Genealogy /
Polish Surnames Anglicized? [48]
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.