GANSCHINIETZ - GESINIEC

To: Theresa Rossmann andreas.waligorski@mail.isis.de

> Already for a long time, I am trying to trace the origin of my ancestors´
> name "Ganschinietz".I only know that they came from Russia, presumably
> from Belorussia. Can you inform me why and when the ending "ietz" has
> been introduced and where can I find some literature on it, preferrably in
> German?

I'm afraid I don't know of any literature on this subject in Russian, but -ietz is a German phonetic spelling of a suffix that is quite common in the Slavic languages. In Polish it is spelled -iec, and it appears in many nouns, including _Niemiec_, "German" (root _niem-_, "mute," + -iec), _kupiec_, "merchant" (root _kup-_, "buy" + -iec), _starzec_ "old man" (root _star-_, "old" + -iec). So a name in the form X-iec or X-ec means "one who does X, one closely associated with X."

I can add that Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions GANSCHINIETZ in his book
Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. It is a German phonetic spelling
of a Polish name written GE~SINIEC, where I am using as a symbol to stand
for the Polish nasal vowel written as an E with a hook or tail (Schwänzchen)
under it. Since we cannot see the correct Polish letters without reconfiguring our machines to use the Central European character set, it is best to use E~ to stand for that letters, because we must distinguish it from normal E (and nasal A~ from normal A) in some way that will appear consistently and reliably on all computer systems. So wherever I type E~ remember it stands for that Polish nasal E with a tail.

The basic root of the name GE~SINIEC is the noun _ge~s~_ (hook under the E,accent over the S), which means "goose" (its sound is similar to that of the
German word _Gänse_, actually).  Rymut says the surname GE~SINIEC comes from a noun that can be spelled with nasal a or nasal e, _ga~siniec_ or
_ge~siniec_. He definies this noun as "chlew ge~si," "a trough for geese."
(Das polnische Wort _chlew_ übersetzt man gewöhnlich _Schweinestall_, aber
hier bedeutet es ein Stall für Gänse, nicht für Schweine. )

It is difficult to say how a person came to bear this name, but it probably
began as a nickname -- perhaps one who worked on a farm and often fed the
geese might be called Ge~siniec. I think that is the most likely explanation -- the name meant "the one who often works at the trough for geese."

As of 2002, according to the best data available (a database maintained by an agency of the Polish government), I was amazed to see that this name appears in several different spellings. As of 2002 there were 5 Polish citizens who spelled the name GANSCHINIETZ. One, a female, lived in the _powiat_ (much like a _Kreis_ in the old German administrative divisions) of Grudzia~dz in Kujawsko-Pomorskie province. The other 4, 2 males and 2 females, lived in Strzelce Opolskie powiat of Opole province.

There were 273 Polish citizens who spelled the name GANSINIEC. Most fo them lived in S~la~skie province, near Katowice, which is roughly the heart of
the area Germans call Schlesien and English-speakers call Silesia.

There were 6 who spelled it GENSINIEC, all living in or very near the town
of Lomza in northeastern Poland. This area was part of "Russian Poland" from
roughly 1815 to 1918.

There were 12 who spelled it GE~SINIEC. 8 of the latter (5 males, 3 females)
lived in Wroclaw powiat of Dolnos~la~skie province, and 4 (2 males and 2
females) lived in the actual _powiat_ of the city of Wroclaw. So those who
spell it GE~SINIEC all live in or very near Wroclaw (Breslau).

This data may not help you actually find relatives. But it may at least help
you gain a perspective on where in Poland these various different forms of
the name appear. At some point that may become helpful in your research.

I should add that people now living in southwestern Poland may not have been
living there long. After World War II, when the Allies took lands long ruled
by Germany and gave them to Poland -- the territory that is now western
Poland -- many ethnic Germans fled, to resettle in East Germany (the DDR).
The Communists wished to repopulate those regions, and also undercut
resistance from people living in eastern Poland. So they forced many to
relocate from east to west. Thus it is possible some of those people named
GANSINIEC and GANSCHINIETZ and GE~SINIEC now living in southwestern Poland have only been there since 1945 or 1946. Before then they may well have lived in eastern Poland, in regions once ruled by Russia.

To sum up, GANSCHINIETZ is a fairly accurate German phonetic spelling of the Polish name GE~SINIEC; that is to say, if a German heard a Pole say
Ge~siniec and tried to write it down, he would probably write it as
GANSCHINIETZ. The name itself is of Polish origin, from a word meaning
"trough or sty where one feeds geese." It probably began as a nickname for
one whose job on the farm was to take care of the geese. A great many Poles
came to live in Belorussia over the centuries, so it is possible your ancestors were Poles who lived there. But by the early 1800s Russia ruled all of what is now Belarus, Lithuania, and most of eastern and central Poland. So Poles who lived "in Russia" might have lived in any of those places -- and there were many Poles who lived in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as in Poland.

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SKRAKOWSKI

To: Robert Witalis Skrakowski <freakster@ukonline.co.uk>

> please excuse my intrusion but i am interested in finding out something > about my surname, skrakowski. it has proved to be a fruitless if somewhat enlightening search on the internet as there are only a handful of entries at most in the search engines i have tried it on, yet other names produce many. it seems that my family does not have an ancestry that goes back beyond the present generation yet the nature of the name seems to be one that is old. by this i mean that its very meaning is 'from krakow' and as such must have come into existence in my mind at a time when people
> could still be distinguished by the place they were from. seems that my ancestors either left, or had to leave krakow sometime in early history, so why so little reference on the net?
> can you help

This is a fascinating question, and I must say up front I don't have a definitive answer. I often find such puzzles with names: X will be common, but X-owicz, "son of X," which you'd expect to be common also, turns out to be rare. Or vice versa. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to why a name did or not catch on.

But if you read notes written by foreigners who've studied English, you'll
notice that often what they write is perfectly correct grammatically, and makes sense -- but it sounds wrong. We just don't say it that way. This phenomena is common in languages; a particular formulation is perfectly plausible, but "we just don't say it that way." The same thing happens with names. This one is common, that one is rare, and it's damned hard to figure out why.

Since I can't give you a definite answer, let me mention this. You can get
an opinion from the real experts if don't mind spending about $20. You can
write the Anthroponymic Workshop of the Polish Language Institute in Krakow.
The staff consists of Polish scholars specializing in name origins, with access to large collections of material on the subject; there is surely no one else in the world better qualified to answer questions on Polish names. They can correspond in English, and the charge for researching a single name is seldom more than $20-30. You write to them with your request, and the individual who does the research will reply, and will tell you how much he/she is charging and how best to send payment. It is usually quite painless, and most people I hear from are very satisfied with the results; but the staff has been a bit slow lately in answering letters -- they have lots of other work to do, after all -- so patience is advisable. If you'd like to give this a try, here's the address:

     Instytut Jezyka Polskiego PAN
     Pracownia Antroponimiczna
     Al. Mickiewicza 31
     31-120 Kraków
     POLAND

Now let me tell what little I can about SKRAKOWSKI.

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, available
online at http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/indexslo.html), there were 26 Polish
citizens by that name. They lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 8,
Bialystok 1, Gdansk 2, Gorzow 2, Jelenia Gora 6, Koszalin 2, Walbrzych 3,
and Wroclaw 2. 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 is scattered all over the country in tiny numbers; there's no significant concentration that would help us point to a specific area and say, "Ah, that's where the name comes from." But this data is important in one way: it establishes that the name, however rare, does exist in Poland. So it is NOT an Anglicized distortion, such as Yastrzemski from Jastrzebski. It may be a variation of a more common name, but there are Poles who go by the name Skrakowski, and that is significant.

I have to differ with you on the basic interpretation of the name; I don't
think it means "from Krakow." The reason is, in my experience you very
seldom see names constructed that way, S-X-owski, where the S means "from"
and X is the name of a place. It's redundant: KRAKOWSKI, without the initial
S, already means "from Krakow."

When nobles first began using secondary names to clarify their identity,
back in the 12th and 13th centuries, at first they used Latin formulations,
since Latin was the language of all writing and record keeping. Thus a Pole
Jan who had an estate at Grabowo would appear in the records as something
like "Joannes de Grabouo." But later Polish became an acceptable language
for keeping records, and Poles naturally tended to use native expressions
meaning the same thing. At first you see "Jan z Grabowa," an exact Polish
rendering of Latin "Joannes de Grabouo," and closer to what a Pole would say
in everyday life.

But it wasn't long before Poles dropped that formulation as a foreignism and
began using a Polish way of expressing the same thing: Jan Grabowski. That
adjectival usage means "of Grabow/Grabowo," as well as "from
Grabow/Grabowo." For some reason Poles liked the feel of it better than "z
Grabowa." So nobles began using that formulation in a big way -- more and
more went by X-owski, where X stands for the first part of the name of their
estate. Gradually these names became hereditary and thus became surnames,
and peasants began using them to. In that way "Grabowski" went from meaning
"[lord] of Grabow or Grabowo" to "[one] from Grabow or Grabowo."

So you see, there's no need to express "one from Krakow" as SKRAKOWSKI, because KRAKOWSKI already says that. Of course you COULD theoretically use SKRAKOWSKI. But in my experience Poles just didn't do that.

Now you may write the Institute and they may tell you I'm all wrong about
this. But I can only go by what I've seen and learned, and my gut feeling is
that SKRAKOWSKI has nothing to do with Krakow.

So what is it? Good question. Usually X-owski means "one from a place with a
name beginning X," but I can find no Skraki or Skrakow or Skrakowo. Often a
rare name with A is a variant of a more common name with O, so I looked for
SKROK- as well, and didn't find anything encouraging. The form SKRAKOWSKI could conceivably be a variant of SKRZAKOWSKI, with the -RZ- simplified to plain -R-; but again, I found nothing to substantiate that. So to level with you, I'm baffled.

But names in the form X-owski USUALLY (not always, but usually) refer to
places of origin bearing names that meant, "of X." And surnames often
referred to names of places that were small and don't appear on any map or
in any gazetteer. In Poland even a bend in the road can have a name,
especially if centuries ago, when names were originating, it was a
significant center of commerce or activity. Very often we find it difficult
to track down what place a surname refers to, but it does in fact turn out
to come from a place name. Rare surnames are particularly likely to preserve
old or dialect variations of names, so that the place in question may now
called something besides Skrak-. The hard part, of course, is figuring out
what or where it is.

The bottom line is that in many, many cases the only hope of getting the
right answer is through genealogical research. If you trace your family back
to their ancestral village, and then talk to people there, they may say,
"Oh, yeah, that name refers to that field over there. They say once there
was a farmstead there, but it disappeared long ago. But we still call that
place Skrakowo because a man named Skrak supposedly owned it."

That's the best answer I can give you. I hope the scholars at the
Anthroponymic Workshop may be able to tell you more. If you do write them
and they give you a good, substantial answer, I'd be very interested in
hearing what it was. You've intrigued me -- I'd love to know just what the
heck Skrakowski meant, and why it's so rare! I want to know, even if the
answer is, "You blew it, Hoffman. The pros say it is indeed a very old way
of saying 'one from Krakow.'"

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WOLICKI - WOLITZKI

To: Gary Wolitski <gandww@sasktel.net>

> Hello...and can you please help with just the 1 name Wolitski and
> possibly it's origin and where in poland i may look at to dig up more 
> history on it?
> My grandfather came to saskatchewan canada in about 1905????? And > i myself still live here!

Wolitzki is an alternate spelling of the name Poles usually spell Wolicki. The Poles pronounce the letter C as we pronounce "ts" in "cats," which is also the way Germans pronounce "tz." Poles pronounce the name Wolicki roughly "vo-LEET-skee," and when Germans, for instance, wrote that name down, they often spelled it Wolitzki or Wolitzky. But that's all simply spelling variation -- it's all the same name, and the standard Polish spelling is Wolicki.

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 1,132 Polish citizens named Wolicki. They lived all over the country, with particularly large numbers in the following provinces: Kalisz 103, Konin 117, and Tarnobrzeg 101. 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 is not concentrated in any one part of the country.

Incidentally, this source showed no one named Wolitzki or Wolitzky. That's to be expected -- only foreigners would spell the name that way. Poles would always tend to spell it Wolicki.

Polish name experts say this name usually refers to a family connection with a place named Wolica or Wolice, so that it means literally "[one] from Wolica/Wolice." The problem is, there are a number of places in Poland with those names -- at least 27 named Wolica, and 2 named Wolice. There's no way to tell just by looking at the surname which one a given Wolicki family came from. Only genealogical research might establish that. That means tracing the family back in documents, generation by generation, till you find something that tells yuo exactly where in Poland your particular Wolickis came from.

==========

CHODKOWSKI

To: Denis Chodkowski <cagou.yeu@free.fr>

>  i make research about my grand father Théophile Chodkowski. He was > born in Dobrolecka M'Chi 17 january 1892. His father was Jean (Jan) 
> Chodkowski and his mother was Félixa Kossakowska.

> My grand father came in France in 1905-1910 (i don't know exactly 
> when). He came from the Ostroleka area. He was too a self made man, and a veteran of World War 1.

> The "legend" said that he had a brother, (or a nephew, or a oncle) called Kasimir, and this one go to the United States.

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, which can be searched here), there were 1,801 Polish citizens named Chodkowski. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 295, Ciechanow 277, Olsztyn 166, and Ostroleka 455. 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 that the name is found all over Poland but tends to be most common in the northeastern part of the country, especially near Ostroleka. So that at least indicates that your ancestors came from the area where this name is most common.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this surname in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He explains that most surnames in the form X-owski refer to the name of a place beginning with the X part. Thus we would expect Chodkowski to mean "one from Chodkow or Chodkowo" or some place with a similar name. Unfortunately, there are several places named Chodkow and Chodkowo, and it is impossible to tell which one a given Chodkowski family came from except through detailed research into that family's history.

I can tell you, however, that there are four small villages west of Ostroleka with compound names beginning Chodkowo-: Chodkowo-Biernaty, Chodkowo Kuchny, Chodkowo Wielkie, and Chodkowo-Zalogi. If your family came from the Ostroleka area, chances are good that their surname refers to a family connection with one of these villages. It is very common to see villages in that area with compound names. Most likely there was a connection at some point centuries ago, and one large estate was called Chodkowo, a name meaning "[place] of Chodek or Chodko"; later it was subdivided into four separate villages distinguished by adding a second name to the Chodkowo- part.

It is even possible your ancestor was noble, and that his family name originally indicated that they were the owners of the estate of Chodkowo. However, one cannot assume that. It is equally possible the family consisted of peasants who took this name because at some point they had lived or worked at Chodkowo. Again, the only way to shed light on any of these is through research into your family's history. I cannot do that, but you can, if you desire.

==========

GODLEWSKI

To: Anthony Godlewski <pharmerg@earthlink.net>

> I am interested in the Origins of my family's surname-
> Godlewski. I would be happy to purchase your book if this
> information is contained in the volume. If not, what information
> can I supply to assist you in answering my request?

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, which can be searched here), there were 11,754 Polish citizens named Godlewski. They lived all over the country, with no significant concentration in any one area; the name is somewhat more common in northeastern Poland than anywhere else, but not to the extent that this offers any useful lead in research. A Godlewski 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 -- like most names ending in -ewski and -owski -- derives from the name of a place where the family came from, or was associated with, at some point centuries ago. He specifically mentions Godlewo, Nur district, Lomza province, as a place the surname refers to.

I would add that there are few Polish place names that are unique, and there are other places with similar names (Godlewa, Godlewo, etc.) the surname could refer to. If you'd like to see some of them, go to this Website:

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

Enter "Godl" 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 Godl-. 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.

This is often the case with Polish surnames deriving from place names. Very often there's more than one place a name might refer to. The only way to determine which one the name refers to in a given family's case is through genealogical research. Thus if you determine the family came from a specific area, and you find a place nearby named Godlewo or something similar, chances are good that's the place the name originally referred to. In any event, I can only help with "quick and dirty" analysis, and cannot do the kind of detailed research necessary to establish this.

==========

KAWKA

To: Robert Kawka <robert.kawka@ntlworld.com>

> Do you have any information on my surname. I would be very inerested to know.

In Polish Kawka is pronounced roughly "KOFF-kah." 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 5,831 Polish citizens by this name. They lived all over the country with largest numbers in the following provinces: Warsaw 685, Bydgoszcz 381, Konin 215, Lublin 540, Lodz 200, and Zamosc 621. 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 basically tells us a family by this name could come from anywhere in Poland; the name is not associated with any one region of the country.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles], saying it appears in records as early as 1371. He says it comes from the noun kawka, which can be a diminutive of kawa, "coffee," but can also mean "the jackdaw," a kind of bird. I suppose an ancestor might have gotten a nickname meaning "little coffee," but surnames from words for birds are very common in Polish, and I think the jackdaw connection would prove true in most cases. It might mean an ancestor lived in an area where jackdaws were common, or could imitate their singing, or wore clothes that reminded people of their coloring -- some perceived association along those lines would probably account for the name.

==========

KONCZAL - KON~CZAL

To: Thomas Konczal <TKDesertRat@aol.com>

> Hello, I was wondering if you have any information on the name Konczal. We have been in this country a long time and no one seems to know anything about our origins. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

There are two possible names here, because in Polish there are two N's. One is normal N, and with that N the name Konczal would sound like "CONE-chall." The other is an accented N, which I render online as N~ because the accents and other diacritical marks in Polish characters don't show up on browsers unless you configure them for eastern European languages, which is more trouble than most folks want to take. The form of the name with N~ is pronounced roughly "COIN-chall"; that accent indicates a slight softening of the N that affects the pronunciation of the vowel as well.

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 95 Polish citizens named Konczal. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Biala Podlaska 10, Bydgoszcz 13, Chelm 36; the rest were scattered in tiny numbers all over the country. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, so I can't tell you how to find that info.

As of 1990 there were 1,088 Poles named Kon~czal. The name was found all over the country, but was highly concentrated in two provinces: Bydgoszcz, 533, and Poznan, 235. So this name is most often found in northwestern to western Poland.

The name with normal N, Konczal, is thought to come from a nickname for the first name Konrad, which also appears in German as Kuntz and in Polish as Kunc. Konczal would just mean more or less "kin of Conrad." This is the name most common in far eastcentral Poland, near Biala Podlaska and Chelm on the border with Belarus and Ukraine.

The more common form with N~ comes from a root seen in the verb kon~czyc~, "to end, finish," and in the noun koniec, "end." In Polish names of the form X-al or X-ala the usual meaning is "one always doing X, one of whom X is typical." So Kon~czal would mean something like "the one who ends it, the one who finishes it; the one at the end." Thus it might have started as a nickname for a guy who tended to finish things; or it might well refer to one who lived at the end of a certain property or at the end of a village. I find that interpretation a bit more likely, because there are several names in Polish that mean that. "One who ends it" seems just a bit figurative for a name interpretation; more often than not, names are pragmatic. So I suspect the name referred to one who was somehow associated with a place at the end of a village or road or property. However, I can't rule out the other meaning; a Kon~czal might have been the kind of guy who said, "OK, you started this; I'm going to end it."

In theory Konczal and Kon~czal could be confused. In fact, some of those Konczals living in Bydgoszcz province were probably Kon~czals whose names were mistyped. And some names come in two forms, one with an accented consonant and one without, reflecting slight regional differences in pronunciation. I think in most cases, though, Kon~czal would prove to be the standard form, and it probably derives from the root meaning "end, final," rather than from a variant nickname of Konrad.

==========

LITWA

To: Buddy and Kim Neal<Buddykim77@cs.com>

> We are trying to find information on the name and ancestry for Litwa.
We currently have little information on Albert Litwa, possibly from yonkers ny, parents may have migrated from binarowa, poland. We are doing the research for personal family history..... any help with the meaning or origin of this name would be greatly appreciated.

I'm afraid the nature of this name is such that I may not be able to tell you much. Litwa, pronounced "LEET-vah," is just the Polish word for "Lithuania." Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles], saying that it appears in records as early as 1372; he confirms that it comes from the word for Lithuania.

As such, it probably originated as a nickname for a Lithuanian who came to live among Poles, or for a Pole who had some connection with Lithuania -- perhaps he went there once, or went there on business sometimes, or even had a tendency to hang around Lithuanians instead of Poles. It's hard to say what the nature of the connection was, because there are many different possibilities, and no way to tell which one applies in your particular case. But a family bearing a name meaning "Lithuania" obviously must have had some connection of some sort with Lithuania, or perhaps with a place in Poland called Litwa because of a Lithuanian connection.

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 826 Polish citizens named Litwa. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Kalisz 60, Krakow 192, Nowy Sacz 51, Ostroleka 74, Rzeszow 52, Wroclaw 54. 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. (Binarowa was in Krosno province in 1990, and there were at least 17 persons named Litwa in that province as of that year. There may have been more -- data from Krosno province was not complete in the databank, so the actual number may have been somewhat higher.)

It seems odd, at first glance, that this name is most common in southern Poland, especially the southcentral part of the country (near Krakow and Nowy Sacz). That's a long way from Lithuania! But if you think about it, actually it does make sense. Surnames developed to help distinguish people, so that you wouldn't confuse this Jan with that Jan or this Piotr with that Piotr. Suppose you live in northeastern Poland, near the border with Lithuania -- what point would there be calling someone there Litwa? Half the people you met could be called Litwa; the name didn't distinguish you. It'd be like everybody in Texas calling each other "Tex" -- sort of pointless. But if you run into persons of Lithuanian heritage down near Krakow or Nowy Sacz or Krosno, they're a long way from home. In that case a name meaning "Lithuanian" would distinguish them by pointing to something about them that made them stand out in a crowd. So actually it makes sense that the name would show up most often among people with a Lithuanian connection who had long since moved far away from Lithuania.

==========

MACHOWIAK - POLCYN - WACHOWIAK

To: <Gillin@cni-usa.com>

> Machowiak, Wachowiak, Polcyn.

> Would like origins of the names.

These surnames from old Polish first names to which suffixes were added that mean more or less "son of, kin of." Thus Polcyn, pronounced "POLT-sin," comes from the ancient first name Pol~ka, a Pomeranian variant of a name seen elsewhere in Poland as Pelka (this Polka has nothing to do with the dance; I'm using L~ to stand for the Polish slashed L pronounced like our W.) The suffix -yn means "kin of, son of," so Polcyn would mean nothing more than "kin of Pol~ka." It can also come from the place names Polczyno or Polczyn, the names of several places in Poland), meaning "place of Pol~ka." Either way, the name itself is not particularly enlightening.

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 1,209 Polish citizens named Polcyn. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 152, Pila 340, and Poznan 331. 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. Clearly this name is found most often in western to northwestern Poland.

As of 1990 there were 5,012 Poles named Wachowiak, living all over Poland but especially in the western half, especially the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 361, Kalisz 341, Leszno 485, Pila 528, and Poznan 1,733. This name developed from nicknames derived from first names beginning with Wa-, such as Waclaw and Wawrzyniec. 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 Wa- from one of those first names mention, add -ch- to form Wach, then add -ow (which means basically "of") = Wachow-, "of Wach," and then further suffixes could be added to that. So Wachowiak would mean roughly "kin of Wach." But it doesn't really mean anything, any more than "Teddy" means something -- it's just a name that developed from another name that did originally mean something.

Machowiak is exactly the same sort of thing, except it developed from first names beginning with Ma-, such as Maciej (Matthias) and Mateusz (Matthew). So Machowiak, pronounced roughly "mah-HOV-yock," would just mean "kin of Mach's sons." As of 1990 there were 605 Poles by that name, with the largest numbers in the following provinces: Legnica 41, Leszno 267, and Poznan 89. So this name is found most often in west central Poland, in the former Provinz Posen [Province of Poznan].

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MAJERCZYK

To: Nayda Mendoza <naymendo@nmsu.edu>

> I am writing this e-mail in hope that you can tell me where the surname
Majerczyk origin. It would mean a lot to my nephew, niece and brother-in-law if they new a little more about their polish ancestry. They are part polish part mexican but they have very little information about their polish heritage.
> My brother-in-laws father was named Val. I believe that either his parents of grandparents were famous opera singers. That is all he knows about his family.
> Oh yes his father served in the military. So if you could please give me an answer I would really appreciate it.

I don't have any information on specific families, so there is nothing I can tell you about any Majerczyks who were opera singers. I can tell you that I went to http://www.google.com, did a search for "Majerczyk," and came up with a number of hits that looked like they might have good information. If you haven't tried that yet, you really should.

In Polish Majerczyk is pronounced roughly like a combination of the English words "my-AIR-chick." 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 832 Polish citizens by this name. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Katowice 84, Krakow 58, and Nowy Sacz 371, Walbrzych 79, and Wroclaw 50; the rest lived in much smaller numbers all over the country. 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 tha name is most common along the southern broder of Poland, especially near the town of Nowy Sacz in southcentral Poland.

The suffix -czyk usually means "son of," although sometimes it can mean "assistant, small." Majer comes from the German name Maier, Majer, Meier, or Mejer, which started out as a term for the overseer or administration of an estate. It's a common name among Germans, and many Germans resettled in Poland, so it's not rare to see Polish names that started as adaptations of German names. So Majerczyk means "son of the estate administrator," or perhaps "assistant to the estate administrator." It would be one of the many Polish surnames that refer to an ancestor's occupation.

Now I should add that this is true if the family was Christian. Among Jews the name Majer has a different source, coming from a Hebrew given name which is most often spelled Meier (but Poles spell it Majer), from a word meaning "illuminated." So if the family in question were Jewish, the surname would simply mean "son of Meier." From what you say I suspect this is not relevant in your family's case, but I wanted to mention it in case it is. The names of Polish Jews and Polish Christians can differ even when the name itself is spelled the same, as in this case.

So if the family was Christian, the name means "son of (or assistant to) the estate administrator," referring to the descendants of one who originally bore the German name or title Maier/Meier. If the family was Jewish, the name simply means "son of Meier."

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PARADOWSKI

To: Peggy <Nowtalkin@aol.com>

> I am of polish descent and my mother's maiden name is Paradowski. That is the only spelling that I know of. Have you come across this name and what is it's origin and meaning? Any help would be kindly welcomed.

In Polish Paradowski is pronounced roughly "pah-rah-DOFF-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 and can be searched here), there were 5,239 Polish citizens by this name. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Warsaw 811, Bydgoszcz 284, Lodz 294, Plock 260, Skierniewice 380, Torun 248, and Wloclawek 373. 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. Basically, this data tells us the name is found all over Poland, but tends to show up most often in the central part of the country.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles]. He says it comes from the root seen in the noun parada, "exhibition, display, show" (from the same Latin root as our word "parade"). Surnames in the form X-owski mean literally "of X's _," where the blank is to be filled in with something so obvious it didn't need to be spelled out -- usually "kin" or "place." So in some cases X-owski can mean "kin of [the] X." But most often it refers to the name of a place where the family lived at some point centuries ago, a place name beginning with the X part, which may have various suffixes that were detached before the -owski was added. If the family was noble, they owned an estate there; if not, they lived and worked there. So while X-owski can just mean "kin of X," it generally means "one from the place of X."

So this name may simply mean "of the exhibitions, of the shows, of the parades," possibly referring to ancestors who were associated with these shows and displays. Or it may mean "one from Paradowo" or some other places with similar names. I can't find any places by those names on modern maps, but that's not unusual. The thing is, Polish surnames developed centuries ago, and often came from the name of a field or hill or little settlement, names used only by locals, that would be unlikely to appear on any map or in any gazetteer. So the place this name refers to may now be quite obscure, or may even have disappeared or renamed or absorbed into another community centuries ago. It's also quite possible the place name or surname, or both, have changed somewhat over the centuries. I'm afraid only genealogical research might uncover facts that would clear up exactly what place the surname originally referred to.

To sum up, the name is not all that rare by Polish standards, and is found all over the country, but especially in the central part. It means literally "of the parades," and could refer to ancestors who were connected with putting on displays or exhibitions; or it could mean "one from Paradowo" or some similar place name. Only detailed research into your family's history is likely to establish which analysis is relevant in their case. So you're more likely to get the final answer to this question than I am!

By the way, I went to http://www.google.com and did a search for "Paradowski" and found quite a few hits. If you haven't tried that, you should -- you never know what connection you may make that way.

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PODOLAK

To: Edward Karolick <magistrand@cox.net>

> My mother's maiden name was Podolak. I was born in 1938.

Podolak is pronounced roughly "po-DOE-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 and can be searched here), there were 2,518 Polish citizens by that name. The largest numbers lived in the following provinces: Katowice 102, Ostroleka 256, Przemysl 244, Szczecin 126, and Zamosc 488. So while the name is found all over the country, it tends to be most common in southeastern Poland.

Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions this name in his book Nazwiska Polakow [The Surnames of Poles].He says this name means "one from Podolia," which is the name of an area in southwestern Ukraine. That's why it's not surprising the name is most common in southeastern Poland, near the border with Ukraine and therefore not too far west of Podolia. You'd expect such a name to show up most often in areas reasonably near the region to which the name refers, and that's the case here. Surnames developed centuries ago, and there's been enough time for people bearing this name meaning "one from Podolia" to spread far and wide. But they still are most common in the part of Poland nearest Podolia. This name is also presumably fairly common Ukrainians, too, but I have no data for that country.

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POS~LEDNIK - PUS~LEDNIK

To: Klaus Puslednik <Klaus.Puslednik@addata.at>

> I read your articles in polishroots and I kindly ask you where the name Puslednik comes from and what the meaning of it.

In Polish this name is usually spelled not with plain S, but with accented S, pronounced somewhat like English "sh." Online we use S~ to indicate accented S (you can use the Polish letter, but it does not appear correctly on systems not configured to use the Central European character set; we know at least S~ will show up correctly on all systems). So the name is spelled Pus~lednik, pronounced roughly "poosh-LED-neek."

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 104 Polish citizens by that name. They lived in the following provinces: Bydgoszcz 12, Gorzow 1, Jelenia Gora 4, Kalisz 6, Leszno 48, Opole 1, Szczecin 15, Wroclaw 11, and Zielona Gora 6. 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 is found primarily in western Poland, especially near the Leszno.

If you want to search the database for yourself, go to that site, http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/indexslo.html, and enter "P*LEDNIK" in the box, then click on "Szukaj" (Search). That will bring up Pus~lednik as well as other names that are very similar. It can be useful to compare different names and see how common they are and where they were common.

If you need help understanding how to read this data, you can read my article "The 'Slownik nazwisk' Is Online!" in the August issue of the free e-zine Gen Dobry! at this site:

http://www.polishroots.org/gendobry/GenDobry_vol3_no8.htm

None of my sources specifically mention the derivation of this name, but I looked in an extensive 8-volume Polish-language dictionary I have, which was recommended to me by Polish scholars as a good source of information on terms that often became surnames. It mentions a noun pus~lednik as a different way of spelling po~l~s~lednik (accent over the O, slash through the L, accent over the S), which would be pronounced almost exactly the same way. That noun means "a farmer or peasant who works a 'half' farm." In Polish po~l~ means "half," so this is a "half-farmer."

What that means needs a little explanation. Originally Polish peasants were allowed by nobles to work land that belonged to the nobles. A full-sized farm was one that was big enough to supply food for a family for a year. The size varied from place to place, but that's what a "full farm" was. However, as time went on and property was split among descendants, what began as a full-sized farm might become two half-farms, or 4 quarter-farms, and so on. A po~l~s~lednik was a peasant who owned or worked a "half-farm" -- not one quite big enough to support a family by itself, but still much more land than many peasants had.

Now Pos~lednik (a more common name, borne by 500 Poles as of 1990, with the largest number by far, 267, in Leszno province) probably comes from a different word, pos~lednik, meaning "one who comes after; descendant." However, it can sometimes also mean the same thing as Pus~lednik. Probably the only way to find out for sure which meaning is relevant in a given family's case is through detailed research into their history, which might turn up some information that would shed light on this question.

There are other words in Polish that mean much the same thing, such as po~l~kmiec~ and po~l~rolnik. The fact that Pus~lednik and Pos~lednik are most common near Leszno province makes me wonder if it was a tendency for people in that area to prefer these terms, instead of the others? I don't know, but it does seem likely, in view of the fact that the surnames Pos~lednik and Pus~lednik are most common in that area. This might be a good indication that your family is likely to have come from that area originally.