Help!!!! I have found my grandmother's birth certificate. It is rumored that she may have been Polish..but I am unsure. All I know are these two surnames (Laburchewski; father & Schidlowski; mother). Are these Polish surnames? Her uprbringing and background has been a mystery in my family. All I know is that she was a devout Roman Catholic, had black hair and olive skin....(I thought polish had blond hair & fair skin). Please help fill in this missing piece to my family puzzle.
LABURCHEWSKI (?): Looks to be a phonetic rendering of possibly £abuszewski (topo nick from Labusz or £abuchy); pershaps the ‘r’’ got somehow inserted? Other possibilities: Labryszewski, Laborzewski or Labuszewski (the latter a topo nick from Labuszewo in Masuria). If this were a proper German transcription, shouldn’t it have read: Laburtschewski.
SZYD£OWSKI: Schidlowski is the correct German phonetic transcription of Szydłowski, topo nick from Szydłów or Szydłowo. A szydlo is an awl, hence Awlton, Alwville or maybe a British-county-style Awlshire.
After reading your post, I reviewed my grandmother's birth certificate and noticed it was an "s" not an "r" in Labuschewski.
So, after reading your post, does that mean both of these last names are German, not Polish? Are these two names more commonly found in Germany? Are these last names referring to a village or trade? So, could I assume that my Grandmother's heritage may be German instead of Polish? She did have Jet Black hair and olive skin... That is not a common German or Polish feature, is it? Or could it be Eastern Polish...perhaps Romanian, Czech,Slov or Ukraine?
The names are Polish but written the German way. There could me countless reasons for that which no-one can even guess it, if the names are all you've got to go on.
Surnames are not the same as nationality or ethnic awareness. There are thousands of people named Nowak in Germany who consider thesmelves pure Germans and there are many people in Poland named Schultz, sometimes spelt the Polish way Szulc, who would be insutled if you called them German.
My analysis is purely lingusitc, focuses on the form and structure of the name alone and does not venture into genealogy or family hsitory.
