are a number of possibilities, especially if the territory now in Ukraine has to be considered. As of 1990 there were 978 Polish citizens named Soroczyński (I have no data on how many Ukrainians might have this name). In Poland the people named Soroczynski were scattered all over, with some of the larger numbers in the provinces of Białystok (56), Gorzow (80), Szczecin (102), Walbrzych (56), Wroclaw (91), and Zielona Gora (75) -- all over the map.

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

...I am researching my genealogy and I came across your page on the Internet saying that you might be able to tell me about my surname. The names I have are Moryl and Ruzicki (I don't know if this is the right spelling). If you could tell me anything about their origins I would greatly appreciate that. I believe they were from the region of Galicia (do you know if Galicia the same as Selisia)?...

Galicia was the name given the area ruled by Austria from about 1775-1918; it covered southeastern Poland (from about Krakow east) and western Ukraine. "Selisia" is probably Silesia, the name of an industrial region in southwestern Poland and the western part of the Czech Republic -- it was called Schlesien by the Germans (who ruled it for a long time) and Śląsk or Szląsk by the Poles. So no, the two aren't the same -- both are in what is now southern Poland, but Silesia is west of Galicia.

Moryl could come from two different sources: there is a term morela, "apricot," and Morel was a sort of short form or nickname for the name Maurelius. So the name may have originated as a reference to the apricot (perhaps to someone who loved to eat them, or grew or sold them, or lived near a place where they were grown), but it might also mean nothing more than any other nickname -- just as "Ted," "Ed', "Jack" don't really mean anything in English, they're just short forms of first names. As of 1990 there were 480 Polish citizens named Moryl, scattered all over the country but with larger numbers in the provinces of Lublin (86) and Tarnow (138), both of which are in eastern and southeastern Poland; Tarnow province would have been in Galicia, I don't think Lublin province was, I think it was in the area ruled by the Russian Empire.

Ruzicki comes ultimately from the Polish form of the word for "rose," spelled as róża (sounding like our word "rouge" with a final -a tacked on). It's a tough name to get a handle on because there are potentially so many different ways this root can be spelled. Ruzicki probably originated in most cases as meaning "person or family associated with a place named Ruzyce or Ruzice or Rózyce" -- there are many, many places with names this could come from. Polish accented ó and Polish u are pronounced the same, so almost any place with a name beginning with Róz- or Ruz- could spawn this name. The form Ruzicki is rather rare (only 42 as of 1990), but Różycki was the name of 10,411 Poles as of 1990. So it's rather important to try to trace the family back as far as possible and see if you can determine the original spelling. If it really was Ruzicki, there aren't many of them left in Poland, they may be hard to track down but odds are decent they're related; but if Ruzicki is just an anglicized form of Różycki, there are thousands of them.

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

...I took your advice about contacting the Prof. in Krakow, in fact I went to see him at his office (after making an appointment of course). The attached file which I hope works is his written answer after 2 months, I would , and I presume he would not mind, is to put it on to your site for future reference, and hopefully other "Nieurzyla's" will see it and maybe contact me. Hoping that you find this interesting. Regards and thank you.... John Nieurzyla.

Krakow, November 6, 1997.

Dear Mr. Nieurzyla,

During your visit in the Polish Language Institute in Krakow, in September this year, we talked about the suspected origin of your surname Nieurzyla. As I wanted to consult some additional sources in order to look for the existence of different bases Nieurz- and Nieui- I promised you to write to you, after some time. Now, I can surely say that such a base as *nieurz- does not exist in Polish. In the book entitled: Slownik nazwisk wspoIczesnie w Polsce uzywanych (A dictionary of surnames borne at present in Poland), Vol.VI, Krakow 1993, published by professor Kazimierz Rymut, which I showed you, there are people who bear the same surname in different spelling, namely: Nieurzyla, Nieuzylla, Nieuzyla, Nieuzylla and Nieużyla. All these variants belong to one and the same proper Polish form Nieuzy*la. There are only 4 people in Poland who bear Nieurzyla as their surname. They live, at present, in the Bielsko-Biala province (3 people) and in that of Katowice (1 person). thus in the historical province Upper Silesia (=Gorny Slask). The surname in the form Nieużyla is borne in Poland by 347 people. Most of them (238 people) live also in the Upper Silesia, namely in the Katowice province. In the Lower Silesia (Dolny Slask), in the province of Opole reside till to-day 94 people named Nieu*zyla. The rest are spread all over Poland. This means that the surname Nieuzyla (the same refers also to other variants was borne mainly on the Silesian territory and that just there was the nest of this family. As, in the past, Silesia was ruled successively by Polish, Czech and German princes and kings the Slavic etymology of your surname might be of both Polish and Czech origin. The base of the surname might come from both old-Czech past participle neuz^il or neuz^ily and old-Polish nieużyly, modern Polish: nieuz(*yty, in both languages meaning the same:'a hedgehog'. The form ending in -a, thus Nieużyla instead of Nieu*zyly came into existence as a result of the so called "paradigmatic derivation". During this process the verbal (participial) form nieuzyly was introduced to the substantival paradigm, in this case to the feminine grammatical paradigm ending in -a - Nieuzyla. In Polish there are a lot of surnames of men which are declined according to the feminine grammatical form. We must for example le say: nie widzialem dzisiaj pana Nieużyly - (To-day, I haven't seen Mr. Nieuzyla) or Kupowalem te ksiatke z panem Nieużyla (I have, bought this book together with Mr. Nieuzla) and so on.

Another interesting consideration. If the surname Nieu*zyla (Nieurzyla) were of Czech origin it would first to be Polonicized, as the original Czech form would have to be spelled Neuz^il. As you remember I found such a surname in a book devoted to the Czech surnames. Therefore, we may say that the form Nieużyla is either a Polonicized form of a Czech Neuz^il or an original Polish form Nieużyla. To sum up it is to say that the form of the surname Nieurzyla, used by you, is an incorrect orthographic form of the proper Polish one: Nieużyla. Such incorrectness originated therefore that from the 17th century the sound spelled in Polish rz and ż was pronounced with us in the same way, namely as ż (in English marked phonetically as this sound you can find in the English word "measure." ) Till nowadays many people in Poland make mistakes in spelling, by writing rz instead of ż and vice versa. The newest example: At present, an American first name Jessica became very popular in Poland. It occurs that even in Polish Register Offices this name is registered against Polish rules of spelling, namely Drzesica, although the proper Polish counterpart of Americam Jessica should be spelled rather Diezika. In Polish linguistic circles, however, there is opinion that the names borrowed from those of foreign ones should be spelled according to their original foreign forms. Alas, there are with us also some linguistic purists who want that foreign names were adapted to Polish spelling rules. This is all I could tell you on the linguistic origin of your surname.

With best greetings

Klimek

...I am looking for the history of my last name. Bialobzeski, I have found so far that the correct spelling is Bialobrzeski. If you have any information at all please e-mail me back and let me know...

You're right about the correct spelling, it is Białobrzeski (the ł is pronounced like our W, so that the name sounds kind of like "bee-yah-woe-BZHEH-ski," with "zh" standing for the sound in the name "Zhivago" or like the "s" in "measure"). It is one of many names formed from the names of places; it could come from Białobrzeg, Białobrzegi, and Białobrzeskie, and they all mean basically "white shore, white coast." Unfortunately there are more than a dozen places in Poland bearing these names, so the surname itself gives no clue which of those villages any one Białobrzeski family came from (and most likely there's more than one family by this name). But such names usually originated because of a connection between a family and those places, so that the surname means "person/family from Białobrzeg/Białobrzegi/ Białobrzeskei," or, to break it down further, "family from the place with the white shore." If a family by this name was noble, it probably owned the villages at one point; if not, they probably worked the land there, or traveled there often on business.

As is normal with surnames derived from common place names, this is a fairly common surname in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 1,910 Polish citizens named Białobrzeski. There's no one area where the name is most common; we see the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (507), Łomża (153), Ostrołęka (286), and Wroclaw (110), but there are people by this name in virtually every province of Poland.

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

...I am writing to enquire if you can assist me in tracing the origin and meaning of the name Jablecki. My great grandparents were Felix and Susanne Jablecki and they remained in Poland. I have some details of family history and I would really like to learn more. I have recently discovered that the surname of jablecki was taken by some Jewish families, but to my knowledge, my ancestors were Catholic. Any help will be much appreciated...

The original spelling of the name in Polish would be Jabłecki (where ł is pronounced like our W, so that the name would sound like "yahb-WET-skee.") The ultimate root is the word jabłko, meaning "apple," and there are a number of common surnames from it, including Jabłoński, Jabłkowski, Jabłonka, etc. I suspect Jabłecki is likely to be associated with a place name, perhaps a village called Jabłko or Jabłek, something like that. I can't find any such place on my maps, but that doesn't mean anything; some of the place names that gave rise to surnames have since changed, or the places have been renamed or absorbed into other communities. Such place names would mean "place of the apples," so they probably got the name because there was a stand of apple trees in the area. So you might construe the surname as "one from the place of the apples."

This is a fairly common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 1,042 Polish citizens named Jabłecki. There were Jabłecki's living in virtually every province, with larger numbers (more than 50) in the provinces of Warsaw (194), Katowice (69), Łomża (85), Ostrołęka (94), Poznan (79), and Przemysl (97). As a map will show, these provinces are scattered all over Poland, so there is no one area we can point to and say "This is where the name came from." Most likely, there were tiny communities with names like Jabłko, Jabłek, Jabłecko all over, so the surname originated as referring to families coming from any or all of those places.

By the way, surnames of this type could easily be borne by Christians or Jews -- there may have been Jews named Jabłecki, but you could hardly say it was a "Jewish" surname. Alexander Beider does not mention Jabłecki in his Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland," which suggests it was not borne by many Jews, at least not in the eastern part of what is now Poland. And your ancestors' first names were definitely Christian (although Susanna can be Jewish, it is normally seen in a form reflecting Yiddish origin and pronunciation, such as Szoszana). So if the family was Jewish, it probably converted several generations back -- which was by no means rare.

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

...I have been researching my surname and its origins and was wondering if you had any information about it. My name is Joanna Paraszczuk and my family are originally from Buczacz in Galicia (now part of Ukraine). I really would be very grateful if you could tell me anything you know!...

While none of my sources specifically mention Paraszczuk, I think I can give you a pretty good idea of its origin. It almost certainly means "son of Paraska," and Paraska (a variant of the Greek-derived first name Prakseda or Parakseda) is a feminine name far more common among Orthodox and Greek Catholics than among Polish Roman Catholics. This fits in well with your info -- you'd expect a name like this to show up more in what is now Ukraine than in Poland. From a social standpoint, too, this makes sense -- names derived from metronymics (mother's names) are far more common among Ukrainians than among Poles, who generally preferred patronymics (names derived from the father's name). So at some point in your family history there was a woman named Paraska who was prominent enough that her family came to bear a surname pointing to origin from her. In Ukrainian the Cyrillic spelling of this surname would look something like this: Паращук. It would tend to be spelled "Parashchuk" by our phonetic standards, but Poles spell the Slavic combination "shch" as szcz.

This name is, as we'd expect, rather rare among Polish citizens -- as of 1990 there were only 137 Paraszczuk's in Poland, scattered all over (probably due to post World War II forced relocations of Ukrainians to western Poland). I imagine the name's a lot more common in Ukraine, but have no data on that. You might visit to learn more about Ukrainian language, customs, history, etc.

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

...I would like to know more about my last name- Kornatowski. Anything that you would be willing to tell me would be great (better than I know know)...

The surname Kornatowski, like most names ending in -owski, almost certainly refers to a place name, meaning something like "person or family associated with Kornaty or Kornatowo." In older times (not so much anymore) when Polish added the -ski suffix other suffixes had a tendency to drop off, so there are a number of names theoretically possible that Kornatowski could derive from. On my maps I see a village Kornaty in Konin province, perhaps 20 km. east of Wrzesnia, in west central Poland; also there's a village Kornatowo in Torun province, about 30 km. north of Torun, not that far northeast of the other one. People coming from these villages, and others too small to show up on maps and in gazetteers, could easily end up being called Kornatowski as a reference to lands they owned (if they were noble) or worked on (if they were peasants). These place names, in turn, derive from Kornat, a variant of the first name we know as "Conrad," so that the surname means basically "person from Conrad's place."

This is a moderately common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 1,280 Kornatowski's living in Poland, in virtually every province. The largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (218), Ciechanow (207), Gdansk (93), and Poznan (84), but as I say, the name is found in almost every part of Poland. This is not unusual -- places were often named for their owners or founders, and surnames derived from those place names, so this name could show up almost anywhere they spoke Polish and had guys named Kornat, i.e ., almost anywhere in Poland.

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

...I found your page on the net which explains name origins and am interested in finding the meaning or origin of my families original name. If you have time any assistance would be appreciated...

The name Dzierżanowski, like most surnames ending in -owski, almost certainly began as a reference to a person or family's connection with place names -- in this case we'd expect it to mean "one from Dzierzanow, Dzierzanowo," etc. In older Polish when they added the suffix -ski prior endings had a tendency to drop off, so quite a few different places could yield the same name. I see on the map a village Dzierżanów in Kalisz province and villages Dzierżanowo in Ostrołęka and Płock provinces, and there could easily be more too small to show up on the maps. All these place names, in turn, derive from an old first name Dzierżan, from a root meaning "to hold, keep," so the villages originally meant something like "Dzierżan's place" (Dzierżan was probably the name of a founder or owner at some point), and the surname means "person from Dzierżan's place. It's a common surname in Poland, as of 1990 there were 1,526 Poles named Dzierżanowski, scattered all over but with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Warsaw (241), Białystok (138), Ciechanow (164), and Katowice (113).

Kowalczyk just means "smith's son," and is very common -- as of 1990 there were 87,690 Poles by that name, living all over the country.

Rutecki is a moderately common name, as of 1990 there were 1,526 Poles named Rutecki. This is probably also derived from a place name such as Rutka or Rutki, and there are several villages by those names in Poland. The ultimate origin of the name is either ruta, "rue" (a kind of plant) or a variant of rudka, a place where iron ore could be found.

Podowski is a tough one, I'm not sure what that comes from. If you write the Institute in Poland, this may be the one they can help you most with, if the form is correct -- it may be the name was originally spelled otherwise, but it was mangled somewhat over the course of years or during immigration. As of 1990 there were 216 Poles named Podowski, so the name is not unknown in Poland; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (30), Ciechanow (53), Gdansk (20) and Olsztyn (48), with a few others scattered here and there. But I've never run across it before, and my sources don't give any clues what it might come from.

... I will also take your advice and contact the institut in Poland...

That's a good idea. But don't waste their time with Kowalczyk, that's just too common and they wouldn't be able to add much to what I've said. Dzierżanowski is probably also a little too common to be much good. But their notes on Rutecki and Podowski are especially likely to prove informative.

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

...I have been trying to locate any information on the above name, Wydrych. I know it is Polish...

Wydrych is a Polish name, as of 1990 there were 805 Polish citizens by that name. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Czestochowa (93), Katowice (79), Kielce (181), and Krakow (81), which are all in southcentral Poland. Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions it in his book on Polish surnames, saying that names beginning with Wydr- usually derive from the word wydry, "otter"; perhaps because a person caught otters, or made a noise like one, or somehow otherwise reminded people of an otter. Many surnames started out as nicknames, and it can be tough to figure out why a nickname originally seemed appropriate (there was a character named "Otter" in the movie "Animal House," and I haven't a clue why that was his name). I should also mention that this name might also derive from the verb wydrzyć, "to tear out or away, to pluck."

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

...Do you have any info on my maternal grandparents names? My grandfather was a Dzerwucki from the Poznan area. My grandmother was a Staron from the Lwow area...

How firm is that spelling of Dzerwucki? Because I've never seen that name before, and as of 1990 there was nobody in Poland named Dzerwucki. The combination Dzer- is rare in Polish, Dzier- is a bit more likely, but there wasn't anyone named Dzierwucki either. Is there any chance the letters have been switched and it was Drzewucki? That is a moderately common name; as of 1990 there were 438 Drzewucki's living in Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (99), Gdansk (34), Szczecin (33), Torun (37), Wloclawek (180). If Drzewucki is the original form, the name probably derives from the root drzew-, "tree, wood"... I'm not saying Dzerwucki can't be right, it can; but it would be quite rare, and it doesn't really look or feel right to me. I think verifying the original form could be pretty important here.

As of 1990 there were 3,230 Poles named Staroń, living all over the country but with the largest numbers (more than 100) in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (244), Katowice (601), Kielce (100), Krakow (106), Krosno (154), Lodz (122), Rzeszow (166), Warsaw (115), Wroclaw (192), Zamosc (144). Most of these are in southcentral and southeastern Poland, but I don't see any pattern more specific than that. The name comes from the root star-, "old" (in Polish and Ukrainian), so Staroń probably began as a nickname meaning "old fellow" or something of the sort.

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

...I would be interested in any information you could help me find on my surname, Cielencki. I have seen several variations of the spelling over the years and am unsure if this is correct...

Are you a member of the Polish Genealogical Society of Texas? With your family's roots, it would seem a logical place to look for help with your research. For more info visit the Website:

… To my knowledge my fathers family other than one brother were all killed. He came from Warsaw my Fathers name was Tomasz Stopczynski, dob: 21st December 1908 , his only surviving brothers name was Stefan of the same surname dob: unknown.

The ultimate root of Stopczyński is clear: it comes from stopa, "foot." But Stopczyński doesn't come directly from that; more likely, it comes from a place name such as Stopka or Stopki, and that name in turn derived from the root meaning "foot," perhaps because of some geographical feature or landmark that reminded people of a foot. There are at least three places in Poland that the name Stopczyński could come from (and possibly many more too small to show up on my maps, or places that have changed names in the centuries since the surnames were established): Stopka in Bydgoszcz province, Stopki in Olsztyn province, and Stopki in Siedlce province. Obviously I have no way of knowing which of these a particular Stopczyński family was connected with; the most one can say, without considerable detailed research into the individual family's history, is that the surname derives from a place name, and Stopka and Stopki fit the pattern.

As of 1990 there were 577 Polish citizens named Stopczyński, with the largest numbers in the provinces of: Warsaw (57), Ciechanow (87), Lodz (58), Szczecin (44), and Wroclaw (58). There are smaller numbers scattered in many other provinces, but those are the ones with the largest concentrations. I'm afraid I don't see any particular pattern to that distribution, so we can't specify one area of Poland and say that's where your family probably came from. (This, by the way, is how it usually is with Polish surnames; there are comparatively few that offer clear leads as to exactly where they originated). I should add that I have no access to further data such as first names or addresses for any of the people living in the provinces mentioned.

… My mother who lives with me came from Oberniki, her mother had died when she was 8 months old, and very little of her she married a man (my grandfather who's name was Mihalski). They had 3 children, Roman, twins Lokardia, Cecylia (my mother).

I'm afraid I can't find an Oberniki on the map, but there are two Oborniki's, one in Poznan province, one (also called Oborniki Slaskie) in Wroclaw province... Mihalski comes from the name Michael (standard Polish form Michał, where ł represents the Polish L with a slash through it, pronounced like our W). Michalski is a very common Polish name, as of 1990 there were 51,325 Poles by that name, and large numbers of them lived all over the country. There was no one who spelled the name Mihalski. That, however, is not surprising. In Polish the ch and h are pronounced exactly the same, so a name spelled with a ch can very easily be spelled with h instead without any significance at all to the change. Until this century most Poles were illiterate, so there was no great pressure to spell names uniformly. Once the Communists set up compulsory elementary education for all Poles, there began to be more emphasis on spelling names the "right" way. So a great many of those Michalski's now living in Poland probably had ancestors whose names were spelled Mihalski in records... What I am saying is that in doing your research, you want to keep an eye out for both spellings, because from a practical point of view they're both the same name.

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

… When you said the Polish name Bendyk probably derived from the first name "Benedict" you really didn't tell me what that name meant. Also we have two other names coming up a lot in the family, Ptaszek and Walaszkiewicz. When you have time I would greatly appreciate any description you may be able to obtain on them.

I'm sorry, I deal so much with obscure names that I get to assuming people are familiar with the meanings of more familiar English names, such as Benedict. It comes from Latin benedictus and means "blessed."

Ptaszek comes from the root ptak, "bird"; ptaszek is a diminutive form, meaning more or less "little bird, birdey" or "son of the bird." It's hard to say exactly why a person might get this name – perhaps they lived near birds, raised birds, had mannerisms that reminded people of birds. In any event, as of 1990 there were 2,234 Poles named Ptaszek, so it's a reasonably common name and distributed fairly evenly all over the country.

Walaszkiewicz could come from several different roots. With this one it makes a big difference what the original Polish form was: if the L has a slash through it, the name means "son of the geldling," and as you might imagine, it's not a very common name (only 66 in Poland as of 1990). But if the L doesn't have the slash, it could be a name meaning roughly "son of little Wal," where Wal is a nickname for several different common first names, including Walenty, Walerian, etc. This, too, is rare, only 36 Poles by that name in 1990. Or it could mean "son of the Wallachian," referring to a tribe of people who lived roughly in what is now Romania. So for this name there is no one simple, obvious answer; different people with this name might descend from folks who got it for different reasons.

… My great grandfather came from Szaflary, Poland which to the best of my ability I came up with south west Poland. You send most people with the name Bendyk are in the Mid central part of Poland. How did you find this?

I have a 10-volume set listing every surname in Poland as of 1990, telling how many Poles had that name in the whole country, then breaking it down by province. Sometimes this info is helpful, usually it's not -- there's no real concentration in any one area. If I think the data might be helpful, I mention it; if it doesn't tell us anything, I skip it. I don't have access to any further details such as first names and addresses; the Polish government agency that allowed its database to be used for the 10-volume set refuses to give anyone further details. So the most I can give anyone is data on surname frequency and distribution by province.

In this case, I only mentioned it to show that more people named Bendyk are in mid-central Poland than anywhere else; but of course, that doesn't mean that's where your family came from. If 100 live in Warsaw province and 2 live in Wroclaw province, the 2 in Wroclaw province might still turn out to be the ones you're related to! It's a matter of probabilities and odds. In my answers I emphasize the high-probability approach because by the nature of things I can't help with specifics. But I always try to remind people they should go mainly by the info they've uncovered; you're far more of an expert on your family than I can ever hope to be.

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

… Does the name "Przedzienkowski" have any particular meaning? Is it a common Polish surname?

This is a very rare name. As of 1990 there were 21 Polish citizens who spelled the name Przedzienkowski, 4 who spelled it Przedzieńkowski, and 19 who spelled it Przedziękowski (ę stands for the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it and usually pronounced roughly as en) – all these spellings would be pronounced almost identically. The 19 Przedziękowski's lived in the provinces of Elblag (10) and Torun (9), and the Przedzienkowski's showed 3 in Elblag province and 8 in Torun province, so those seem to be the areas where this name is most common. (I do not have access to any further data such as first names or addresses).

I'm not quite sure what the ultimate root is -- David Zincavage may be right about the "spin thread" root, but if so I'd expect the initial nasal vowel to show up somewhere, i. e., Przędziękowski or Prządziękowski. As it is, I can't tell whether the name should be broken down to prze-, "across, through, very, thoroughly" + dzięk-, "to thank," or przed-, "before, pre-" + dzień, "day." Part of the problem is it's hard to say which of those spelling is the "correct" one; if we knew Przedziękowski, or instance, was the one that most accurately reflected the name's origin, it would appear to mean "one from the place where they thank you thoroughly"! Somehow I don't find that convincing.

But whatever the ultimate root, I think David's right that the name originally referred to a place of origin. I haven't spotted many likely candidates -- there's a Przedzeń in Kalisz province, that might work, but I kind of doubt it. Probably the surname did refer to the name of a place beginning Przedziękow-, but in the centuries since the surname was established, that place has vanished, been absorbed by another community, changed its name, etc.

So the short answer is, it's a rare name, and it probably referred to a place -- but good luck tracking that place down!

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

I am a member of the PGSA and also have purchased your book the second edition on the Orgins and Meanings of Polish Names, however I still know nothing of my grandfather's name Josef Rakowicz. He was born 30 Nov. 1871 in Sierki, Łomża, Poland. I would appreciate any help that you could give me on this name. Thank you so much for the wonderful work that you are doing.

I certainly appreciate your kind words! I hope the material I write is some help to you and others trying to do genealogical research.

Rakowicz comes from the suffix -owicz, which means "son of," plus the root rak, "crab." So the literal meaning is "son of the crab." It is tough to say exactly why a person would end up with such a name. Perhaps the name was first applied to the sons of a fellow who caught and sold crabs, or who loved to eat crabs, or who walked like a crab or somehow otherwise reminded people of one. This name appears in records as far back as 1354, so it can be hard to figure out exactly what it meant centuries ago -- and the name probably originated independently in different places and times, so that it may have had different meanings in different cases. But there was some connection with "crab," that's the one thing that seems pretty certain.

As of 1990 there were 558 Polish citizens with the name Rakowicz, living in virtually every province but with larger numbers in the provinces of Białystok (101), Bydgoszcz (46), Pila (72), and Poznan (119). Sierki is now in Białystok province, so some of those 101 Rakowicz'es in that province may be relatives. Unfortunately I do not have access to more detailed info such as first names and addresses -- what I've given here is all I have... The interesting thing is that Rakowicz is only moderately common -- 558 isn't all that many -- yet the name it comes from, Rak, is quite common; there were 11,730 Rak's in Poland as of 1990. I haven't a clue why there'd be such a disparity!

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

… Blase Rekowski born 1852 in poland where? family names? any imformation would be great.

I'm afraid I don't have enough information to be able to help much with individuals. Relatively few Polish surnames provide clues that are much use in tracking down where a family came from; most often you have to have found out where they came from through researching records (naturalization papers, ship passenger lists, parish records in this country, etc.).

Rekowski is no exception. As of 1990 there were 2,313 Polish citizens by this name, living all over the country. However, the greatest concentration of them by far is in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (528), Gdansk (970), and Slupsk (308). This the part of northwestern Poland associated with an ethnic group called the Kaszubi, in English the Kashubs -- they are closely related to Poles, but have their own language and culture that set them apart. In terms of linguistic origin, Rekowski is probably a northern Polish version of the very common name Rakowski, which just means "one from Raków/Rakowo" or other villages with similar names, of which there are a great many. So where most Poles would say "Raków" or "Rakowo" or "Rakowski," folks in northern Poland tend to turn that a into an e and say "Reków, Rekowo, Rekowski." And the Kashubs are the people among whom this name is most common.

There is an organization called the Kashubian Association of North America (KANA). I suggest you check into this, it's quite possible they can give you some useful clues and info.

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

… My name is ... Porambo, when my grandfather came to america our surname was changed from Poremba. He settled in the city of Lansford, Pennsylvania at the turn of the century. Oddly enough there were about 5 different families who lived in Lansford with the Porambo surname who were not related. I have no family to ask about our name.

The name Poremba is also spelled Poręba, where ę is the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it and pronounced somewhat like en or, before b or p, like em -- so that Poremba and Poręba are pronounced the same, and that's why the spelling can go either way. The name comes from the term poręba, "clearing in the woods," and probably referred to where a family lived or to the fact that they made a living by chopping down trees. As of 1990 there were 3,036 Polish citizens named Poręba and 483 more who spelled the name Poremba, so it is a moderately common name. Poręba's lived all over Poland, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (254), Nowy Sacz (966), Tarnow (293) -- thus the name is most common in southcentral to southeastern Poland. Historically this was an area where people were often given charters by local lords to found new settlements by going in to the woods and clearing spaces for buildings; such settlements were often granted relief from taxes or other payments for 10-20 years so they could get off to a good start. This surname probably refers in most cases to people connected with such a settlement.

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

… I wondered if you could be so kind as to tell me information about the surname Pilitowski, on my great Grandmothers tombstone it states Pilitowska. On her insurance paperwork it states that she was from Zalesz, Poland but I have never been able to find such a place.

Well, first the -ska/-ski business. You may already know this, but in Polish names ending in -ski change the ending when referring to females: it's Pan Kurski (Mr. Kurski) but Pani Kurska (Mrs. Kurska). So, as you rightly assumed, Pilitowski is the standard form of the name.

Names ending in -owski usually refer to a connection of some sort between a person or family and a place with a similar name ending in -y or -ów or -owo. So we'd expect Pilitowski to mean "one from Pilitów or Pilitowo." I notice on my maps only one place that qualifies, a village named Pilitowo, just a few km. south of the town of Plonsk in Ciechanow province -- my guess is the parish church in Plonsk is where folks from Pilitowo would go to register births, deaths, marriages, etc. I don't know whether any records would survive that you could link to your family, but it might be worth a look.

As of 1990 there were 280 Polish citizens named Pilitowski; larger numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (91), Ciechanow (78), Pila (22), Płock (20), and Szczecin (19), with smaller numbers scattered in a few other provinces. That distribution pattern shows that the name is most common in central and northcentral Poland, which is consistent with a Pilitowo connection.

"Zalesz, Poland" is tough because there's no exact match, but there are literally dozens of places this might refer to. There are jillions of villages called "Zalesie" (literally, "beyond the woods," quite a few named Zaleze ("beyond the bog"), etc. There is, for instance, a Zalesie some km. north of Plonsk, and thus not very far from Pilitowo -- it might be the place you're looking for. But I must caution you not to get your hopes up: there really are literally dozen's of Zalesie's, and other names that could easily be turned into "Zalesz." Odds are you could pick any spot in Poland at random and you'll find a Zalesie or Zaleze nearby. Still, this one might be worth a closer look. The nearest place with a Catholic parish church appears to be Glinojeck; if I were you, I'd go to the nearest LDS Family History Center, see if the records for that parish (Glinojeck in Ciechanow province) are available on microfilm, and ask to have them sent to the FHC for you to look through. No guarantees, you understand, it's a matter of playing the odds.

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

… I would like some information on the name Pisarcik. Is it related to the Polish name Piszczek?

No, there's no connection. Piszczek comes from a basic root meaning "squeal," and probably derives directly from the noun piszczek, "one who plays pipes or fife." Pisarcik looks to me like a Czech equivalent of the Polish name Pisarczyk (they are pronounced almost exactly the same) -- both mean "son of the writer, clerk, scribe." Pisarczyk is a fairly common name in Poland, there were 2,015 Poles by that name in 1990; as of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Pisarcik. The root pisar-, "writer, clerk, scribe," and the suffix -cik/-czyk, "son of," are used in several Slavic languages, so I can't be sure Czech is the one Pisarcik comes from -- but it strikes me as the most likely. Of course, it is also conceivable the name may have been Polish Pisarczyk spelled differently because of some external influence.

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

… I am having difficulty in finding anything on the surnames Pieszchala and Turack if you can help me with these names I would surely appreciate. These were my g-parents and my mother died young so I have nothing to go on!

Pieszchala is almost certainly a spelling variation of the name Pierzchała; the ł is pronounced like our w. In Polish the combination rz is usually pronounced like "zh" in "Zhivago," and sz like the "sh" in "ship"; but under certain conditions the rz "devoices," as linguists call it, to the "sh" sound, so it sounds like Pieszchała, and that's why the name is sometimes spelled that way. To our ears it would sound like "pyesh-HA-wah." According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, this name, first seen in legal records from 1429, comes from the verb pierzchać, "to flee, run away," and the suffix -ała usually implies continuous repetition of an action, so Pierzchała would mean "one always running away."

I'm not sure this name has to be considered uncomplimentary -- as of 1990 there were 4,548 Poles by this name, so it's kind of common, I doubt it would be that common if it were necessarily thought of as negatively. In any case, it is found all over the country, so I can't really point to one area and say "That's where it comes from"... The spelling Pieszchala is interesting, because only Poles would turn that rz into sz (a German would turn it into sch, an English-speaker into sh), so that suggests the name may have been spelled that way in Poland, and not changed when your ancestors emigrated. But as of 1990 there were only 8 Polish citizens who spelled the name that way, so I don't think the spelling is going to give you any leads. Until after World War I most Poles were illiterate, so spelling tended to be far less standardized; but once most Poles were taught to write, the "correct" spellings of names became standard. In other words, more than 50 years ago a lot of those Pierzchała's might have sometimes been spelled "Pieszchała," so the spelling itself isn't a reliable clue.

Turack might be a couple of names: it could be Turacki with the I dropped, or it could be Turak with the k changed to ck under German or English influence. Either way, we're dealing with a rare name; as of 1990 there were 3 Poles named Turacki (all 3 living in the province of Ostrołęka in northeastern Poland), and there were 28 named Turak (in the provinces of Biala Podlaska 5, Katowice 4, Lublin 5, Suwałki 1, Tarnow 9, Torun 4). I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I give here is all I have. If you have any luck in finding passenger ship records, parish records, naturalization papers, something like that which gives you more details on where in Poland your ancestors come from, at that point the rareness of the name starts to work in your favor -- if you do find someone by that name, the odds are fairly good he/she is related! In any case, according to Rymut the name comes from either tur, "auerochs," or turać, "to roll." The -ak suffix seems to me more likely to mean "son of" and the name probably means "son of Tur," with "Tur" being a kind of nickname for someone big, strong, hairy, like an auerochs. Rymut says the name Turak appears in legal records as early as 1488, so the name may not be common but it's old!

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

… Do you have any info on the name "Patora?" A surname book in the public library listed my former surname as meaning evil, clumsy, and inept. Were we all a bunch of clumsy evil people? How can this be possible? Did we attempt to overthrow the government and get punished with the surname?

I don't have anything really firm on Patora. In his book on Polish surnames Kazimierz Rymut mentions Patorek and Patorski as coming from the Latin term pater, "father," and if he's right about that, it's highly likely Patora comes from the same root -- from a linguistic point of view, Patora would almost certainly come from the same root that generated Patorek and Patorski. Derivation of a Polish surname from a Latin word may seem unlikely, but you have to remember that many Poles were Catholic, so when they went to Mass or had sacraments administered they would hear Latin words and naturally associate them with things holy. The word pater showed up all the time in the Catholic liturgy, referring to an earthly father and especially to a heavenly Father, so the word would not be unknown to Poles and would have a certain class and sanctity associated with it. It also was the Latin title by which a priest was called, literally "Father." So all in all, it's not that far-fetched a notion that pater could end up generating a Polish surname, perhaps associated with a relative of a priest, or a rather religious father. I, for one, consider this the likely derivation of the name.

I don't know where that surname book got that meaning of "evil, clumsy, inept," but I get mad when I hear from people who've been given utterly false information from so-called "experts." It makes me angry that there are people out there running their mouths without knowing what they're talking about!... OK, end of tirade, back to the subject. The only possible link I could find was a dialect term patorny that means "loathsome, hideous." It could be connected with your name, but it seems to be rare in Polish; and I see no reason to assume the name has to mean something awful (although I must admit, many Polish names do have pretty ghastly meanings!).

As of 1990 there were 1,144 Polish citizens named Patora; the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Lodz (571), Płock (117), and Sieradz (154), with much smaller numbers scattered all over the country. This indicates the name tends to be concentrated in the Lodz-Płock-Sieradz area, which is right in central Poland (in its current boundaries). I'm afraid I don't have access to any further data such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is what I have.

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

...His name was Michal Szysz, he did tell me he was born in Volca, Novogrodek, Poland in 1922. His parents were Maksym Szysz and Helen Wysocka.

I can't find a source that gives a definitive answer on this. I found two roots that are plausible sources for this name; I can't promise they're right, but I think odds are good one or the other is applicable.

One is a term szysz, apparently an archaic or dialect term, meaning "army volunteer." There is also a term szyszak meaning "helmet," I'm not sure whether it's related, but it probably is. If this root is the right one, it suggests an ancestor was connected with the army as a volunteer. My sources suggest this term is used more toward the northeast of Poland, and that seems to fit what you say -- more about that in a moment.

The other possibility is that Szysz- comes as a nickname from first names such as Sylwan (Sylvan), Sylwester (Silvester), and Szymon (Simon). It's well established that Poles often formed nicknames by taking the first couple of sounds of a popular first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes. And S- and Sz- often alternate in names. So Szysz could very well have started as a nickname for some popular first name, and the three mentioned above are the best candidates. If this is right, you can't say Szysz means anything, any more than "Ted" or "Joe" means anything.

As of 1990 there were 443 Polish citizens named Szysz; there were some living in virtually every province, but the larger numbers showed up in the provinces of Biala Podlaska (57), Białystok (29), Chelm (45), Elblag (45), Lublin (24), Olsztyn (35), Siedlce (25), and Warsaw (39). A glance at a map shows that the name is more common in eastern and northeastern Poland -- that fits in with your info, since "Novogrodek" probably refers to Novogrudok in Belarus (Belorussia). In other words, the area where your father was born was part of Poland then, but now is probably in the country of Belarus. This name may be more common in Belarus than Poland, but I have no data on that; what data i do have is for Poland in its modern boundaries, and it shows this name tends to appear most often in the parts of Poland near the border with Belarus.

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

... Hello. Any information you could provide me on Wietrzychowska and/or Naskrent would be greatly appreciated. I'm having very little luck in my research.

Wietrzychowska is just the feminine form of Wietrzychowski, the ultimate root of which is the word wiatr, "wind." However, words ending in -owski usually indicate a connection of a family with a place that had a name ending in -ów or -owo or something similar. There is a village Wietrzychowo in the province of Olsztyn, and that's one place name the surname Wietrzychowski could refer to. Other possibilities are Wietrzychowice in Tarnów and Wloclawek provinces, and there could have been any number of places too small to show up on maps that could generate surnames. So the most we can say is that this surname means "person from Wietrzychowo" or some place with a similar name, and that place name comes from the root meaning "wind." This is not a common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were only 74 Wietrzychowski's, living in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (19), Konin (12), Koszalin (5), Leszno (11), Pila 5, Szczecin (6), Wroclaw (16); unfortunately I have no further details such as first names or addresses.

Naskrent can also be spelled Naskręt, with the Polish nasal vowel written as an e with a tail under it and pronounced much like en; any name with ę is likely to be spelled with ę or en, and any name with en is likely to be spelled with ę. As of 1990 there were 201 Poles who used the spelling Naskrent and 1,501 who used Naskręt. I don't have solid information on exactly what the name comes from, but it probably is connected to the expression naskrzętnie, "crossways," or na, "on" + skręt, "turn, veer." Of the Naskręt's, the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Leszno (522), Poznan (372), and Wroclaw (98) -- so the name seems most common in western Poland (the pattern is the same for Naskrent).

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

... Please, see if you can check a surname of Bielenda

I can find no source with definitive information on the meaning of the name. There are a bunch of Polish names that come from the root bial-/biel-, "white," and this may well be one of them. There is a suffix -enda sometimes added to Polish roots to make names, so biel- + -enda = Bielenda is at least plausible. If that's how the name originated, I suppose it would be something like "Whitey" in English, maybe a nickname for a person with very fair skin or light-colored hair. All this is a very plausible educated guess, however, and it could well be the name comes from something else -- I just don't have enough data to say.

If it does come from something else, it's worth noting that there is a Ukrainian verb belendity meaning "chat, chatter, stutter." That could very well be the source of this surname, because as of 1990 there were 345 Polish citizens named Bielenda. The largest concentration by far (204) lived in the province of Rzeszów in southeastern Poland, with the next-largest number (23) in the province of Tarnobrzeg, immediately to the north of Rzeszów -- and there were a few living here and there in provinces scattered all over Poland. So it would appear the name probably originated in southeastern Poland, and that's an area where Polish and Ukrainian mix to a considerable extent. So a person from that area, even though he's a Pole, might well have a name influenced by Ukrainian.

As I say, I don't have enough to prove anything either way, and this name may well come from the root meaning "white." But in view of the data on geographical distribution, I lean toward the "chatter, stutter" meaning. I suspect Bielenda started as a nickname for a person who tended to chatter away, or perhaps stuttered. If you would like to try to get something more definite, I suggest writing the Anthroponymic Workshop in Kraków.

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

Is it possible that the name Kissel was originally somthing else but changed when the family arrived. Also the same for Zajac. I've grown up being told that both are of Polish origin.

Zając (pronounced "ZAH-yonts") probably has not been changed, except for one slight difference: in Polish the second a is written as an a with a tail under it, and pronounced much like on, so that this name is often spelled Zajonc. It comes from the word zając, "hare," and is a very common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 48,349 Polish citizens named Zając, living all over the country... When people named Zając came to this country, in many cases the tail under the a was dropped and no further change was made. It is thoroughly plausible that that's the case here.

Kissel is harder, there's no basis on which to decide for sure. It certainly could be changed, for instance from Polish Kisiel, which would sound a little like "KISH-el" -- this is a common name from a word for a kind of fruit jelly; and as of 1990 there were 9,893 Poles by that name. But we can't rule out the possibility that this was a German name Kissel or Kuessel, or a Polish name Kiszel, etc.. In terms of numbers, Kisiel is by far the most common, so the odds are the name was originally Kisiel. But you can see that we don't have enough info to conclude that for sure.

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

...I am interested in the origins of two names. The first is Kempka and the other is Yackish. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Kempka comes from the Polish word kępa, "cluster of trees; holm" (ę is the Polish nasal vowel written as e with a tail under it and pronounced much like "en" or, before b or p, "em"); in other words, Kępka and Kempka are alternative spellings of the same name. The -ka is a diminutive suffix, "little __." So this surname probably started as an indication of where a family lived, kind of a shorthand for "the folks who live by the little cluster of trees." There must have been a lot of folks who lived near such clusters -- as of 1990 there were 5,213 Polish citizens named Kępka, and another 814 who used the spelling Kempka. They lived all over Poland, I see no significant pattern to the name's frequency and distribution; that just makes sense, this name could get started anywhere people spoke Polish and lived near trees, that is, anywhere in Poland!

Yackish is a tough one because the name has obviously been Anglicized -- for instance, Polish doesn't use Y at the start of words, also it doesn't use the combination "sh." Going strictly by phonetics, the Polish spelling would be Jakisz, and there is such a name, but it's quite rare; as of 1990 there were 24 Poles named Jakisz. They lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 7, Białystok 1, Katowice 2, Kraków 1, Lublin 2, Opole 2, Szczecin 5, Wroclaw 4 (unfortunately I have no access to further details such as first names or addresses). The name Jakisz appears in records as far back as 1579, and is one of many surnames that started out as a nickname for people with first names beginning with Jak-, including Jakub (Jacob), Jakim (= Joachim), etc. Poles loved to make nicknames by taking the first part of a popular first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes. So basically Jakisz would be kind of like "Jake's son" in English.

Of course, without further research there's no way to tell if Jakisz is the name you're looking for -- it just seems to be the best match, based on the info you've given me. Whatever the original form was, it probably originated the same way. In any case, if the name starts Yack- in English, it probably was Jak- in Polish.

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

... I have just started out researching my family name but have run into a great problem. My surname is Raschke, my family hails from Poland as far back as I can see, but there is also talk of my family being from Germany. Poznan is the accepted area that my family is supposedly from but I have learned that there are three distinct lines of Raschke, one of Polish origin (meaning Red breasted robin), one from Germany (meaning councillor in german) and one from Bohemia (alderman) ... Can you enlighten me as to what the name might mean, where in the area they may be from and any other info you can provide such as contacts, addresses, etc.

The only information I have is that German name expert Hans Bahlow said in his book Deutsches Namenlexikon that Raschke is Slavic in origin, a short form or nickname of the names Radslav or Raslav; Polish expert Kazimierz Rymut agrees that names beginning with Rasz- (which is how Poles would spell "Rasch-" phonetically) comes from the names Radosław and Rasław. Poles liked to form nicknames by taking the first couple of sounds from a first name, dropping the rest, and adding suffixes: thus Ra- from Radosław and Rasław + -sz- = Rasz-. In Polish and most other Slavic languages the suffixes -ek, -ka, -ko, etc. are diminutives, so that Raszek or Raszko or Raszka would mean "little Rasz, son of Rasz." So the surname Raschke is a German version of Raszek or Raszka or Raszko, all meaning little more than "son of Radosław or Rasław." The original name might have been Polish or it might have been Czech, but it was definitely Slavic.

As of 1990 there were only 8 Polish citizens who used the German spelling Raschke, but there were 1,780 Poles with the name Raszka and 218 named Raszke (as well as 865 named Raszkiewicz, which means "son of Raszek/Raszka/Raszko").

I only have info on the linguistic origins of names, and nothing at all as far as contacts or addresses, so this may not be much help to you. But it's all I have access, and perhaps it will help a little. I hope so, and wish you the best of luck with your research.

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

...I was wondering if you had any clue how Latocha came to be a Polish surname, what it would mean, etc. It is often mistaken for a Spanish surname, but I have been assured, by my relatives here and in Poland that it is infact a Polish name. I know it has also been spelled Latocja. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Many Polish words and names sound as if they could come from Spanish or Italian, it's not surprising people are sometimes misled. Sometimes the exact same words or names develop independently in different languages, purely by coincidence. Latocha may be a Spanish name too, but it definitely can be a Polish surname; it appears in Polish records as far back as 1319. Surname experts say it derives from the term latocha, "year-old calf" (from the root lat, meaning "summer" or "year," thus a latocha was an animal that had already seen one summer). This was apparently used as a nickname for people sometimes, and eventually became established as a surname -- and not a rare one, either, since in 1990 there were 1,485 Polish citizens named Latocha. They lived all over the country, with larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (62), Katowice (466), Piotrków (92), and Tarnów (440); these provinces are in southcentral Poland, but that's the only pattern I can see to their distribution -- there's no concentration in one small area that would let us say "Here is where this surname started."

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

As you can see, my surname is Szycman. I am told that this was changed in the early 1950s from Schutzmann. From the look of that, I think it may have German origins. A bit scary, since knowing what the Germans did to the Poles. Have you any information on either name?

Yes, Szycman is clearly a Polish phonetic spelling of German Schuetzmann -- Polish sz is pronounced the same as German sch (like English "sh") and y is the closest Poles can come to the sound of German U umlaut (ü or ue). This is not unusual, there have always been large numbers of Germans living in Poland (there are thousands and thousands of Hoffmans, for instance), although after World War II a lot of them left, for obvious reasons!

German Schuetz- can refer in some cases to the root meaning "shoot," or to the root schützen, "protect, guard," so I'm not sure whether Schuetzmann would mean "marksman" or "watchman, guard," and neither of my sources on German names really settles the question definitively. But from what I see, the root with no umlaut, just Schutz-, is more likely to mean "guard," and with the umlaut, Schütz- or Schuetz-, probably refers to "shoot." So I believe this name started out meaning "marksman, archer." Once Germans by that name came to live in Poland, it was only a matter of time before the Polish influence began to affect the spelling of the name, and eventually Szycman was the result.

As of 1990 there were 88 Polish citizens named Szycman, living in the following provinces: Warsaw (10), Bydgoszcz (3), Elblag (8), Gdansk (50), Gorzów (14), Koszalin (1), Sieradz (2). Clearly Gdansk, in the area that used to be ruled by the Germans, is the main center for Szycman's. Unfortunately, I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses... Interestingly enough, despite all the bad blood between Germans and Poles especially after World War II, there are still 25 Poles named Schuetzmann, (Bydgoszcz province 6, Gdansk province 19), and 49 named Schützmann, with the u umlaut (Bydgoszcz 2, Gdansk 40, Lodz 2, Suwałki 5). It's dangerous making assumptions, but it's not entirely impossible that many of the Szycman's and Schuetzmann's and Schützmann's are related -- it was not unusual for different members of a family to come to use different spellings of the same last name. You shouldn't assume that's true, since Schützmann is probably a pretty common German surname -- but it is at least possible. If you go looking for Szycman's, don't ignore people named Schuetzmann or Schützmann just because of the different spelling!

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

...I am searching for the surname Bialousz. My grandfather was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1906 and immigrated here with his family at the age of three months. Have you located this name in any of your research? I have been able to find absolutely nothing.

The name comes from the basic Slavic root bial-/biel-, "white." The form -usz- usually comes from the root ucho, "ear," so this name seems to mean "white-ear." I'm not sure how such a name got started -- perhaps as a reference to a horse or dog or animal with a white spot on its ear? And then it might be applied to the man who owned it? I don't know, none of this really convinces me, and yet Białousz (where ł is pronounced like our "w") should mean "white-ear."

This name is not extremely common in Poland, but I wouldn't say it was very rare, either. As of 1990 there were 267 Polish citizens named Białousz, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 41, Bielsko-Biala 4, Czestochowa 4, Elblag 38, Gdansk 6, Jelenia Gora 29, Katowice 19, Kraków 3, Leszno 11, Lublin 2, Olsztyn 30, Ostrołęka 42, Płock 2, Siedlce 8, Skierniewice 12, Szczecin 5, Tarnobrzeg 2, Walbryzch 1, Wloclawek 1, Zielona Gora 7. (I'm afraid I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses -- this is all I have). Interestingly, there were 761 Poles named Białous, which appears to mean the same thing; I would have thought Białousz would have been the more common form.

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

...My mother's maiden name, Swiezy, has been overlooked by us. Any information you can give on this name?

According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut, Świeży (pronounced something like "shvyeh-zhee") is a Polish word meaning "fresh, new, in good condition." As of 1990 there were 480 Polish citizens who used this name in the spelling Świerzy (which is pronounced exactly the same) and 266 who spelled it Świeży. The largest number of Świeży's lived in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (25), Czestochowa (22), Katowice (79), and Kraków (87) -- all in southcentral Poland -- with fewer than 10 living in several other provinces.

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

...I didn't find my surname on your current list on the website. Is it possible to give me the meaning and origins of the surname Bobrowski? I've been getting conflicting information on this...

There are over 600,000 Polish surnames, so it's not surprising I haven't quite gotten to them all on the Website 8-).

The root of this name is bóbr, "beaver," but names ending in -owski usually started as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place name, often ending in -ów or something similar. There are quite a few villages in Poland named Bobrowa and Bobrowo -- all of which just mean "place of the beavers" -- and the name Bobrowski could get started from any of them. So basically Bobrowski means "person from Bobrowa/Bobrowo," or "person from the beaver place."

Since there are quite a few different places that could spawn this name, it's not surprising it's a moderately common one -- in 1990 there were 5,874 Polish citizens named Bobrowski, living all over the country.

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

... What can you tell me about the surname: Olejasz?

This is a variant spelling of the name Olejarz, which comes from the word olejarz, "one who makes or sells oils." In Polish the rz is usually pronounced like the "s" in "measure," but at the end of words it tends to devoice to the sound of "sh," which is spelled sz in Polish. So that's why the name Olejarz could easily end up being spelled Olejasz -- that's what it sounds like.

As of 1990 there were 2,746 Polish citizens named Olejarz, living all over the country. There were only 20 who spelled the name Olejasz, living in the provinces of Warsaw (6), Biala Podlaska (3), Rzeszów (1), and Wroclaw (10). Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names and addresses, so what I've given you here is all I have... It may be the people named Olejasz are the ones you should look for, but I would caution against jumping to that conclusion. Most Poles couldn't read and write back in the days of emigration, so names could get spelled any old way and people had no way of knowing better. Once the Communists took over and forced everyone to get at least an elementary education, more could read and write and name spellings tended to get standardized. A lot of folks who'd gone by Olejasz one time, Olejarz another, would have started spelling it the standard way, Olejarz, all the time. So as you do your research, be aware that the name's spelling may change along the way, and you may well find it spelled either way, even with your own ancestors.

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

...In the 10 volume name listing from 1990 or in your research, have you ever seen this name. My cousins say that it was originally pronounced "whew-jhin-ski"...with a very soft initial "whew" sound...perhaps closer to "hyou-jhin-ski"... Any suggestions?? Perhaps some initial letters were dropped when they came to America??

That's certainly possible. It would explain that initial sound your cousins say it originally had. On the other hand, as of 1990 there were 87 Polish citizens named Udziński, with the vast majority living in the province of Torun (I have no access to further data such as first names and addresses, unfortunately). So it's also possible the name was spelled as shown, and that initial sound they describe was just some local dialectal or regional pronunciation... Or it could be the name was originally Chudziński or Judziński or Łudziński or something else. There's just not enough info for me to say anything for sure.

If you can't come up with more data, I'd suggest operating on the assumption that Udziński is correct, and see if you can get a line on some of those Udziński's living in Torun province. That's not a sure thing, but weighing probabilities, it seems the best bet.

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

...I am attached to the Dictionary Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. I am writing a book on The Multicultural Names of Australia. At the moment I am struggling through Polish names, with the help of your marvelous book.

They do present a bit of a challenge, don't they?

...As a fellow Onomastician I thought you might appreciate what has happened in Australia from the point of view of surnames. Since the end of WWII and the opening of Australia to European Immigration, the ratio of Anglo-Saxon the "foreign" names has changed from 10% to almost 50-50, especialy now that Asian immigration has increased so dramatically. It has all happened so quickly that "older" Australians find the plethora of new names bewildering. Hence my book.

I had no idea immigration to Australia had been so heavy -- although now, considering the matter, it certainly should come as no surprise! And I can well believe "older" Australians with Anglo roots would find it confusing and intimidating to have all these new ethnic elements to deal with.

...You explain everything so well that I have hesitated for many weeks to ask such a trivial question, but!! on page 24 of your second edition, you talk about Dorociak (Dorota + iak) which I assume means Dorota's daughter but I cannot find anywhere in the book which explains 'iak'. How it came about and why etc. I have the name Jakubiak to explain and I have said that it means Jacob's daughter, (you list it under Jakob on page 274) but I like to explain more about the etymology of the words etc. Would you mind very much letting me know more about -iak?

So much of my correspondence is with people who need to have the basic concepts explained to them, it will be a pleasure discussing this with an onomastician!

Essentially, the suffix -iak is the same thing as -ak; both are diminutive suffixes, but -iak differs only in that it involves softening or palatalization of the root's final consonant. Thus in some names we see -ak added directly to a root with no palatalization, e. g., Nowak, Pawlak; and in others we see the palatalization, e. g., Dorota + -iak = Dorociak, Jakub + -iak = Jakubiak, Szymon + -iak = Szymoniak.

The basic meaning of -ak/-iak is diminutive, but especially when applied to first names, it tends to have a patronymic significance. Thus "Jakubiak" means "little Jakub," but much the same way as if someone saw me walk by and said "There's Fred" (Fred's my middle name and it's the one I go by, I hope this isn't too confusing!) and then a moment later my son toddled along and he said "There goes little Fred," i. e., "Fred's son." So in most cases where -ak/-iak is appended to the root of a first name we can translate it as "son of." However, it's not used exclusively in that way, for instance there is a noun "Krakowiak" which means "one from Krakow." Polish suffixes rarely have one and only one meaning (unfortunately; life would be much easier if they did!).

I'm not sure why sometimes the suffix is added with palatalization and why it's not. No doubt Polish linguists have addressed this very question, and somewhere in my sources there is probably a learned article on this very subject. But I can't find it at the moment -- and besides, to make sense of it one would probably need a Ph.D. in Slavic historical linguistics. I think it suffices for our purposes to say that the suffix can be added either way, without palatalization (Pawel + -ak = Pawlak) or with it; and if it's added with palatalization, that is indicated either by interposing an -i- (Jakub + -i- + ak) or by modifying the root's final consonant (Dorota + -ak to Doroti- + -ak to Doroci- + -ak = Dorociak). There are ways to tell which final root consonants add -i- and which change the letter, but again, this is probably more information than you want!

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

...My wife's great-grandmother was a Waleria Erland from Lodz. It doesn't seem particularly Polish, but are there any other people with this last name in Poland?

As of 1990 there were 19 Polish citizens named Erland; 1 lived in Warsaw province, the other 18 lived in Łódz province. So there are still people by that name in the general area of Łódz (not necessarily in the city itself, but at least in the province of which Łódz is the capital). Unfortunately I have no access to further details such as first names, addresses, etc. Just possibly you could have a search done of the Łódz province phone directory, perhaps one of those 18 has a phone, and that would yield an address. I believe the Polish Genealogical Society of America can do this for a reasonable fee, or if you are persistent and ingenious you may be able to do it for yourself. It's the only way I know of that you might get an address for these Erland's.

...Her great-great-grandmother is a Teofila Swiontkowska from Warsaw. Is this name, either in this spelling or in the spelling Swiątkowska, a common one?

Yes, this is a fairly common name, although it is more common in the spelling Świątkowski -- both that spelling and Świontkowski are pronounced the same, something like "shvyont-KOFF-skee." As of 1990 there were 5,793 Poles who spelled the name Świątkowski, as opposed to only 48 who spelled it Świontkowski.

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

...Interested in finding info on Antoni Chichlowski born in Poland in 1882. Came to U.S. around 1912-1915 with wife Michalina and daughter Estelle. Lived in Trenton N.J. where my father was born (...Chciklowski) note last name change. Family then moved to Providence R.I. area where Antoni and brother split. No known area where brother settled. Family fianlly settled in Chicopee/Springfield Mass. where I was born.

As of 1990 there were 116 Polish citizens named Chichłowski (the ł stands for the Polish slashed l, pronounced like our w); they lived in the provinces of Warsaw (6), Gdansk (3), Gorzów (17), Katowice (1), Kielce (21), Konin (6), Legnica (6), Leszno (5), Opole (4), Poznan (7), Siedlce (3), Suwałki (2), Szczecin (12), Wroclaw (23). I don't have access to any further details such as first names or addresses, so that info may not be a lot of help, but for what it's worth, there it is.

Names ending in -owski usually started as a reference to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ów or -owo or something like that. So this name probably started out meaning "person from Chichłowo" or some similar name. I cannot find any place by that name, but there is a village Chechłowo, served by Sledianów parish, in Białystok province, 13.5 km. northwest of Drohiczyn, that has been called Chichłowo in the past -- the surname could refer to that village. The root chechło means "marshy depression, wet meadows," so a village in or near such wet ground could get the name Chechłowo or Chichłowo or Chychłowo, and the surname could come from that. This is not necessarily the only place this surname could refer to, but it strikes me as the most likely candidate, without further details.

With your roots in R.I. and Mass., have you looked into the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast? They have done a lot of research on origins of Polish families living in Mass., Rhode Island, and New Jersey, including compiling indexes of those buried at Polish cemeteries in the Northeast. If you haven't tried the PGS-NE, you might want to consider joining it and seeing if it can offer you some leads.

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

...I am wondering if you have any information on the Polish surname Otfinowski or Otwinowski. My great grandparents went by Otfinowski but were buried as Otwinowski. I think it originates from a town named Otfinow(ska), in the Tarnów region of Poland, or perhaps maybe there were just alot of Otfinowskis who lived there. Your information would be helpful in pinpointing an exact location.

In my book on Polish surnames, Otfinów (also spelled Otwinów) in Tarnów province is the place I suggested as the origin of this name. Usually -- not always, but usually -- names in -owski refer to a place with a similar name ending in -ów or -owo, so you expect Otfinowski or Otwinowski to mean "person from Otfinów/Otwinów." And that was the only place I could find in Poland with a name that qualified. There might have been more, too small to show up in my sources, but I think this village in Tarnów province is by far the most likely one to have served as the source of this surname. If so, it's an exception -- very few names can be traced back to just one place, most of the time if there's one village in Poland with a particular name, there'll be 2, 3, even 20 more!

Please realize, though, that surnames typically originated 200-400 years ago, sometimes more, and records don't go back that far (except, sometimes, for nobility). So there may not be any records that go back far enough to settle the matter of exactly when and where this surname and this village linked up. But it does seem likely that's where the Otfinowski's came from -- that name, Otfinów, is unusual, I doubt there are too many other places with similar names, and my references show none.

As of 1990 there were 425 Polish citizens named Otfinowski, and 931 named Otwinowski, so these aren't rare names. Of the Otfinowski's, the largest numbers lived in the provinces of Katowice (36), Kielce (120), Kraków (36), Tarnów (57), and Walbrzych (54), so they were all in the southern part of the country, from southeast through to southwest. The Otwinowski's were really scattered all over, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Katowice (102), and Kielce (253) -- only 3 in Tarnów province. This distribution may suggest there was more than one place that could spawn this name -- or it may just be that the name has been around a long time and people have spread all over. Kielce and Katowice provinces are in southcentral Poland, just north and west of Tarnów province, and that could still be consistent with origin in Tarnów province... All in all, it's not 100% certain that all the Otfinowski's and Otwinowski's came from that village in Tarnów province, but that's the most likely place of origin.

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

... I saw your address on a website and you said that you'd be willing to help people found out a little about their Polish surname. I'm hoping you can help me with the name Jarek.

This is one of many surnames that derive from old first names dating back to the days when the Poles were pagans. Before they were converted, the Poles generally gave their children names formed by taking one or two basic roots and putting them together to form a kind of simplified wish or prophecy for their children's future; thus the root jar-, "sharp, strict, severe" + the root gniew, "wrath, anger" could be combined to make the first name Jarogniew, meaning something like "may his wrath be harsh" (i. e., may he be such a tough guy that no one will dare mess with him). There were several such names with that root jar-, which could also mean "robust, young," and there were also several nicknames or short forms from those names, including Jaroch, Jaron, Jarosz, and Jarek.

Jarek is actually that root plus the diminutive suffix -ek, meaning in effect "little Jar" or "son of Jar," where "Jar" stands for any of those nicknames for names beginning with the root Jar-. Many surnames started this way, and have remained fairly common in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 2,403 Polish citizens named Jarek. In Polish the J is pronounced like our Y, so Jarek would sound like "YAW-rek" (rhyming with "law" + "wreck"). There is no one part of Poland where this name is concentrated, you run into it all over the country, so it offers no clues as to where an individual family named Jarek might have come from.

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

... I am searching for information on my family history... Any information that you can give me about my family history would be much appreciated. The name is Jarocewicz. I have been told by my Grandmother that it is spelled the same in Polish and pronounced like Yarosevitch.

The suffix -ewicz means "son of," so this name would mean "son of Jarota" or some similar first name. That, in turn, probably started as a nickname or short form from one of the old pagan Slavic names with the first root jaro-, "sharp, harsh, severe," such as Jarosław (spelled Yaroslav by English phonetic values), Jaromir (there's a Czech-born hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins named Jaromir Jagr), etc. So all this name really tells you is that about the time surnames were becoming established, there was a fellow named Jarosz or Jarota or something like that who was well enough known in the community that folks started calling his kin by this name, much as the name "Johnson" or "Davidson" got started in English.

Jarocewicz is a pretty rare name, as of 1990 there were only 61 people by that name in all of Poland. The largest numbers of them lived in Białystok (24) and Siedlce (12) provinces -- I'm afraid I don't have access to more details, such as first names or addresses... Jarocewicz would be pronounced roughly "yaw-rote-SAY-vich." If the name was pronounced something like "yaw-row-SEV-itch," as your grandmother suggests, I can't wondering if it was Jarosiewicz, a much more common name (1,071 Poles by that name as of 1990), or Jaroszewicz, borne by 2,612 Poles. Both names sound something like "yah-row-SHEV-itch." Jarocewicz may be correct, but the other two are a lot more common and I thought I should at least mention the possibility that that's what the name will turn out to be.

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

... We are looking for info onthe surname Jastrowizc.

The correct spelling would be Jastrowicz. The suffix -owicz can almost always be translated "son of," so Jastrowicz means "son of Jaster" (or Jastro or something like that). The only source I have that mentions this root jastr- says that there was an archaic word in Polish jastry meaning "swift, quick," so Jastrowicz may mean "son of the swift one," or it may mean "son of Jaster" where "Jaster" is a name or nickname, kind of like "Swifty" in English.

As of 1990 there were 220 Polish citizens named Jastrowicz. They were scattered all over the country, with larger numbers living in the provinces of Kalisz (53), Sieradz (24), Szczecin (27), and Zielona Gora (33). There isn't much of a definite pattern to this distribution, except that the name seems more common in western Poland, in the areas formerly ruled by the Germans. But the name itself is definitely Polish, not German.

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

... My mother's parents' surnames were Ozga and Jaszyna. Can you tell me anything about the origins of these names?

According to Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, Ozga comes from a root ożga (the z with a dot over it is pronounced like the "s" in "measure"), which means "fire." It's a common name, as of 1990 there were 4,204 Polish citizens named Ozga and another 1,739 who bore the name in the form Ożga.

Jaszyna is much rarer, as of 1990 there were only 53 Poles with this name, of whom 35 lived in the province of Tarnobrzeg in southeastern Poland, with the rest scattered in small numbers all over the country. None of my sources mention this name, so I can only make an educated guess: it's probably like most other names beginning with Jasz- in that it derives from nicknames for people with first names such as Jan, Jaromir, etc. Poles often formed names by taking the first couple of sounds from a first name -- such as Ja- from Jan or Jaromir or Jakub -- and adding suffixes to them, kind of like the way English formed "Teddy" out of "Theodore." Jaszyna could be a name formed that way from Jan, Jaromir, etc... That's not 100% certain, it's just the best I can come up with, given the info I have.

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

... I am searching for information on the names of Jasdzewski and Pietrowski. Both of my parent's families are from central Minnesota. One person has informed me that Jazdzewski might be the correct spelling of the first name, and that Piotrowski is a more common name than the latter.

That person who informed you sounds like knowledgeable -- so often when people write and say "I was told that..." what comes next turns out to be utter garbage. Piotrowski is more common than Pietrowski; as of 1990 there were 2,031 Polish citizens named Pietrowski, and 57,934 named Piotrowski. From the viewpoint of name derivation, however, we can treat those two as more or less the same -- the ultimate root of both is the first name Piotr, the Polish version of "Peter." And it is almost certain that Jasdzewski (no one by that name in Poland as of 1990) is a variant form of Jażdżewski (2,374); very possibly someone misread a z as an s somewhere along the line. Or at one time the name may well have been spelled that way also, but in the last century literacy has become far more common among Poles, and along with it came normative influences that tended to standardize spelling -- a phenomenon I'm sure you're familiar with. So variants such as Jasdzewski would tend to be standardized as Jażdżewski. (the Polish name is spelled with dots over both z's — giving them the "zh" sound of "Zhivago," so that the name would be pronounced roughly "yazh-JEV-skee").

Polish names ending in -ewski or -owski usually began as references to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name, typically ending in -ew, -ewo, -ów, -owo, -y, -i, etc. Thus we'd expect Jażdżewski to mean "person from Jażdżewo or Jażdżew, etc.," and Pietrowski would mean "person from Pietrów, Pietrowo, etc." Names ending in -ski are actually adjectival in origin, and when this suffix was added to toponyms other endings tended to drop off, so that different toponyms such as Pietrów, Pietrowo, even Pietrowice could all end up with the same adjectival form, Pietrowski. At one point in Polish history these surnames derived from toponyms were used only by the nobility, but as time went on that exclusivity could not be maintained; thus if you see Pietrowski in a record from the 15th century, it almost certainly refers to a noble family that owned an estate or village named something like Pietrów, Pietrowo, etc. -- all of which mean "[place] of Peter." But as time went on the name that originally implied "noble owning the estate of Pietrow/o/ice" came to mean no more than "person or family from Pietrow/o/ice."

There are numerous villages and towns in Poland with names that could produce the surname Pietrowski or Piotrowski (in Slavic languages there is a linkage between o and e, it is not rare to see forms with either vowel), so I have no basis on which to indicate one as the place most likely connected with your ancestors. This is not surprising, when you realize how common a name Piotr is in Poland -- there could be little "places of Peter" all over, and thus the surname meaning "one from the place of Peter" can also have developed all over. So unfortunately the data on frequency and distribution of either Pietrowski or Piotrowski isn't much help -- it just tells us these are common names, although Piotrowski is by far the more common.

Jażdżewski refers to a place named Jażdżew or Jażdżewo, and that in turn derives from a root jazd-/jezd- meaning "to travel, ride," referring to travel by some conveyance as opposed to on foot. So the name literally parses as "of, from, having to do with or connected with the place of riding," but more often we'd render it simply as "one from Jażdżew or Jażdżewo or Jażdy." It's odd that this is a moderately common name (as I said, 2,374 Poles bore this name as of 1990), but I can't find any corresponding toponyms on my maps; I would have expected to find at least a couple of Jażdżew's or Jażdżewo's. This is not too unusual, however; these surnames typically developed at least two centuries ago, often more, and since then the place they referred to could easily have disappeared, changed its name, be absorbed by another, larger community. So it's sometimes very difficult to track down the place the surname originally referred to.

I have a 10-volume source that lists every name in Poland as of 1990 and how many Poles bore that name (it's the one I've been citing data from all along); this source also breaks the total down by province. So I can tell you that Jażdżewski is found in many provinces, but is most common by far in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (736), Gdansk (832), Slupsk (340). These are all in northcentral to northwestern Poland, and that geographical concentration suggests these names may be associated with the Kaszubi, a very interesting ethnic Slavic group closely related to the Poles but with their own fascinating culture and language. You might wish to visit the Website of the Kashubian Association of North America, it's very possible they could give you some good info or leads on the Jazdzewski side -- possibly the Pietrowski side as well.

Also with the Minnesota connection you might want to investigate the Polish Genealogical Society of Minnesota.

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

... Your web site is very interesting ! Any information on the meaning and origin of Kajdasz.

Glad you liked the web page. As for Kajdasz, the only source I can find that mentions it suggests it comes from the Hungarian first name Kada, or the Hungarian surname Kaydi. This is not as odd as it sounds, there was considerable contact between Poland and Hungary (at one point Polish territory actually bordered on territory ruled by Hungary), so you run into Hungarian names in Poland and Polish names into Hungary rather often... Another possibility (but one none of the experts mentions, so I don't know how reliable it is) might be derivation from the Polish noun kajda, a term for a haymaker's whetstone holder, or a pleat over the belt. I know that seems kind of far-fetched, but Poles have made names out of some of the most obscure things, so I can't rule out the possibility. That's the best I can come up with; if you'd like to see whether the best experts have anything firmer, you could write the Anthroponymic Workshop in Kraków.

As of 1990 there were 217 Polish citizens named Kajdasz; the distribution breakdown is short, so I'll quote the whole thing -- remember this is by province, not just in the cities named but in the provinces of which they are the capital: Bydgoszcz (33), Elblag (8), Gorzów (10), Jelenia Gora (1), Kalisz (4), Katowice (51), Poznan (91), Sieradz (3), Szczecin (2), Torun (8), Wroclaw (6). In this case Poznan and Katowice provinces seem to be the focal points -- I'm not sure that helps much, but it might be worth knowing. Interestingly, the name Kajdas, without the final z, is more common -- as of 1990 there were 624 of them, with more than half in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (234) and Katowice (141), and much smaller numbers in the other provinces.

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

... I am currently (4 yrs.) researching my Polish roots. I checked your surnames and found Kajdasz, however, my research found Kajder changed to Kaider. Could this be the same? My grandfathers papers read Galicia. Grandma is a mystery....Maiden name Ham or Hamm also from Galicia. My father was fostered as a child.....deceased now and I know very little about my Polish Roots.

Kajder or Kaider (just different ways of spelling the same thing) would probably not be the same as Kajdasz; it probably started out as a German name, rather than Polish. This is not unusual, there were many Germans who came to Poland in the 12th-15th century, settled down, and became "Poles"; their names often stayed the same but were spelled differently, according to Polish rather than German phonetic values. Just going by the sound, I'd say the original German name was probably spelled Kaider, Käuder, Keider, or Keuder. I can't find any of those names in my sources, but I don't have as much on German names as I do Polish.

As of 1990 there were 163 Polish citizens named Kajder; they were scattered all over the country, with no real concentration in any one place. We must also remember that "Galicia" was that part of the former Commonwealth of Poland that was ruled by Austria, and it covered what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. So you may find your ancestors came from what is now Ukraine.

Ham or Hamm is probably also German, although it could also come from Polish cham, "yokel, rustic." As of 1990 there were 8 Polish citizens named Ham, living in the provinces of Lodz (1) and Tarnów (7). There were 7 named Ham, living in the provinces of Katowice (3), Lodz (3), and Zielona Gora (1). Unfortunately I only have access to this data and no more, so I can't get first names or addresses of individuals by those names.

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

... Labus is my last name. I found it listed as a Polish surname in 1790. There is a town called Labus, just north of Koszalin in what is now Poland, but in the past had been Pommerania, Germany. Labas is also a Lithuanian word meaning "good" and is used as a greeting. Any ideas?

This is a tough one, because there are several plausible derivations, and I have no basis on which to single out one and say "This is the relevant one in your case."

Labus certainly could come from the Lithuanian term -- I have often seen names of Lithuanian descent show up in the general area of Pomerania (which is not exactly what you'd expect from looking at the map). But I have a copy of a 2-volume work on Lithuanian surnames, and it seems to say this isn't a name used all that often. The names Labys, Labuŝaitis and Labuŝeviĉius appear, but not Labus or Labuŝ. Of course some names have died out since our ancestors emigrated -- I know that for a fact from Polish data -- and both Labuŝaitis and Labuŝeviĉius mean "son of Labuŝ," so clearly that name has been used and may have been more common a century or two ago.

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut mentions Łabus, Łabusz, and Łabuś among names deriving from the Polish root łaba, "paw"; the Polish L with a slash through it is pronounced like our w, and the s with an accent over it, pronounced somewhat like our "sh." I suppose such names originated as nicknames for a person with big hands or feet. In any case, among ethnic Poles, that would seem the most likely derivation... I can't help but wonder if in some cases the name might be connected with Łaba, which is also the Polish name for the river Elbe? I would think Rymut would have mentioned it if it was probable, and he didn't -- but then no one is right all time. I think it's worth keeping in mind.

But I also should mention that the term łabuz exists in Polish, from labuz in Ukrainian, "weed"; there is also a Ukrainian verb labuzytys', "to wheedle, coax, fawn, flatter," and under some circumstances a name Labus could conceivably come from that. I wouldn't expect it to be relevant unless research shows your family had a strong link with Ukraine, but if any such link does show up...

All three of these origins are possible, but choosing one as most probable depends on the family background. If you find a strong Lithuanian connection of any sort, origin from labas, "good," becomes much credible. Likewise, a Ukrainian connection would boost the chances of the "weed" or "wheedle" link. But if your people seem to have been ethnic Poles as far back as you can discover, then the link with łaba, "paw," seems strongest. As I say, I can't make that judgment -- but maybe you can!

As of 1990 there were 101 Poles named Łabus, 580 named Łabuś, and 1,685 named Łabuz (I think that has to be mentioned, because it would not be at all strange to see Łabus as a variant of Łabuz -- they are pronounced almost identically). If I had to bet, my money would be on Łabuś because your people were probably Poles and because the ś is often modified to simple s in many dialects. On the other hand, in 1990 none of the Poles named Łabus or Łabuś lived in Koszalin province, and only 7 of those named Łabuz lived there. (Unfortunately, I don't have access to more detailed info such as first names and addresses). Łabuś was most common in the provinces of Czestochowa (117) and Katowice (207) in southcentral Poland; Łabus was most common in Katowice province; and Łabuz was also most common in southcentral and southeastern Poland, e. g., provinces of Katowice (143), Kraków (205), Nowy Sacz (256), and Tarnów (380). It is highly likely those Łabuz'es had some Ukrainian roots.

I know I haven't handed you a nice, easy answer to the question of your name's derivation; but sometimes there isn't any one clear-cut answer, and I'd be a liar if I pretended there was. I hope this information may help you, especially as you combine it with what your research uncovers about your family's roots. I do think it's pretty clear-cut that with Poles the "paw" root is the best bet, with Lithuanians it's "good" root, and with Ukrainians it's the "weed" or "wheedle" root.

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

... I am hoping you can help me. I am interested in my surname, Indyk (Yndyk?) which my grandfather carried over to America in the early 1900s from Galicia (Blizianka). I understand this is the same surname of Martin Indyk, American ambassador to Isreal. I have not been able find any information except an obscure village in Holland (Indijk). Is there any relation?

I doubt the village in Holland has any connection (although when it comes to names you never know!). According to Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut the Polish name Indyk comes from a noun indyk, which means "turkey." Please note that the name has none of the comic overtones in Polish that it has in English! It's just one of a great many surnames taken from the names of birds and other animals. I suppose a fellow might have gotten that name originally as a nickname, referring to some connection with turkeys. He might have raised them, sold them, like to eat them, walked like one, wore clothes that somehow reminded people of a turkey -- the exact connection is hard to reconstruct centuries later, and probably in different cases the name developed from different connections.

As of 1990 there were 855 Polish citizens named Indyk, and another 636 named Indyka, which is basically the same name, meaning perhaps "of the turkey" rather than just "turkey." The name is found all over Poland, but the largest numbers are in the provinces of Krosno (178) and Rzeszów (182) in southeastern Poland -- part of what used to be Galicia. Note that my sources cover only Poland in its current borders, so there may well be plenty of Indyk's living in western Ukraine, which was also part of Galicia. The root is the same in Ukrainian, Indyk (as we'd spell it when transliterating from Cyrillic), and means "turkey, turkey-cock," and also "presumptuous young man."

[Note: later Dan Indish sent me the following update]:

I contacted you some time ago with a request for info on the Indyk surname and possible ties to Holland and the town of Indijk (a.k.a. Indyk). I appreciated the info and I thought I would give you an update for your files. I found this web page that you might be interested in: Dutch populace

It talks about a mass migration of Dutch (Mennonites) into Poland, then Russia in the mid 1500s. It talks about the Dutch as reclaimers of swamp land. The name Indijk may have been derived from their profession. The Dutch verb "indijken" means: to build a dyke around a lake or swamp, in order to pump the water out.

The information about indijken is fascinating, and in some cases certainly could be connected with the Indyk surname. It seems to me Polish onomastics experts are justified in saying that most Slavs bearing the name Indyk would get it from some connection with the word for "turkey" somewhere along the line; the origin of the word and name Indyk has been traced back to Latin indicus, and predates the immigration of the so-called Olendry (Hollaender) into Slavic lands. But the info you cite certainly makes the argument plausible that in some cases it could be of Dutch derivation instead. I intend to add this info to my Webpage in the near future.

You see why I hesitate to make sweeping dogmatic statements without qualifying them at least a little? It may seem gutless, but the truth is there's always an exception to the rule. And in name research we run into this sort of thing rather often. The same word (pronounced the same, if not spelled the same) can develop in different places, totally independently, with no link in meaning. Then somewhere along the line the Dutch dikers and the Slavic turkeys get together just long enough to confuse us!

By the way, it's ironic you quoted that page -- they don't mention it there, but I'm the one who translated that article from Polish to English (eight years ago -- can it really have been that long already?)

...You indicated that the largest numbers of Indyks are in the provinces of Krosno (178) and Rzeszów (182) in southeastern Poland. Aren't these cities along the same river?

Yes, they are, on the Wislok river. It'd be fascinating to learn if there's any mention in the town histories of Dutch immigration and dike-building.

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

... Do you have any information on the orgin of the following Polish surnames: Balonek and Kajfasz.

I only found one source that mentioned Balonek or Bałonek (the Polish l with a slash through it sounds like our w). It said it can come from balon, "balloon, circular object," or bałon, "person with large, staring eyes." It seems likely someone would get this as a nickname because something about him was large and round, and his eyes seem the most likely candidate. As of 1990 there was no one in Poland named Bałonek, and there were 113 Polish citizens named Balonek; the vast majority lived in the province of Bielsko-Biala, in far southcentral Poland, southwest of Kraków. There were a few scattered in other provinces, but the main concentration was definitely in Bielsko-Biala province.

The same source -- a book on surnames in the area of Cieszyn, which is in Bielsko-Biala province, right on the Czech border -- also mentions Kajfasz. It says Kajfasz comes from the Biblical name rendered in English as "Caiaphas," the by-name of a Jewish high priest involved in the trial of Jesus. When I see people with names like that or Judas or Pilate -- names you would hardly expect devout Christians to give their children -- I can't help wondering if a person might have gotten that as a nickname because he played that character in a Passion play or similar religious activity? I can't account for it otherwise. Anyway, as of 1990 there were 271 Kajfasz's in Poland, with the larger numbers in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala 119, Gdansk 23, Katowice 23, and Kraków 32 (there were also 48 who spelled the name Kajfosz, 31 in Bielsko-Biala province and the rest in neighboring provinces).

This data seems to suggest strongly your family came from the area of Bielsko-Biala, that part of southcentral Poland that protrudes down near where the Czech Republic and Slovakia meet. That doesn't necessarily have to be true, but the numbers sure make it seem likely. If you have no information on where the families came from, this might be a helpful clue, although it still leaves a lot of area to cover. Unfortunately I have no access to first names or addresses or any other data besides what I've given above, so I have no way to help zero in on a specific town or village.

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

... Can you tell me if this is a German or Polish name: Kapelski.

Germans don't use the suffix -ski to end their names, that's completely foreign to them; -ski is a Slavic suffix, so the name is most likely of Polish origin -- it might also be Czech, but Czechs tend to spell it -sky rather than -ski. The surname probably derives from the Latin word capella, "chapel," perhaps by way of German, in which it is spelled Kapelle and can also mean a musical band. Large numbers of ethnic Germans have lived in Poland over the centuries, and from about 1772 to 1918 Germany ruled what is now the western half of Poland. So what with one thing and another, it is very common to find ethnic Poles living in "Germany," and ethnic Germans living in Poland. But as far as the linguistic origin is concerned, the -ski definitely indicates Slavic, and probably Polish, origin... As of 1990 there were 198 Polish citizens named Kapelski, scattered all over the country but with particularly large numbers living in the provinces of which the capitals are Poznan (104), which the Germans called Posen, and Bydgoszcz (35), which the Germans called Bromberg.

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

...I was wondering if you knew the origin of the name Kulwiec. I realize that the original spelling was probably along the lines of Kulawczyk or Kulawiecz, but, since my great-grandfather left his siblings in Poland and died young here in the U.S., that information was never passed down. I am currently picking away at some genealogical research, and I am just beginning to learn what resources are available to me.

Kulwiec may well be the original form of the name. It is a recognized name in Poland, though not very common -- as of 1990 there were only 33 Polish citizens by this name, living in the provinces of Warsaw (3), Białystok (5), Bydgoszcz (5), Gdansk (9), Katowice (1), Krakow (4), Lodz (1), Pila (1), Wroclaw (4). (I'm afraid addresses, first names, etc. are not available, this is the only info the Polish government made available for compilation in a directory of surnames).

Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut lists this name under those deriving from the root kul- in the noun kula, sphere, bullet, crutch, or in the verb kulic się, to crouch, cringe. The term kulawy means lame, limping, and many other words with this root are used in reference to the lame or cripples, so I'm tempted to say the most likely meaning of this is son of the cripple. Perhaps not very flattering, but as Polish surnames go, believe me, this is better than many!

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

 

… I was told that you have a book about people that lived in Poland years ago. What I am trying to do is search my roots in Poland. The surname is Prosofsky or Prosowski.

As of 1990 there were 199 Polish citizens named Prosowski (the other spelling is just a phonetic variation; Prosowski, when pronounced, sounds like "Prosofsky," so sometimes it might be spelled that way by non-Poles). The larger numbers of Prosowski's lived in the provinces of Warsaw (22), Katowice (52), Płock (41), and Tarnobrzeg (32), with much smaller numbers living in other provinces. (I'm afraid I have no access to further data such as first names, addresses, etc.). There is no obvious pattern to that distribution, so we can't say there's just one part of Poland where various families named Prosowski came from -- the name may well have originated in several different places independently. Names ending in -owski usually refer to a connection between a person or family and a place with a name ending in -ow, -owo-, -y, something like that; so we'd expect this name to mean "person from Prosów or Prosowo." Offhand I can't find any places by those names; it could be they're too small to show up on maps, or have changed names in the centuries since the surname originated. It's also possible Prosowski is a variant and the name originally took a different form, such as Prusowski or Proszowski. But without detailed info on the family, there's no way to know which of several feasible forms the surname developed from -- if it changed at all!

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

… I am looking for information about my grandparents family names, Lugowski & Resel.

The name Ługowski (the Polish l with a slash through it is pronounced like our w), like most names ending in -owski, initially referred to a connection between a person or family and a place with a similar name. In this case we'd expect Ługowski to mean "person from Ługi or Ługów or Ługowo," something like that. There are several villages named Ługi and at least a couple more named Ługów, so there's no way to say which one a particular Ługowski family came from. The ultimate root of the place name is probably either ług, "lye," or a variant of łęg, "marshy meadow." As of 1990 there were 3,992 Polish citizens named Ługowski, living all over the country, so there is no one region we can point to and say "That's where they came from." The surname probably started independently in several different places in reference to a nearby Ługi or Ługów.

As of 1990 there were 147 Poles named Resel, with larger numbers living in the provinces of Czestochowa (39), Opole (54), and Walbrzych (16) and a few living in other provinces scattered here and there. The provinces mentioned are in far southcentral and southwestern Poland, in areas with large German populations. That may be significant, because Resel does not appear to be of Polish linguistic origin -- there is no similar Polish word or root. It is most likely a Polish phonetic spelling of a German surname such as Ressel or Roessel or Roesel. According to German surname expert Hans Bahlow the name Roesel is found among Germans in that general area, and means "rose-gardener, one who sold flowers." It is perfectly plausible that the spelling of the name of a German family Roesel who lived among Poles might eventually be modified so that Poles would pronounce it correctly, and Resel fits. So that strikes me as the most likely derivation of this name -- though I can't be 100% certain.

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

...my Dad's parents were from Poland..my Grandfather's name was Adam Kanczuzewski, I haven't found what city he was from. I heard he was from the Russian side of Poland. He came to the U.S. sometime between 1895-1900. My Grandmothers name was Teofila Mindykowski...(Her mothers maiden name was Rakoska)...

Names ending in -ewski or -owski usually started as references to a connection between a person and a particular place, which seems helpful -- the names may tell where the family came from. Unfortunately, they're not often all that helpful, because the places involved are too small to show up on maps, have changed their names over the years, have been absorbed by other communities, or a number of different villages use the same name. Thus Rakoski (Rakowska is just the feminine form) is a variant of Rakowski, which suggests origin in any of several dozen places named Rakow, Rakowo, etc. Those places got their names from some association with crabs, as rak is the word for "crab." As of 1990 there were 11,007 Polish citizens named Rakowski, living all over the country, so I'm afraid that particular name doesn't do much to help focus on a specific area.

As of 1990 there were 261 Poles named Mindykowski; the vast majority lived in the provinces of Bydgoszcz (113) and Gdansk (93) and Pila (25), all of which are in north central Poland. So in this case the name's distribution pattern does help a bit -- chances are very good your Mindykowski's came from a rather small part of Poland around and west and south of the major city of Gdansk. I cannot find any villages named Mindykowo, Mindykow, or anything like that on my maps, but chances are there are or were one or two villages by those names somewhere in the area, and most likely the surname originated as a reference to those places, whose name comes ultimately from the root minda, "coin."

The name Kanczuszewski probably comes ultimately from the noun kańczuga, "whip, lash," but again, it probably comes from a place that took its name from that word. There is a village Kanczuga in Rzeszow province (far southeast Poland), the surname could refer to that, or it could refer to other places too small to show up on my maps. As of 1990 there were only 7 Poles named Kańczużewski, living in the provinces of Warsaw (1) and Gorzow (6). There were 45 with the name spelled Kańczurzewski (pronounced exactly the same, so it can be regarded as essentially the same name), living in the provinces of Gdansk (1), Gorzow (9), Katowice (1), Konin (29), Poznan (1), and Zielona Gora (4). (Konin province is the province due east of Poznan province, and you can usually find Poznan on any map of Poland, so that will give you at least a general idea of the area where the most Kanczurzewski's can be found). Unfortunately I do not have access to more details such as first names, addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

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

I have been searching for the history of my last name - Michalewski. Is there anything you can help me with.

In Polish, MICHALEWSKI is usually pronounced roughly "mee-ha-LEFF-skee." The Polish CH is not quite like our H, it's a little more guttural, like the "ch" in German "Bach"; so if you can make the first sound of the second syllable a bit more guttural than English H, it'll be perfect.

You can see 2002 data on its frequency and distribution, along with colored maps -- for both the masculine form, MICHALEWSKI, and the traditional feminine form, MICHALEWSKA -- here:

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/michalewski.html

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/michalewska.html

They show the name is not terribly common in Poland; there were 607 Poles bearing the masculine form and 646 bearing the traditional feminine form.

The name comes from the Polish first name Michał, and means basically "of the kin of Michael." It could also mean "one from the place of Michael," possibly referring to villages or estates or settlements with names beginning Michal-. More often, however, those place names begin Michalow-, and produce the surname MICHAŁOWSKI. Both MICHALEWSKI and MICHAŁOWSKI mean more or less the same thing, "of the _ of Michael," where the blank is filled in with something so obvious it didn't need to be spelled out, usually either "kin" or "place." As it happens, the forms with Michalow- are more often associated with place names than the forms with Michalew-. That's why I say MICHALEWSKI is more likely to mean "of the kin of Michael." But Polish surnames often switch -LE- and -LO- easily, and you can't rule out either meaning. 

The only way to be sure how to interpret the surname is to trace the family history. Sometimes, that will uncover information that makes it clear whether MICHALEWSKI referred to the kin of Michael or the place of Michael -- and if the latter is applicable, family history may clarify which particular place it refers to. There are dozens of places in Poland with names beginning Michalow-, and from the surname alone, one cannot say from which one a given Michalewski family took its name.

If you're interested, you can see data on the name MICHAŁOWSKI here:

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/micha%25C5%2582owska.html

http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/micha%25C5%2582owski.html

The spelling MICHALEWSKI and MICHAŁOWSKI are distinctively Polish. But very similar names, meaning approximately the same thing, appear in other Slavic languages, because the forms of the name Michael are similar in those languages, for instance, Ukrainian Mykhailo and Russian Mikhail. Surnames ending in -owski/-ewski or -ovsky/-evsky are usually either Polish or Ukrainian in origin, however. Russian names are more likely to end in -ov or -ev. I notice you spell your name MYKHAYLEVSKY, which looks to me like a Ukrainian equivalent of Polish MICHALEWSKI. Of course, many people living in Russia have Ukrainian roots, and that's why we also see this name in Russia.

To sum up, the surname means "of the kin of Michael," or perhaps, in some cases, "one from the place of Michael." The latter may refer to specific villages or estates with names derived from Michal-; but more often, those place names take forms beginning Michalow- and thus produce the surname MICHALOWSKI. But MICHALEWSKI and MICHAŁOWSKI are very similar, and mean more or less the same thing. Only research into the history of the specific family may shed light on exactly why that family came to bear that name.

I hope this is some help to you, and I wish you the best of luck.

William F. "Fred" Hoffman
Author, Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings 
www.fredhoff.com


Copyright © 2010 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

... I have just visited your site on the net and thought that you may be able to assist with the origins of the family name Kapera. The name is thought to have come from the Kraków area in recent times. I noticed after searching the net that there is a school/suburb in Estonia called Kapera.

This is one of many names that are hard to pin down exactly. For one thing, it could easily be a variant of the name Kopera, from kopra, "dill," or kopr, "copper"; we often see names with -o- showing up with variant spellings with -a-, and Kopera is a fairly common name (1,752 Poles named Kopera as of 1990)... By contrast, there were 864 Poles named Kapera, with the largest numbers living in the provinces of Katowice (56), Kraków (374), and Tarnów (55). So southcentral and southeastern Poland definitely seems to be the main area for this name.

It might also be a variant of Kasper, "Casper." There is mention in records from 1452 of a "Caper," and apparently that was from Casper, so it seems clear sometimes the -s- drops out.

If the root is, in fact, kaper, there are a couple of possible derivations. There is a noun kaper that comes from the Latin word for "goat," and there are other Polish names that come from Latin words; and the Polish word for "goat," kozioł, is the source of some of the commonest names in the country. So that is at least feasible... Also, there is a term kaper meaning "pirate," coming from a Dutch word. Finally there is a verb from Ukrainian, kaparyty, meaning "to be poor, miserable," so in some areas the name could come from that and be applied to a poor, sickly wretch.

Unfortunately, I have nothing that allows me to pick one of these and say, "Yes, this must be it." I can only present the possibilities. If you'd like to see whether Polish scholars have come up with anything more solid on this name, you could try writing the Anthroponymic Institute in Kraków.

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

...My grandfather Kazimierz Luczynski immigrated to the United States on the15th of May, 1917. His petition for naturalization states that he was born on the 4th of December, 1885, at Zabno, Poland.... A search on the Fourteenth Census of the US: 1920 - Population shows his place of birth as Galicia, PO-A. I am searching for information on his name.

Galicia was the name of the territory ruled by Austria after the partitioning of Poland (beginning in 1772). It covered the southeastern part of Poland and the western part of what is now Ukraine. PO-A is probably "Poland-Austria" or something similar -- census takers were told not to accept "Poland" as a place of birth because technically, no such nation existed; they had to specify German Poland, Russian Poland, or Austrian Poland. As for Zabno, there are at least three villages by that name in what used to be Galicia (plus several more in other parts of Poland); without more data there's no way to tell which of those Zabno's is the one you want.

...I have also noticed that in 1733 Stanislas Leszczynski was elected King of Poland. Could Luczynski be derived from Leszczynski?

Well, to start with the question about Leszczynski, no, it's highly unlikely Luczynski and Leszczynski have anything to do with each other. You never say "never" when it comes to surnames, but from a Polish point of view those two names would have no more to do with each other than, say, "Arthur" and "Artemis" -- just a purely coincidental sharing of a couple of sounds.

Łuczyński (the Polish L with a slash through it is pronounced like our w) probably derives from a place name. There is, for instance, a village named Łuczyna in Wroclaw province -- Łuczyński could very well have started out meaning "person from Łuczyna." Łuczynów in Radom province is also a possible candidate; and there may be more too small to show up in my sources. The place names, in turn, might come from the Polish forms of the first names Lucy or Lucas (meaning something like "Lucy's place, Lucas's place), or from the rather rare or dialect term łuczyna, which means pieces of wood dried and smeared with oil and burned to provide illumination -- "torch" would be the closest translation in English, I'm not sure "torch" is exactly what's meant here, but it's pretty close.

As of 1990 there were 4,320 Polish citizens named Łuczyński, so it's not a rare name. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (501), Kielce (266), Lodz (574), Piotrków (284); this suggests a concentration in the central part of the country, but as I say, there are Łuczyński's living in virtually every province.

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

...What can you tell me about the name of Opat. I undersand that it means "abbot" and that it may have been given to certain people for their work. It has not been shortened from another name in at least 4 generations. My in-laws came from the kepino area and have family there in Kaliz. Most of the other people we have found with the Opat name are Czech.

There's not a great deal I can add to what you already know. Opat probably does come from the term opat, meaning "abbot," but such names don't necessarily refer to the man himself. Just as a name meaning "king" might refer to a servant of the king, or someone who was the "king" of a group and called that as a nickname, a fellow might be called "abbot" in jest, as a nickname, or because he worked for or served an abbot, etc. We sometimes think of abbots as simple men of prayer, but in medieval times, an abbot was actually a person of considerable power. He often owned vast estates, technically the property of the monastery but in fact run by him; he might have all kinds of retainers and servants. So we can't say for sure exactly what "Opat" might mean as a surname, except that it was somehow connected with "abbot."

As of 1990 there were 184 Polish citizens named Opat, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 2, Biala Podlaska 2, Białystok 5, Bydgoszcz 5, Chelm 9, Ciechanów 3, Elblag 1, Gdansk 14, Gorzów 11, Katowice 12, Konin 9, Legnica 5, Leszno 26, Lublin 27, Lodz 3, Olsztyn 4, Ostrołęka 5, Pila 5, Poznan 16, Torun 2, Zielona Gora 10. I'm afraid I don't have further details such as first names or addresses, and I have no data on Czechs at all, so I can't shed too much light on that.

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

Do you know anything about my own surname Gieraltowski? Do names that end in -ski or -cki generally just imply "from the.." or "of the.."? Is there more meaning to such names?

The endings -ski and -cki in Polish are adjectival, and as such they don't necessarily mean more than "of, pertaining to." So a piekarz is a "baker," and piekarski means "of the baker, baker's." In a particular context you can sometimes read a little more into them -- for instance, if you find a -ski or -cki name in a record from 1300, it's virtually certain that person was noble. But most of the time, just "of" or "from" is all the suffix means.

As for Gieraltowski, it means "person/family from the place of Gerald." Gierałt is one form the German name Gerald took in Polish; "Gierałtów" or "Gierałtowo" is a name that might logically be given to a place owned or founded by a man named Gierałt; and Gierałtowski is a surname meaning a person came from that place, owned it (if he was noble), travelled there often on business -- had some kind of connection with that place that caused people to refer to him by that name. There are several villages whose names this surname could come from, including a Gierałtów in Jelenia Gora province, a Gierałtowo in Poznan province, and several Gierałtowice's. As of 1990 there were 617 Polish citizens named Gierałtowski; particularly large numbers lived in the provinces of Warsaw (150), Białystok (66), and especially Łomża (247), with just a few scattered here and there in other provinces.

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

... Hello fellow Genpoler, I hope that this is not to much of an imposition, but could you inform me if the names Nieurzyla or Nieuzyla are in your book. This is not possible to check out in the United Kingdom. If they are in then I will purchase the book via the internet.

I'm glad you asked -- these names are not in my book, and it would have been a shame if you'd gone to the trouble to order it only to come up empty!

The reason these names are not in the book is that I have never come across them before. Looking in the Directory of Surnames In Current Use in Poland, I see that Nieurzyła (the Ł is pronounced like English W) was a name borne by only 4 Poles as of 1990--3 in Bielsko-Biala province, 1 in Katowice province. Nieuzyła was borne by 5 Poles, one in Gdansk province, 2 in Katowice prov., 2 in Opole prov. The real jackpot is the spelling Nieużyła (the Z with a dot over it is pronounced like 'zh' in 'Zhivago)-- there were 347 Poles by that name, in the following provinces: Gdansk 1, Katowice 238 (!), Lodz 1, Nowy Sacz 2, Opole 94, Płock 1, Poznan 1, Torun 2, Walbrzuch 1, Wroclaw 6. From an onomastic point of view all these names are variants of the same name, spelled slightly differently due to error, dialect differences, different pronunciations, etc.; but as often happens, one particular spelling is by far the most popular, and in this instance that spelling is Nieużyła.

The Directory does not have further data such as first names or addresses, and I know of no way to get hold of such data, except perhaps by consulting Polish telephone books; the latter is a long shot, as phones in private homes are not so common in Poland as in the U.S. and the U.K. But a look at the directory for Katowice province, and perhaps also Opole province, would presumably yield addresses of at least a few Poles by this name.

Without further data it's tricky trying to analyze the derivation of this name. It appears to come from nie-, "not," + a form of użyć, to use; Nieużyła would seem to mean something like "not used" or "useless." None of my sources mention it, however, so I want to make it clear that I am only making an educated guess.

There is a soure that might be able to give you a firmer derivation: the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute.

I'm sorry I could not help you directly, but I hope this information may prove useful to you. I wish you the best of luck with your research!

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

I've been researching my husband's family line - Polakowski and am having a very hard time finding anything on the original ancestor to immigrate to America and the link back to Poland. I saw a little on the site about this surname but not much, could you elaborate for me?

Usually there is very little about surnames, whether English or Polish, that offers useful leads in tracing individual families. People often write to me hoping I'll be able to say, "Oh, your surname proves your family was noble and owned the estate at X located 10 km. south of Warsaw, and your ancestor was 5 foot 6 inches and red-haired, and had seven kids and three dogs." All most Polish surnames tell us is "Your ancestors came from somewhere in Poland -- or maybe Belarus or Lithuania or Ukraine, or some other area where lots of Poles lived at some point."

Polakowski, pronounced roughly "po-lah-KOFF-skee," is a good example. The root of the name is Polak, which means "Pole." In terms of structure Polakowski means literally "of the Pole's _," where the blank is filled in with something so obvious it didn't need to be spelled out -- usually either "kin" or "place." So Polakowski could just mean "of the kin of the Pole."

More often names in the form X-owski refer to places with names beginning with the X part, places where the family lived or with which they were connected at some point centuries ago. So Polakowski most likely started out meaning "one from the place of the Pole," referring to some specific village or settlement with a name beginning Polak-. Unfortunately, there are a number of places in Poland with names that fit, and the surname gives us no clue which one it refers to in a given family's case. Your Polakowskis might have come from Polaki in the province of Siedlce, or Polakowo in Koszalin province, or Polakowice in Wroclaw province, etc. The only way to find out which one applies in a given family's case is through detailed and successful genealogical research.

In other words, I can't tell you what you want to know. You're far more likely to determine where your Polakowskis came from than I am.

Once in a while a name will turn out to be concentrated in a specific area to the point that that concentration provides a useful clue. But I'd estimate that happens in fewer than 5% of all cases. And to be honest, we wouldn't expect a name meaning "kin of the Pole" or "one from the place of the Pole" to be restricted to any one part of Poland.

And that's what the data shows. 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 3,133 Polish citizens named Polakowski. They lived all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one area. A Polakowski family could come from anywhere.

So the bottom line is, I answer questions about name meanings and origins primarily to satisfy people's understandable curiosity. Once in a while I'm able to dig up some bit of info that actually helps trace a given family. But that's pretty rare, and I'm afraid it didn't happen in this case.

Copyright © 2002 W.F. Hoffman. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

I have some additional info about last name Budrewicz, that I would like to share with you. You've mentioned the village near Suwalki called Budrowo, but I believe most of Budrewiczes come from area of what is now Belarus and Lithuania. My grandfathers last name was Budrewicz and he was born in 1917 in the small village called Budrewicze near Lida (now Belarus). It's very close to the border of Lithuania and not so far from Wilno. The village still exists and I was even able to trace it on one of the Internet maps.

I'm interested in the subject as I believe that the origins of the name Budrewicz come from Lipka Tatars, that were invited to settle and given the land and noble titles in Lithuania over several centuries (small piece from Wikipedia below).

The migration of some Tartars into the lands of Lithuania and Poland began during 14th century and lasted until the end of the 17th. (...) According to some estimates, by 1591 there were about 200,000 Lipka Tatars living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and about 400 mosques serving them. According to the Risāle-yi Tatar-i Leh (an account of the Lipka Tatars written for Süleyman the Magnificent by an anonymous Polish Muslim during a stay in Istanbul in 1557-8 on his way to Mecca) there were 100 Lipka Tatar settlements with mosques in Poland. The largest communities existed in the cities of Lida, Navahradak and Iwye. There was a Lipka Tatar settlement in Minsk, today's capital of Belarus, known as Tatarskaya Slabada.

Monika Talarek

...I am interested in my surname: Fikus. My father (and mother) were from Poland, and the spelling was not changed in recent history. My father, Witold, was a concentration camp survivor, 1915-1996...

Fikus is a perfectly good Polish name; as of 1990 there were 1,138 Polish citizens with this name, so it is not uncommon in Poland. The Fikus's lived all over, with larger numbers in the provinces of Gdansk (102), Kalisz (163), Katowice (139), Opole (281), Poznan (59), and Wroclaw (63), and smaller numbers in many other provinces. I don't see a real pattern there, except that the name seems to be more common in western Poland, in the areas ruled by the Germans most of the last two centuries... None of my sources say definitively what the name derives from, but the most likely origins are from the noun fik, a variant of the word for "fig-tree," or from the verb fikać, "to kick, jump." It's quite common to see surnames derived from terms for trees, fruit, etc. -- it might mean an ancestor lived by a fig-tree, or liked to eat figs, or sold them. Or the name could have originated as a sort of nickname for someone who was always jumping and kicking, a very active person, full of nervous energy. Those seem the most likely origins for this name, although all this is just educated guesswork on my part, since, as I say, none of my sources discuss the derivation of the name.

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

...Having read your web page on Polish names I didn't see mine - Naumowicz - do you have any information on its origin?...
You must understand that there are over 800,000 Polish surnames -- some very common, some extremely rare -- so I rather doubt I will live long enough to list them all on the Web page. But I'm glad to add to the list as I can.

Naumowicz is a fairly common name; as of 1990 there were 1,564 Polish citizens by that name. The largest numbers of them lived in the provinces of Białystok (195), Gorzow (120), Suwałki (290), and Zielona Gora (92), and smaller numbers were in virtually every other province. Suwałki and Białystok provinces are in northeastern Poland, whereas Gorzow and Zielona Gora provinces are in far western Poland; but it's possible that name was originally concentrated in eastern Poland. After World War II the so-called Operation Vistula forced millions of people to relocate from what had been eastern Poland to the western regions taken from Germany and given Poland; so we often see names of Ukrainian or Belarusian or Lithuanian origin showing up in large numbers in western Poland, far from where we'd expect them to be -- all due to the post-war relocations.

I'm fairly certain that this name originated in eastern Poland (and Belarus and Ukraine, which were historically part of the Polish Commonwealth) because Naumowicz means "son of Naum," and Naum is a name used mainly by Orthodox Christians; you don't often see Polish Catholics using it. We have this same name in English, usually spelled Nahum -- it's the name of one of the minor prophets of the Bible (see the Book of Nahum) and comes from a Hebrew word meaning "consolation, compassion." For some reason this name never became all that popular among Roman Catholics and other Christians of western Europe, but it did become moderately popular among Orthodox Christians, and also among Greek-rite Catholics (so-called Uniates). So even though the spelling of Naumowicz is Polish, in most cases the families bearing the name will prove to be from eastern Poland and the lands adjoining it.

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

...Hi. I would like a quick and dirty analyses for the name Wiater. My grandfather immigrated from the village of Tyczyn near Rzezsow in 1906. That is the area of my interest...

The name Wiater comes from the Polish word wiatr, "wind." While it's difficult to say now -- centuries after the name originated and began to be applied to different families -- exactly why such a name stuck, we can make plausible guesses. It could have been applied as a nickname to someone born on a windy day, someone who tended to be rather windy, possibly even someone who made or ran a windmill; and in the course of time it came to be used as a surname.

It is a common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 1,658 Poles with the name Wiater, and another 3,815 with the name Wiatr. As far as distribution, the name seems to be common found all over the country, with no real concentration in any one area; this is not surprising, obviously no one part of Poland would have a monopoly on wind, so we wouldn't expect the name to show up only in certain places.

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

... looking for the family name of Stankiewicz. Please if you can help me find any info on this family name...

This one is fairly easy. The suffix -owicz or -ewicz means "son of," so this name means "son of Stanek" or "son of Stanko." These are both nicknames or diminutives of the name Stanisław (in English Stanislaus), a very ancient and popular first name in Poland; Poles loved to take the first syllable of popular first names, drop off the rest, and add suffixes (not unlike our "Eddy" from "Edward"). So Stanek or Stanko would be kind of like "Stan" or "little Stan" or "Stan's son" in English; and the sons of a man by either of these names would be referred to very often as Stankiewicz. Eventually it stuck as a surname.

Surnames derived from diminutive or affectionate forms of popular first names tend to be pretty common, and that's true in this case. As of 1990 there were 19,826 Polish citizens named Stankiewicz, distributed more or less evenly all over the country. This makes sense, the name could and probably did get started anywhere they spoke Polish and had guys named Stanisław, i. e., all over Poland.

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

..The family tradition says that Babicki means "ladies' man." Can you confirm this? (My grandparents come from an area that is now Belarus)...

Well, it could possibly mean that. The root bab- in Polish (also Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, etc.) does mean basically "woman," and several words from that root do mean "ladies' man." We can't rule out the possibility that that's what the name meant when first applied to your family.

In general, though, Babicki is more likely to have started as a reference to the name of a place the family was associated with; if they were noble, they owned it, if they were peasants they worked there, or if merchants, they traveled there often on business. There are several possible place names that could spawn the name Babicki, including Babica and Babice, and unfortunately there are quite a few villages by those names (not just in Poland). So the sound, scientific answer is to say that this surname means "coming from Babica or Babice"; and most likely later on, once people had forgotten what the true origin was, they proposed a perfectly simple and natural explanation based on what the name sounded like. And in individual cases it might even be right! But I'm afraid most of the time the truth's a little more boring. Instead of "ladies' man," it probably just meant "one from Babica/Babice"; those places, in turn, may have gotten their names from some association with women, but there's evidence that baba was sometimes used in names to mean "hill, elevation, free-flowing river" (supposedly by some rather far-fetched analogies with the female body!?).

Sorry to be a killjoy, but I'll say this -- compared to some names I interpret for people, this is a fine one. The other day I had to tell a woman her ancestral name means "pees crooked," and I had to tell a man his name meant "manure." In comparison with a lot of Polish names, this one is pretty nice!

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

...My name is not listed. I wonder if you have any information that you could share with me or suggest where I may look...

Kochański (ń = the n with an accent over it) could come ultimately from several roots, but the most likely is kochany, "beloved," or kochanek, "lover, sweetheart"; it appears in Polish legal records as far back as 1471. It's hard to say whether the name came directly from those roots or from a place named something like "Kochany" (which, in turn, surely came from those roots); in theory, the name could have developed either way. I don't see any place by that name, but some might have existed centuries ago, when surnames were being formed -- there are several villages named Kochanów, but that name would tend to generate a surname in the form Kochanowski, not Kochański.

It's a pretty common name, as of 1990 there were 5,266 Polish citizens named Kochański. They lived in every province of Poland, with larger numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (523), Białystok (291), Bydgoszcz (270), Katowice (273), Kielce (264), Lublin (226), Olsztyn (206), and Torun (224); but as I say, there were Kochanski's living in every province, and there doesn't appear to be any significant regional concentration that would let tell us anything useful about where it originated. Most likely it developed in many different places, so all Kochanski's are not all part of one big family.

It's worth mentioning that the ch and h are pronounced the same in Polish (kind of like the ch in German "Bach"), and when a sound can be spelled more than one way you usually will see it spelled more than one way. So don't be surprised if you occasionally run into the spelling Kohański -- it's rare, but it could happen, and it wouldn't necessarily indicate any real difference.

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

… I just came across your web page on Polish Surnames. Thought I would toss my father's name your way to see what you might know or have it in your notes. The closest surname on your list was Kochowski; was wondering if ours had a different origin. Seems to me that I once heard that the original spelling had a "mark" (needless to say I don't know any Polish to speak of) under the "n" but I'm not really sure. I do know that my father never knew where his father came from (Russia he thought), nor whether he had any aunts or uncles.

The Polish form of the name would be Kochański; the name is pronounced something like "ko-HINE-skee." It comes from a Polish word kochany, meaning "beloved." I believe the name Kochan was used in ancient times, kind of a way of saying a child was especially dear to this parents and others, and the surname would derive from that name or some similar usage. For instance, it might refer to a person who came from a place with a similar name, although offhand I can't find any place with a name likely to produce Kochański (there are a number of places that could produce the similar name Kochanowski, but less likely to produce Kochański). About the most we can say is that it means "of, from, pertaining to the beloved one," perhaps with Kochan used as a first name, thus "kin of Kochan," or even "one from the place of Kochan."

It's a pretty common name in Poland; as of 1990 there were 5,266 Poles by this name, living all over the country, so we can't really pin one area down and say "That's where they came from." I'm afraid that's true of most Polish surnames, I'd estimate only 5% or so offer any kind of helpful lead as to where a family by that name originated. Since Russia at one time ruled most of central and eastern Poland, the "Russia" clue isn't a whole lot of help either. About the most I can say is that this probably is a Polish name rather than Russian, because Russian doesn't use the root koch- to mean "love, dear," that's more a Polish usage.

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

...I was wondering if could assist me in establishing the origins of my surname, which is Brytan. all my family comes from Janow Jubelski in Poland.

I was a little surprised to see that as of 1990 there were 352 Polish citizens named Brytan -- that's more than I would have expected. They lived in many provinces, with larger numbers in the provinces of Elblag (30), Krakow (86), Tarnobrzeg (34), and Zamosc (63). The ones in Tarnobrzeg and Zamosc provinces are the ones most likely to be related to you, since that's the general area of Janow Lubelski (which is in Tarnobrzeg province, near the southern border with Zamosc province). Still, the distribution data shows that the name does appear elsewhere.

None of my sources discuss the origin of the name, but it seems likely to come from the root Brtyan-, "Britain, British." There is a term brytan that means a kind of large dog, and it comes from that root; all the words in the dictionary beginning with Brytan- have some connection with "Britain," usually referring to something associated with the British. Sometimes people got place-derived names because they came from that place, sometimes because they traveled there on business, but that would have been quite a commute! So it seems reasonable to figure the Brytans generally had some British blood in their family tree. This is not unheard of, there were quite a few foreigners living in Poland over the years -- the Scots, in particular, who often came to Poland to work as peddlers. It's not out of the question that a Scot who settled in Poland might end up with the name Brytan, since to Polish peasants the distinction between Scot and British might be kind of nebulous. But a Brytan could certainly have had British ancestors; there were Germans, Swedes, Scots, etc. in Poland, why not a few British?

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

... I have been searching for information on 2 Polish surnames that do not seem to be very common. I am researching the names Sztermer and siebiedzinski. Could you give me any information on the origin and/or meaning? (Quick and dirty is just fine.)

Sztermer is a Polish phonetic spelling of the German name Störmer (2 dots, the umlaut, over the o), so that either name sounds sort of like "shtare-mer." This comes from the German root Storm, "storm," and according to German surname expert Hans Bahlow, originated as meaning "man with a stormy disposition," i. e., one who storms his way through life. While German-derived names are not at all rare in Poland, this one happens to be pretty rare: as of 1990 there were only 29 Polish citizens by this name, living in the provinces of Warsaw (1), Czestochowa (1), Kalisz (6), Legnica (2), Łomża (3), Ostrołęka (1), Suwałki (6), Szczecin (1), Wroclaw (4), and Zielona Gora (4). (I'm sorry to say I have no access to further details such as first names or addresses).

Siebiedziński is a good Polish name, but it, too, is rather rare -- only 27 Poles bore that name as of 1990, living in the provinces of Warsaw (2), Kraków (3), Suwałki (21), and Walbrzych (1) -- Suwałki province is in northeast Poland, near the border with Lithuania and Belarus. In form Siebiedziński appears almost certainly to be one of many Polish surnames derived from place names, probably something like Siebiedzin or Siebiedzino. I can't find any such place mentioned in my sources, but that's not too unusual. Surnames developed centuries ago, and often the places they came from were tiny hamlets (the name may have been used only by locals and never would have appeared on any map), or have since been renamed, or absorbed into other communities. If you have any luck tracing your ancestors to a particular area of Poland, and you see any mention of a place named Siebiedzin or anything like that (most likely in the Suwałki area), that is probably the place your ancestors got their name from. But it may take a lot of digging to find it!

...Also, I saw your explanation of the name Danisiewicz, is the name Zdanowicz just a variation? Thank you in advance for any help you can provide...

No, Zdanowicz is a separate name, meaning literally "son of Zdan." That, in turn, is a short form of an ancient Polish first name such as Zdamir, dating from pagan days, before the Poles were Christianized and starting naming their children after Christian saints. The original name meant something on the order of "gives peace," as best I can tell; and Zdan would be a short form, kind of like "Ted" from "Theodore" in English. This name appears in legal records as far back as 1460, so it's a good old Polish name. As of 1990 there were 3,994 Poles named Zdanowicz, living pretty much all over the country with no apparent concentration in a specific region, although the provinces of Białystok and Suwałki in northeastern Poland had some pretty good numbers (616 and 121 respectively).

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

I have often wondered the origin and meaning of my family name and wondered if you could shed any light in this matter. The surname is Daszkowski...

The name Daszkowski, like most names ending in -owski, probably started as a reference to a connection between a family and a particular place, in this case named something like Daszków or Daszkowo. I found only one place with a name that fits: a village that no longer exists, which was called Daszkowo or Doszkowo. It was near Gasiorow and Biezdziechow in what is now Poznan province, apparently just a few km. west of the town of Wrzesnia in Poznan province. It's possible other places existed with names this surname could derive from, but I can't find any others, so this just might be the place. It was referred to in 159 records as Daszkowo, but in most other records it was called Doszkowo. It seems fairly likely that that's what Daszkowski started out meaning, "person or family from Daszkowo/Doszkowo." The name of the village, in turn, means "Daszko's place" -- Daszko is a name we see in old records, used as a kind of nickname for popular first names such as Daniel or David (kind of like "Ted" from "Theodore"). So there was apparently a fellow named Daszko at some point who owned or established this village, and it was named for him, and your family had some connection with that place -- usually, it would just boil down to the fact that they lived there.

The name Daszkowski is moderately common in Poland, as of 1990 there were 1,084 Polish citizens named Daszkowski -- which is why I can't help but wonder if there were other small places named Daszkow or Daszkowo, which were too small to show up on maps, or changed their names, or were absorbed into other communities; it just seems odd that that many people could have gotten their name from one little village that doesn't even exist any more. Still, who knows? That's the only Daszkowo I could find. In any case, the Daszkowski's lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (183), Bydgoszcz (78), Gdansk (185), Lodz (60), Slupsk (74), and Torun (104). It appears they're more common in the northcentral and central part of Poland than elsewhere, but there isn't enough of a pattern to let us pin it down any more precisely than that.

[Follow-Up On Daszkowski]

...Thanks for the information. I have since learned that my family is of Polish nobility and comes from the town called Daszki, which was given to them when they became nobility. The town of Daszki (which I am not sure if it still exists) was near Gdansk. My family had a large estate there until my great-great-great grandfather sold it (or lost it somehow) and immigrated to America. I know that some of the family ended up staying in Poland and had many children. This could explain at least some of the Daszkowski population (at least in that region)...

This is an excellent example of what I mean when I tell people "If you do a good job researching your family, you'll end up being far more of an expert on your names than I can ever hope to be!" None of my sources mentioned Daszki near Gdansk, and it's not on any of my maps. But you got the information, and it sounds fairly reliable to me. For a lot of Daszkowski's what I wrote would have been correct, but there's always one in every crowd 8-).

So ignore what I wrote about the derivation -- but at least the distribution data I gave you may be some help. And I'm pleased to hear you were able to come up with this info. It just proves, it's smart to listen to the "experts," but never take what they say as Gospel, and never stop digging on your own!

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

...I am trying to do research on my father's family. Nobody seems to know much about them. I know that both of my father's parents came from an area near Warsaw, in a shtetl named Bendzin. I'm wondering what info you could give me regarding each of their last names. One of them, Winograd, which is also my name, has been said to mean "vinyard" in several languages...

Winograd does indeed mean "vinyard" in Polish (and other Slavic languages, if you adjust the spelling slightly in view of each language's phonetics). It's difficult to tell in a given case whether an ancestor got this name because he lived near a vinyard, owned a vinyard, or worked in a vinyard -- about the most we can say for sure is that there was some kind of connection with a vinyard... I was surprised to see that as of 1990 there were only 46 Polish citizens named Winograd, I would have expected a lot more (however, there were 526 with the related name Winogrodzki). The 46 lived in the following provinces: Białystok (6), Bydgoszcz (11), Legnica (1), Skierniewice (1), Walbrzych (3), Wroclaw (13), and Zielona Gora (11), so they were scattered pretty much all over the country. (I'm afraid this data is all I have access to, I don't know how to get details such as first names and addresses).

Alexander Beider mentions Winograd in his Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (which included the Warsaw area), so it clearly is a name sometimes borne by Jews. But I haven't run into it often enough to know whether it's justifiable to conclude anyone named Winograd would probably be a Jew. In theory, it's one of those names that could be used by any religion; in practice, sometimes such names do prove to be associated primarily with one or another. In view of Jewish dietary precepts, however, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if this name is primarily associated with Jews; if so, that might have something to do with why it's less common than I expected, and it may have been considerably more common before the Holocaust.

Novletsky or Novlotsky is a bit of a problem. The form doesn't really "sound" right to me, and as of 1990 there was no one by either name in Poland. Even if you adjust for phonetic differences, turning it into Nowlecki or Nowlocki (Poles write the sound "ts" with the letter c, and the sound "v" with the letter w), it still doesn't seem quite right. However, an extra O can often get lost quite easily, and as of 1990 there were 12 Nowolecki's living in Poland, all in Warsaw province. I can't be positive this name is connected with the one you're asking about, but from a linguistic point of view such a connection is plausible, and the area seems to be about right... Oddly, Beider's book doesn't mention any of these names, and usually he is pretty good about listing any name borne by Jews living in the eastern 1/3 of modern Poland. As for the meaning, its form suggests it is derived from a place name, probably something like Nowolec or Nowolek. I can't find mention of any such place in my sources, but this is not necessarily odd -- surnames originated at least two centuries ago (although Jewish names are often of somewhat coinage), and the places they originally referred to might have been too small to show up in any official map or gazetteer, or might have been renamed, or absorbed into larger communities. Often we have a very hard time finding the places surnames came from.

If you would like more help, perhaps you can find some useful leads at the Website of the publication Avotaynu, or from Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Foundation. These are connected with folks who have greater expertise in Jewish research than I, and you just might be surprised what you can find if you hunt for records of the Bendzin shtetl or other such sources.

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

...researching family please help if you can thanks nancy...

The name Pyrtek does not appear in any of my books by Polish name experts, but it seems plausible that it comes from the root pyrt- or perc-; there is a Polish term perć (connected with Slovak prt') which means "a steep path along a mountain-side, a steep passageway." If this connection is correct -- and I can find nothing else in Polish that appears to be relevant -- it probably belongs to the category of surnames derived from references to places. Perhaps an ancestor lived near such a path, or often traveled on such a path.

As of 1990 there were 348 Polish citizens named Pyrtek, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 6, Bielsko-Biala 3, Gdansk 11, Katowice 231, Koszalin 1, Krakow 37, Nowy Sacz 20, Torun 2, Walbrzych 5, Zielona Gora 32. It's interesting that by far the majority live in provinces in southcentral Poland (Bielsko-Biala, Krakow, Nowy Sacz, and Katowice), near the Czech/Slovak border. This makes sense in terms of geography and also in light of the fact that this name may not have originated as native Polish -- it seems more likely to have come from Slovak. That's not to say your ancestors weren't Poles, there are lots of Poles with names of non-Polish origin; but at some point there might have been some Slovak blood in the family. That's guessing on some rather slender evidence, but the chances are good enough to make it worth mentioning.

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

...Would like to know information about the surnames Gargasz, Zieba, Czeberowski, and Glozor...

Czeberowski is a rare name, as of 1990 there was no one in Poland with this name or any of the likely spelling variations such as Cieberowski. Names ending in -owski usually refer to an association with a particular place, in this case probably a place name something like Czeberów or Czeberowo, so that the surname means "person from Czeberow[o]." I can't find any such places, although there are a couple of villages in Białystok province in northeastern Poland named Czeberaki -- that name comes from an old first name Czeberak, which is thought to be related to the term ceber, "bucket." It's not unusual to find that a name ending in -owski doesn't match up with any village still in existence; sometimes surnames were formed from references to names used only by locals, names of very small villages or farmsteads that never appeared on any map, or have since been changed. But that's my best guess as to what the surname comes from, "person from Czeberowo."

Gargasz is also not too common, but it's not unheard of. As of 1990 there were 419 Poles named Gargas, 140 named Gargasz, and 238 named Gargaś (ś stands for the Polish s with an accent over it, pronounced like our "sh," and the sz is a similar sound -- so all three of these spellings can reasonably be regarded as minor variants of the same name). While this name can be found all over Poland, it is a bit more common in southcentral Poland, especially the area around the cities of Kraków and Nowy Sacz; and Gargaś shows up a lot in southeastern Poland, in the provinces of Tarnów (43) and Rzeszow (80). The name Gargasz appears in legal records of the Nowy Sacz area as far back as 1561. Name experts are not sure of its origin, but think it comes from an old German first name Garge, or perhaps from a verb garguleć, "to decay."

Glozor is a mystery; there was no one by that name in Poland in 1990, and none of my sources mention it. I'm afraid I've come up empty on this one.

Zieba is usually spelled Zięba in Polish (the ę is pronounced either en or em, in this case em, so that the name sounds like "ZHEM-bah"). The probable root is zięba, "finch," although a connection with the root zięb-, "chill" is possible. But many Polish surnames derive from the names of birds, and that's probably the case here. It may have started as a nickname, perhaps because a person lived in an area with many finches, or perhaps because something about the person reminded people of a finch. As of 1990 there were 19,024 Polish citizens named Zięba, so it is a very common name. Because it is pronounced much like Ziemba, you may also sometimes see it spelled that way, that's not unusual -- there were 3,846 Ziemba's in 1990, so either spelling of the name is pretty common.

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

...Klafki (1810, Ostpreussen), Klawki (1830, 1852 in Brazil), Klauki (1852, in Brazil), Klawke, Klaffke and Klafke (now-a-day). My ancestors came from Ostpreussen in 1852 but I think the name is not a German name but a Slavic name. One has suggest the meaning of the name may be Woodcutter, or Son of Klaus (Klauski).

The best evidence suggests that in most cases this name derives from Klawka, which is a Polish short form of the name Mikołaj = German Nikolaus (short form Klaus) = English Nicholas. I believe you are right to think the name is Slavic rather than German, because German usually forms diminutives of names by adding suffixes with the letter -L (Haensel = "little Hans (John)," Gretel = "little Margaret"); but Slavic languages use suffixes with the letter -K-, such as -ek, -ka, -ki, -ko. There are many areas in eastern Germany and western Poland where Germans and Poles lived close together, and their languages influenced each other's names, so that a Polish name might change somewhat to fit German phonetics. Thus we sometimes see the name Jahnke, which looks German; but it's actually a Germanized form of Polish or Czech "Janek, Janko." I think something similar happened with your name.

The root Klaw- is clearly a Slavic adaptation of German Klaus, so we have the following process: from Latin Nicholaus -> German Klaus -> Polish Klawek or Klawko -> German Klafke. We know the forms Klawek or Klawko appear in Polish legal records from as far back as 1391, and that they were regarded as short forms or nicknames of Polish Mikołaj (German Klaus). As time went on and Germans gained more power and influence, the name probably was modified slightly to German phonetics, and thus we finally get Klaffke or Klafke.

I should mention that this is not the only possible derivation of the name. It could conceivably come from Latin clavis, "key." Although it seems unlikely, I cannot rule it out. But clearly it is far more likely in most cases that the name derives from the name Klaus. Klawek or Klawko can be interpreted as "little Nicholas," which may mean an ancestor by that name was rather small, but more likely it was a patronymic, a name taken from one's father's name. Thus Klawek or Klawko probably meant "son of Nicholas."

I'm afraid none of these names is very common in modern-day Poland; as of 1990 there was at least 1 person named Klawka, also 1 named Klawke, but I have no further information on where they lived. There was no one named Klawki. There were 32 Polish citizens named Klawek, living in the provinces of Pila (9), Walbrzych (21), and Wroclaw (2) -- all areas with large German elements in the population. There were also 170 named Klawa and 123 named Klawe. So names formed from this root are not unknown in Poland, but they are not particularly common.

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

...Would you help me find the meaning of the name Karpinski? I was told that it was a very common name, much like Smith in America...

Well, it's not quite that common, but it is a fairly common name. As of 1990 there were 19,174 Polish citizens named Karpiński. They lived all over the country, and the distribution seems to be fairly even -- no pattern that tells us anything special.

The ultimate root is connected in most cases to the term karp, "carp" (the fish), which is the root of a great many surnames and place-names in Poland, Russia, etc. In some cases it might also come from the term karpa, "trunk, stem," or from a short form of the first name Polikarp. I'm not sure, but I think in olden days Karp might also have been used as a first name or nickname, much the way we use nicknames such as "Catfish," "Kingfish," etc.

Names ending in -iński usually started as a reference to a place where a family lived or came from; in this case I would say the most likely candidates are the villages of Karpie in Legnica province, Karpin in Lodz province, and Karpiny in Elblag province. However, there could have been many more places named Karpin, Karpino, etc. that are too small to show up on maps, or have since changed their names, or have been absorbed by neighboring communities. But that is the basic meaning of the name: "person from Karpin/Karpino/Karpiny," -- or, to break it down further, "person from the place of the carp" (or in some cases "person from the place of Polikarp").

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

...I am looking for information on Trojanowski...

Like most names ending in -owski, this one almost certainly started out referring to the place a person or family lived in or came from. In this case I'd expect the name of the place to be something like Trojanow, Trojanowo, Trojanowice, Trojany -- and as it happens, there are a number of villages in Poland by those names. (Those names in turn, come from the Slavic root troi-, "three," or from the first names Trojan or Trajan). I can't say which particular village your family was associated with, but if your research leads you to a particular area in Poland and you notice a village nearby with a name beginning with Trojan-, that's probably the place!

When a place name is that popular, the surnames derived from it are usually pretty popular too, and that's the case here -- as of 1990 there were 10,088 Polish citizens named Trojanowski. They lived all over the country, I don't see any particular pattern to the distribution.

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

...I would like to know if you have any quick information on the name Mikulski. It's just and intrest so don't put too much into it. If you do have something, please e-mail it too me. Thank you...

The root of this surname is Mikuła (the Polish l with a slash through it is pronounced like our w), which is an archaic variant of the popular first name Mikołaj = English Nicholas. If surnames were being formed these days you'd expect Mikołajski, formed from the standard version of the name (and in fact that is a reasonably common name in Poland). But most surnames arose centuries ago, and back then Mikuła was still a pretty popular variant, and that's why surnames were formed from it. There are other names from this form, including Mikulak and Mikulec, but Mikulski is by far the most common.

If you wanted to translate it, you'd say Mikulski means "of, belonging to, pertaining to, associated with Nicholas." In practice it would normally mean just "Nicholas's kin," although in some cases it might possibly also come from places meaning "Nicholas's place," such as Mikułowice, Mikulice, etc. But usually names derived from those places would be Mikułowski or Mikulicki, so plain old Mikulski would usually just mean no more than "kin of Nicholas."

Surnames formed from popular first names are usually quite common, and that's the case with Mikulski: as of 1990 there were some 9,693 Polish citizens by this name. I don't see any particular pattern to the distribution, it's a moderately common name all over the country.

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

...I will appreciate it if you could provide some information about the meaning of the name Suchodoslki. I still have relatives in Poland and even they do not know the meaning of the name. Thanks much...

The standard form of the name would be Suchodolski, and it derives from places named Suchodół and Suchodoły. These names are basically the same, Suchodoły is just plural and Suchodół singular. Both come from the roots suchy, "dry" + dół, "pit, depression," also sometimes short for dolina, "valley." So these place names mean "dry valley" or "dry valleys." Apparently sometimes places got this name because they were relatively dry, but in some cases the name may have been meant ironically, in fact the valleys were quite wet. But whether the name was meant with or without irony, "dry valley" is the basic meaning, and Suchodolski means "person or family from Suchodół or Suchodoły = "person from Dry Valley(s)."

There are a number of places in Poland with the names Suchodoły and Suchodół (quite a few on my maps, and probably more too small to show up on maps), so it's not surprising this is a fairly common surname -- 3,717 Polish citizens were named Suchodolski as of 1990. The name appears to be distributed fairly evenly all over the country, with Suchodolski's living in virtually every province, and with the larger numbers tending to be in the more densely-populated provinces. As I say, this is reasonable -- by its nature this place name could and probably did originate in many different areas all over Poland, so we'd expect the surname formed from it to have formed all over.

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

...The only information I have to go on is that he gave his name (on arrival in Australia) as Friedrich Wilhelm Miosge (Polish translation unknown) and that his sister Olga later married a Voight?. He also told my grandmother (his grandaughter) that he was of noble origin???...

Well, let's do Voight first, because that's easier. Voight is a Germanic form of a name that is common in German and Polish; in German it usually takes the forms Voigt or Vogt, in Polish it's Wójt (usually with suffixes added; the Polish accented o, pronounced much like oo in "wood"). This name comes from a title of a regional administrator or supervisor; a Vogt or Wójt was usually an administrator in charge of a village, but could also be in charge of some larger community or area. The term actually comes from Latin advocatus, which gives us our word "advocate" and means "called to, appointed." As of 1990 there were 500 Polish citizens named Vogt, 14 named Voigt, and 24 named Voit; as for Polish Wójt, there were thousands and thousands with names that derive from this root (although many of those names can also derive from the first name Wojciech, which has nothing to do with Voigt/Wójt). But the German forms Voigt and Voit and Vogt are the ones that probably interest you most, and as I say, they're reasonably common in Poland and probably much more so in Germany (though I have no hard data).

Now, as for Miosge, this is a tough one. The name looks and sounds to me Lithuanian, but none of my Lith. sources mention it. If it's Polish, my only guess is that it might be a variant of a name such as Miazga, borne by 2,905 Poles as of 1990; there is also a name Miozga, which I think is probably a variant form of Miazga, and it was borne by 680 Poles. Both appear to come from a term miazga, meaning "pulp, chyle." If a Pole pronounced Miosge, it would sound similar to "Miazga," so there could be a connection -- but that's just an educated guess, I have no proof whatever.

As of 1990 there was at least 1 person named Miosge in Poland, but the data on his/her file was apparently incomplete. There were 115 Poles named Miosga, and they lived in the following provinces: Czestochowa 31, Gorzow 3, Jelenia Gora , Kalisz 6, Katowice 50, Legnica 5, Opole 18, Wroclaw 1. This indicates the name is most common in south central Poland, as Czestochowa, Katowice, and Opole provinces are all right there, just a little west of Krakow. Unfortunately the source from which I got this data does not include further details such as first names and addresses, so what I give here is the only info I have access to. But Miosge and Miosga are so similar that I think they must be variant forms of the same name.

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