Polish Surnames Anglicized?

Steve Wilkos from the Steve Wilkos show, former security on the Jerry Springer show, dropped the z from his original Wilkosz Polish surname.

Shortly after JPII was elected I wrote an item for a Michigan newspaper. It was typed on a manual typewriter with a Polish keyboard and Wojtyła came out each time in the paper as Wojtyka. That seems an honest mistake for those unfamilair with Polish orthography.

I have a lot of information on the Grzych family if you are interested. My mother's maiden name was Grzych, and her oldest brother tracked down a lot of genealogy in Poland.

Did he retain the Domakeczny spelling the whole time?

Ga£ęzowski (pronounced and spelled Galenzoski in North America)

Here's the evolution of the spelling changes:
My 4X great grandfather Kasimir Ga£ęzowski immigrated to the Austrian Bukovina with his wife and children. What scant evidence we have indicates it must have been around the time of the first partition of Poland. He had a son, Tomasz who married Salomea (her surname unknown, but her Christian name is Polish so we assume she was as well). Their son's name was registered as Johann Galenczowski, the first spelling change. Two things to note. One is his Christian name is Germanic - I haven't (yet!) encountered that first name among Polish men, at least back when Johann was born in 1824. The second is the letters N and C were inserted into the spelling. I understand why the N was inserted but the C has me puzzled. Joahnn's son, my great grandfather, Karl immigrated to North America with his brothers and sisters. Here the spelling changed again. The C and W both disappeared and the name became Galenzoski. These are documented changes and I can only conclude that along the way letters were added or removed to match spelling to pronunciation to match the language conventions of the dominant culture As a footnote, some family members in North America changed the surname to Gale after WWII. Sad to say there was a lot of prejudice against the Polish refugees who were seeking safe haven after the war, but that was temporary once the second generation came along.

BTW - I'm seeking information on the Ga£ęzowskis in Poland.

Interesting discussion. My surname is Deborski. At work, when I talked to someone on the phone who was going to send me something, I always spelled out my last name. Even with that, I had a collection of about 30 variations that came back to me in the mail - people seem to have a need to switch the r and the o to get Debroski, or add a w to get Debrowski. Dombrowski was a quite common one. The most amusing ones were those that looked French - De Boursky, de Borske, etc.

In my family history searches, I've learned to look for some very strange variations. In US census records, etc., I've found my ancestors as Debrski, Debursky, Deburski. These don't even take into account the variations that arise because someone (e.g., for Ancestry.com) read an original hand written record and had to decide what it said. The original was written down by a census taker who had to listen and write what was they thought they heard. I make good use of the wild card and "sounds like" options when they exist.

I think some names were changed over time as a soft sound was just left out. In my family tree, I have both Klimowski and Klimoski, Pankoski and Pankowski.

my maiden name is Pelka with the slash over the l, so my dad said that it is really pronounced Pewka, instead of Pelka. That being written, pronounced in the english way, as I know that polish alphabet has no v, and the w is used. So, it is not pevka, but pewka.

Unfortuantely there is no popular way to phonetically respell Pełka in English. Pewka may look like pew (church bench) to Anglos so it might come out sounding like PYOOkah.

Grzych/Grish is my mother's maiden name.

Polish name-changing in America
It is no secret to anyone that many Polish immigrants changed their surnames after coming to America. Most often they were shortened, phoneticized or anglicized. But this author's maternal grandfather, who worked in the Pennsylvania coalfields before becoming a barber in Michigan, may have been one of the very few Polish immigrants who actually lengthened his original surname. He arrived in America as Jan Kupczak and later legally changed his surname to Kupczyński. The story goes that there had been two unrelated Jan Kupczaks living at the same boarding house and their mail kept getting mixed up.

Some PolAms are dead set against name-changing, others defend the practice for business reasons and for the sake of convenience. Could anyone hold is against an immigrant who changed a name such as Chrzęszczykiewicz, Przybyszewski Szczęśliwicki to something more pronounceable? In some cases, as we shall see below, the changes have actually made surnames more Polish than they had been before by improving their pronunciation. Here are some of the ways Polish surnames have been altered in America.

1. NON-OBSCURING ABBREVIATION: The name is shortened, for instance from Pietrzykowski to Pietrzyk, but its Polish ethnic origin remains obvious. Other examples could include Kowalewicz, Kowalewski, Kowalczyk > Kowal; Kołodziejczak > Kołodziej; Kucharzewski > Kucharz; Sikorzewski > Sikora and Bartoszewski > Bartosz.

2. OBSCURING ABBREVIATION: If a Lewandowski changes his name to Lew or a Kalinowski becomes a Kalin, the new name's ethnic origin is no longer readily apparent. The same is true of Adamczyk > Adam; Grabowski > Grab; Laskowski > Lasko; Sikorski > Siko and Tomaszewski > Tomas.

2. RESPELLING: Some Polish Americans have respelled their names to have them pronounced as close to Polish as possible. This could mean dropping the 'w' (and removing the 'cow') from Makowski > Makoski or removing the hardly audible initial 'p' from Przybylski and respelling it Shibilski. Others include Grohoski (Grochowski), Galsavage (Gałasiewicz), Yablonski (Jabłoński), Voytovich (Wojtowicz), Shanoski (Sianowski) and Kuharski (Kucharski).

3. SAME OR SIMILAR MEANING: Some have changed their Polish names to English ones of similar meaning. So Nowak > Newman, Kowal (Kowalski) > Smith, Bielecki > White, Pietrzak > Peterson, Bednarz (Bednarczyk) > Cooper, Woźniak > Carter, Piekarski > Baker, Zimowicz > Winters, Piątek > Friday, Skorupski > Shell, Zieliński > Green, Jabłoński > Appleton, Szymczak > Simons or Simmons, Kwiatek > Flowers, Młynarski > Miller, Wilk > Wolf, etc.

4. SIMILAR SOUND: Here the meaning is unimportant, since a name is chosen that is close in sound to the Polish original. Examples: Kupczak > Cooper, Bartkowiak > Barton, Kowalik > Covley, Duda > Dudley, Malinowski > Malley, Głowacki > Gloveson, Krawczyk > Kraft, Borowski > Barrow, Wałasiewicz > Wallace, Wesołowoski > Wesley, etc.

5. ARBITRARY CHANGE: Such changes occur when someone chooses a name that appeals to him or her although it has no connection or association with his or her original surname. Here anything goes, so Czarnecki could become a Black, Harrison or McAllister, Wiśniewski might change over to Anderson, Kennedy, Summers or Rutledge with no rhyme or reason.

Many of the problems with Polish surnames in America stem from Polish orthography (spelling). A Czech, Slovak, Russian. The Czechs and Slovaks spell the name Novak, and the remaining three nations which use the Cyrillic alphabet transcribe it into English the same way. But if a PolAm retains the original Nowak spelling, it will invariably get Anglo-mangled into 'no whack'. Cyrillic-writing Eastern Slavs transcribe all names phonetically enabling Americans pronounce them the right way. Compare: Bogutsky (Polish spelling: Bogucki), Charnetsky (Czarnecki), Kravchuk (Krawczuk).

GRZYCH: dialectal East Poland peasant pronunciation of Grzech (sin). One can only speculate as to why someone might have acquired such a nickname-turned-surname. Perhaps the nick was imposed on someone known in the village for frequently exclaiming "a to grzych!" (that's a sin). It coułd have originated as a toponymic nick from Grzychów, Grzechowo or similar, but I couldn't find any such place in today's small, truncated Poland. But there are localities called Grikhnovo (Polish spelling Grzychnowo) in parts of Russia that once belonged to Poland.

A much simpler explanation is that "Grzych/Grzech" is a form of Grzegorz, which it actually is. I personally know more than one Grzegorz called Grzech by their friends and family.

Defintiely a possibility. The point is that many Polish surnames are traceable to mutliple sources. In one family it's from this source, in another from a different one. Tracking down a source going back many generations can be quitre a daunting task.

is actually almost impossible.

Amen!

Looks like its been a while since the last post, but I thought I'd contribute some examples of name changes in our family. Toboła became Tobin, Krzeszewski became Kriske, Majchrzak became Myshack. One family went from Myszka to Musolf.

On my great grandfather's log coming to the US it is written Bulkowski, but when I spoke to someone in Poland about it they said it most likely would have been Bułkowski, which has a completely different pronunciation. Why do you think this is? It's essentially a different name now?

Generally all foreign accent marks disappear in America, so the slashed £ in Bułkowski became a plain unslashed one. In this case the pronunciation is not a big problem but in other cases it is. Those who wish to retain something closer to the original pronunciation have been known to alter the spelling. For instance Chomiński became Hominski, Jabłoński > Yablonski, etc.

Incidentally, both surnames -- Bulkowski and Bułkowski -- exist in Poland and each is used by over 300 people. A coat of arms accompanies Bulkowski.

NOTE: For more information please contact me.

@cyberchuck
I was wondering if you are related to Ignatius Cyman? That is the name of my great great great great grandather and he died in 1908. My email is baxter.kathleen17@gmail.com I would love to hear from you