My father from Lublin - Boris Cusazc

my father came from Lublin in East Poland, his name was given to us as Boris Cusazc but later filled in some paper work listing his name as Paul Von Well, so I'm not even sure of his real name. He was a refugee, and said he had been an engineer in the Polish Air force and subsequently joined the British Air force when he arrived in England. Can anyone help me with the names or where i should go from here thanks

Cusazc is a very unusual name. Google shows only 29 results for cusazc -cuszac (eliminating randomly disruptive "cuszac").

The ending ZC looks very strange and it does not seem to belong to any European language. Check for example this page: List of digraphs in Latin alphabets:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digraphs_in_Latin_alphabets

There is no ZC on that list, but there are:
CZ - Polish, Kashubian, historical Hungarian
CS - Hungarian
ZS - Hungarian
SZ - Polish, Hungarian
SC - Catalan, French, English, Latin American Spanish, Occitan and Portuguese
These are only a few selected samples from a long list of digraphs.

So considering the both reasons - the rarity and unusual ending digraph (if it is actually a digraph) - the name seems to be atrociously corrupted or invented. Since the correlation between Boris Cusazc and Paul Von Well is none, it looks to me like a big invention by your father, really.

But let us try few alternatives assuming corruption instead:
Cusacs (Hungarian like) - very unlikely, according to google
Cusacz (Polish ending) - few such names exist around the world. But it is not a Polish name. If it was Polish then Kusacz would be more probable, because this version has some meaning in Polish - referring to Tinamou family of birds (kusacze, kusaki, kusakowate).

But there are so many other alternatives possible, so I cannot suggest anything specific, unless you verify the name first and provide us with more probable alternative. By the way, Polish or Ukrainian version of Boris is Borys instead.

Kusacz can actually be Ukrainian - a cognate of Polish Kąsacz -(this is a just a guess) the first name Borys is also not typiacally Polish but Russian (or Ukrainian generally Orthodox) - btw boletus you have any idea where Polish ornitiologist had taken the kusacz name for these South American birds? the etymology is completely obscure to me

A very interesting question, but I have no answer to it. Wikipedia, pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategoria:Polscy_ornitolodzy , lists many meritorious Polish ornithologists - some of them born in 18th and 19th centuries, and quite a few of them exploring birds of South America, while others discovering birds of Siberia - mostly due to failed January Uprising and courtesy of tsar Alexander II.

Without going to details, the following names are worthy to check as possible Polish godfathers of the little "kusacz" birds: Konstanty Tyzenhaus (1786-1853), Feliks Jarocki (1790-1865), Władysław Taczanowski (1819-1890), Konstanty Jelski (1838-1896), Jan Sztolcman (1854-1928), Konstanty Branicki (1824-1884).

Btw, many species of birds were named after Taczanowski, including "kusacz Taczanowskiego" (Nothoprocta taczanowskii P. L. Sclater et Salvin,1875).

Interesting, OP. Do you have dates of when your father left Lublin? I wonder if you can get access to the British Air Force records? Sounds like there is a lot more to this story.

I looked at this name again and ... Eureka! Borys Kuszcz could be a quite probable name of your father. Database "Moi Krewni" shows a small number of "Kuszcz" people currently living in Poland: 7 - in the district Biała Podlaska, 3 - in the city of Lublin. One of these people, "Konrad Kuszcz" is registered as an owner of a building and renovation company. Here are all his recent details: edg.lublin.eu/rejestr/?page=41&field=numer&order=desc&akcja=view&id=29095

The word "kuszcz" is of ukrainian origin and it means "krzew, krzak" in Polish. This word apparently also exists in Polish and it was first borrowed by Polish poet Słowacki. Google translates it as "shrub, bush". Family names "Kuszcz" and "Kuszczycki" belong to Polish coat of arms "Kusza" (Crossbow) - if you can prove it of course. :-)

"Kuszcz" was also and administrative and military unit of OUN - Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The smallest unit of OUN was Stanica, which consisted of 1-2 villages. Higher unit was Kuszcz, which included 4 to 7 villages. For this reason the OUN's kuszcz has a very bad connotation in Polish WWII history. On the other hand, some Ukrainian officers were contracted in the years 1928-1939 to Polish army. One of them was Wiktor Kuszcz, pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraińscy_oficerowie_kontraktowi (only in Polish wiki).

There are quite a lot of Ukrainian surnames Kuszcz, some of them quite famous, such as Natalija Kuszcz - a pole vaulter, Anatolij Kuszcz - a sculptor. Some such names might have been transcribed as Kushtch, and this is where a source of the corruption "Cusazc" might lie.