My name is Whitney does anyone know the Polish equivalent/spelling?

My parents are from Poland but moved to America early in their lives and I was Born in America.. I would like to know the Polish equivalency of Whitney, Thank you!

There isn't any.

Whitney (it's a place) means (depending on your interpretation) either 'white water' or 'white island'. So it would be Białawoda or Białawyspa, neither of which are names. For the 'white' part, there are three names that Polish citizens are allowed to choose: Genowefa (very rare) but that's a bit of an old lady name (perhaps due for a revival), Blanka (also rare) and Wira (even rarer), which most people in PL would associate more with Russian. Blanka is maybe the best bet.

If Whitney is your first name then as Monitor pointed out there is no Polish equivalent.

If Whitney is your surname then there are some possibilities as to how you got saddled with it.

Whitney is an Old English surname which is believed to mean "White Water."

The Polish words for these are biały (white) and woda (water). There is a rare Polish surname Białowodzki which derives from these two words. However, if this was your parent's original surname it would be a very remote chance that they would just happen to come across the Old English equivalent "Whitney" which is still in use today.

The most likely reason you are now stuck with Whitney is because it is an Anglicized corruption of a Polish surname such as Witnewski. Alternatively your parent's original Polish surname may have been something completely different but they randomly chose Whitney due to their original surname being too difficult for native English speakers to spell and pronounce. Or they were mislead into believing that in order to integrate into an English speaking society then one must adopt a WASP surname. They may have chosen Whitney from a place they visited (there is a Mount Whitney in California) or a street, restaurant or shop sign that had some relevance to them when they moved to America. Or they may have chosen it after a person they personally knew or after an American entertainer who had this name.

If you ever discover your original Polish name don't hesitate to contact your local court and have it changed back.

That doesn't make sense.


Place name, not surname.

A very nice name really. The nicest Polish equivalents are above - Blanka is perhaps the classiest.

Not to you but that doesn't surprise me. However, it's a very real possibility. English speakers wouldn't pronounce the Polish W as a V and their lazy tongues are pretty challenged by any word longer than two syllables. It hasn't been uncommon either for persons of Polish or other Slavic heritage or even Jews to drop the very endings of their surnames in order to sound less "ethnic" to the English speakers around them.

If in the example I provided the original surname was something like Witnewski then it could have morphed into Whitney just to bear some slight visual or phonetic semblance to the original name. This could have been done consciously by the surname holder or morphed into a nickname given to him by English speaking neighbors, friends or co-workers. Name changes don't occur through some planning committee. Such changes more often occur through error, humor or whimsey. And this is all the more so when someone is an immigrant to a country which has a completely different culture and language. Even the name Whitney itself. Most people looking at it today wouldn't recognize it as meaning "White Water" and that includes those who have it as a first or last name.


There are many people who have this as a surname and it is not a modern occurrence. Many surnames derive from and are as ancient as place names and many place names come from surnames.

It should, since there's no suggestion from the OP whatever that her given name is an Anglicisation of someone's Polish surname. Most young people called Whitney are named after a particular pop singer, recently deceased.


I don't doubt for a minute that you would know about the way Canadians and other North Americans speak, though I would challenge your point that they have trouble with words of over two syllables. As someone who has never heard Polish spoken in Poland, and with English as your first language you may well have difficulty with pronouncing Polish surnames, however here, in the old world people don't generally find it much of a challenge - I certainly never did


Rather few in fact (about number 900 on the UK ranking list, well below Kowalski and Nowak) and again no suggestion the OP is named after someone's surname. And of course the surname derives ultimately from a couple of rather nice villages which when you're old enough to travel as a tourist to Europe unaccompanied, you may enjoy visiting. Though if you go to Witney (the h vanished from one of them) avoid horseriding since you never know who you might meet.

And to the OP, Genowefa sounds lovely but is too archaic, Blanka is rare but probably your best choice as an equivalent.