Newborn girl -ska or -ski ? AUSTRALIA

Hi,

I just got a newborn baby girl :-) and I'm contemplating on what surname ending to fill in for her birth certificate, either -ski, or ska -?

I live in Australia.

Would you have any opinion on that?

Thank you,
Karol

The question is whether it is possible/legal to have a -ska surname for your daughter in Australia.
In Poland it is rather obvious that Kowalski's daughter is Kowalska. Would Australian officials be so understanding?

'Kowalski' and 'Kowalska' will be considered two formally unrelated names in Australia, I suspect.

Many popular actresses from around the world (mainly from USA/Australia) got -ski, for Poles it sounds weird but for non-Polish speakers there is no difference I think.

Monika Lewinsky will always sound weird to a Polish speaker. When we hear this, we instantly think 'Oh, she's American'.

We also have one notable example in the reverse: "Tamara Lempicka" rather than a Tamara Lempicky.

.... or you could just name her according to the convention of the country you live. You know- assimilate (in the same way everyone would require other migrants to in Poland).

congratulations to you, I hope she and her mum are fine btw.

Some last names can be tricky in Polish, for example, the wife of Nowak would be "NowakOWA", however if Nowakowa were to be unmarried, it would be "NowakOWNA", with the final "o" having a hook on top, thereby giving it a short "u" sound, almost like the sound of "oo" in the English word "bOOk"!

Only in colloquial speech and not always. Especially not among younger generations.
Most importantly, a Nowak's wife or daughter won't have her name changed in official documents. She will be a Nowak in her birth certificate, ID or passport.

Officially these are no longer used, ime they're used mostly ironically or insultingly (I've only heard very old people use them unironically).

In modern Polish the difference is syntactic rather than morphological so that female last names ending in a consonant don't decline.

Widziałeś Nowaka? (Nowak is a man)

Widziałeś Nowak? (Nowak is a woman)

Polish is finally modernizing. Now, it seems that Czech has remained more conservative:-)

No! Never! We will never ever attempt to modernize our old Sarmatian language.

Yes, I've heard that ending used ironically.