What ethnicity would you say a person would be if someone came from kresy Poland

What ethnicity would you say a person would be if someone came from kresy Poland with the surnames Pawluk, Sobolewski and Koziarski ? And they Spoke Polish and Russian languages

If they are Polish they are Polish, no matter what region they come from. What's your point?

Obviously
My point is if someone came from western Ukraine when it was under polish rule and they had those surnames in there family would the person be of Polish or Ukrainian ethnicity

Before II World War people generally remembered what ethnicity they belong. Ukrainians in many cases hated Poles, so I doubt any Ukrainian would like to be considered as Polish.


What do you mean? What's the difference if someone has such or another surname?

They are unlikely to be Polish (given that Poles were very much in the minority in those regions).

One must ask some Sobolewski or Koziarski. I find OP's question very weird.

Are those surnames Polish or Ukrainian?

Thanks for your comments tho :)

Sobolewski and Koziarski seems to be typically Polish surnames. Sobol is a kind of fur, koza is goat, koziarz - a goat shepherd.
Pawluk seems to be typically Ukrainian. In Poland there is similar surname Pawlak.

You have to be careful with saying "This person had a typical Polish surname and so must be Polish." There are numerous people who had Polish surnames but did not consider themselves to Polish and are not considered to be Polish by the vast majority of Poles. Two examples which spring to mind are Bronislaw Kaminski and Erich Zelewski: both had Polish surnames (Erich went as far as having his surname changed because of that) and both also had one very certainly Polish parent but neither ever identified themselves as Polish and you'll look a long time before you find a Pole who will call either other of them Polish.

That's why I used the expression "they seem to be" and I said that one must ask (individually) carriers of such surnames what their roots are. Look here:

I am as much polish as anyone on this forum possibly more then most. However it's generally recognised by poles though rarely stated that there are poles and there are poles. That's why this forum exists in the first place. There is diversity within 'poles' I see this as a positive feature it's unfortunate that you dont seem to appreciate this positive difference. It is this difference that strengthens a nation.

Because there isn't a 'one-fits-all' answer. It depends on the person in question.

Which tells you only what that person thinks. I was at school with a bloke called Kaminski who identified as being Polish and British (given that he spoke fluent Polish, had a Polish passport and both his parents were born in Poland, he certainly had a case to identify as being Polish). I don't think he was related to the former head of the R.O.N.A.

So i take it those surnames are not obviously Polish or Ukrainian

Remember a surname (unless there's inbreeding) only comes from one side of a family.

And that is what is all about. Declaration of an individual person.


They are but look there are many Poles in Poland who have German surnames. So what? Does it make them less Polish? One cannot say what's the ethnicity of a person based solely on someone's surname.

No but one can say that if someone has a German surname that they partially decent from Germans ect

Or if you are is posh woman or jumped up as one of my female cousins who made her surname and her childrens double-barreled.

The question makes no sense by UK standards as ethnicity is self declared. Where one is born and where your parents are from are two factors, attributes such as first language and religion are also to be taken into account. If someone wanted to dial in their political persuasion, nothing can prevent an individual from doing so.

Often without any ethnicity. Their great-great-great-great-great grandfather may have been the last to have had any contact with Germany - everyone else being from elsewhere. English people with Norman surnames may have had no contact with France for 15 generations.

Ethnicity is nothing anyway. Who you are, what you achieve and what you're like as a person is all that matters.

He is asking about his own relatives.

Ok, there is about more than 8 000 people in Poland with surname Sobolewski. Sobolewski has its several coat of arms so you might have some noble ancestry (but no one says that you are from a noble line). It appears almost in all Polish powiats but the huge concetration of it is in North-Eastern Poland

Koziarski is much less popular - slightly above 1 000 people have this surname in Poland. It also has some coat of arms.

Now, what out!
There are slightly above 3 000 people in Poland with surname Pawluk (that is more than Koziarski!). Little people with that surname lives along central line of Poland. Most lives in Eastern and Westen parts of Poland (which shows defnitely it's Kresy origins)


I'm sorry, a little mistake. About 7800.

a.k

Thank you so much you have answered my question :)

That's obvious from the context.. Unusual to have to ask. Perhaps he's confusing ethnicity with ancestry.

Oh boy this is gonna give you problems, nationality would been a lot easier lol

1 hint, huge meltingpot


most probably he is after knowing his ethnic heritage and not nationality of his ancestors.


No, but it shows their heritage in the past and that there is a big chance they were polonized.


Indeed

Correction: it shows the name of one person in their past, perhaps centuries in the past. I know an English man called Caesar (surname) who can trace his roots in England back some 500 years: does his name make him Italian?

I was talking about surnames in Poland or former Poland

It was typical for many German-Poles to polonize themselves especially after ww2, either because of disgust of the III reich, stronger connection to Poland or fear of negative attitude of Poles showing anti-German sentiments.

Agreed.

The fact is that a person's surname can tell us absolutely nothing about their ethnicity: it can tell us as little as what ethnicity a single ancestor of a person wanted to be!

Yeah, but it can tell a story which can easier be traced back in time. Imagine if we didn't have surnames... or all took "correctly ethnic surnames" only.

Few heads up: A part of my family comes from Kresy. Three generations of our men worked as head foresters in Podolia - both under Austria and for independent Poland. [The fourth one - after receiving his education in Forestry faculty at Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań - also became a head forester around Toruń and - after the war - one of the directors of the Directorate of the National Forests at Toruń and then Gdańsk.]

One of my great great aunts taught several generations of Hucul children in their native Rusyn language. Six other women from my family, three generations of them - all rooted in Kresy, were also teachers. Lack of intelligence?

You conveniently forgot about Lwów culture - its two universities (Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza and Politechnika Lwowska), its Polish School of Mathematics, its Scientific Society, Picture Gallery, Great Theater, National Museum. You forgot about scores of intelligentsia and their families deported to Siberia and Kazachstan, and many scholars and scientists murdered by NKVD and NAZIs.

And then, Stanisławów, or Iwano-Frankiwsk - ignorantly mocked by you in some other thread. I personally knew several Polish families that came from that city. The most intelligent, funny, social and cheerful people. For example, Pan Staś, aside from doing boring accounting, he also had a very good baritone voice, played guitar quite well and knew several dozens of Kresy songs. I still remember some of them. His wife, pani Frania, taught us alternative history lessons in our primary school (but only when some students were absent). About Katyń, Wołyń, Jałta, Mikołajczyk and all that ****. "Children, let's go out to our woods to have a botany lesson."

And if this personal relations do not impress you then go to wikipedia, pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisławów
and scan the list of famous people related to Stanisławów: actors, generals, politicians, scholars, engineers, economists, diplomats, architects, singers, musicians, sportsmen, etc. Not producing intelligent people?

Then take some little places, such as Czortków in Tarnopol Province: population 5,200 in 1921, 19,000 in 1931.
Here are few excerpts translated from Jarosław Abramow-Newerly, Granica Sokoła
- We had in Czortków our own City Theatre, although an amateur, but at a quite high level. There were the ladies: Krukowska, Krzyżanowska, Wasilewska. The latter was also a guide of a "Sokół" (Falcon) movement, an excellent actress. Similarly as Kostkiewicz, a locomotive engineer, who played additionally in orchestra on a piccolo. This troupe presented the New Year's Czortków Nativity Scene, which was shown several times, because it was so liked. They mocked the local authorities. Some felt offended, I remember.

- But not Mayor Michałowski?
- No, no. The Mayor had a sense of humour.
...
- We were often visited by the professional theatre of Madam £ozińska from Stanisławów. It was excellent, but our local one was not any worse. A famous Warsaw's actress Ewa Bonacka came from Czortków, sir.

- A wife of Władysław Daszewski, a stage designer?
- That's it. Her mother was so proud that her daughter were succeeding in Warsaw's Polish Theatre. - She gets so many flowers, always - and she showed us how many. We also head a theatre in our school, directed by our Latin teacher, professor Krwawicz. He also directed the City Theatre and he directed our symphony orchestra. We were not short of musicians, because there were music schools of two Stanisławs: £ukasiewicz and Mucha.

Oh, Czortków, sir, it was an unusual city. Unusual. Clean, well maintained. Blooming. As a little Lwów. With wonderful orchards. In every garden bunches of grapes. And if we had not enough of them we took the express train to Zaleszczyki for the fruits. Zaleszczyki was called the Polish Merano. Similarly as the famous Italian city, Zaleszczyki was located on a peninsula, shaped like a horseshoe. Flown around by Dniestr river. Unusually picturesquely located, with sunny climate, where fruits ripened: grapes, watermelons, peaches, apricots, melons.

- Every self-respecting citizen of Czortków. sir - continued pan Jan - had his own wine cellar. And what kind! "Palcy lizać. Sam mniód!" And the great people. Hearty, warm, "adhesive" - as I usually say. I will always recognize a countryman from Podolia -- wherever he would be.

Those two surnames sound/look (spelling) Polish. But you'd have to ask an the person with either of those names about their background, kresy after all were quite diverse.

Culture that the Poles did their best to destroy during the II RP, yes.


Most of that list are products of either the Austrian or the Communist systems.

Sorry, but while I can accept Lwów to have been a great city during the II RP and before, it doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of Kresy was and is to this day an utter dump.