Ski Or Ska? - Polish surname endings

Yes Trev4got, that's right.....most of the time. German Jews though while still in Germany adopted the native German habit of the double 'n', i.e. "Kaufmann", resp. "Kauffmann", "Hofmann"/"Hoffmann" vs. "Kaufman"/"Kauffman" etc.. in an English-speaking country:-) Same for gentiles.

It is known that Jews were always adopting their names from other nationalities as from Polish nationals or Germans, it all depended on the circumstances at the time and what they personally wanted to achieve from such a name change. Like ie: for the immigration purposes.

I just wonder, if they actually know their original Jewish names today, not the adopted ones which were changed over and over again.

Good point, asik:-)

Total Bollox!!! How outside PL can you be SKi and in PL SKa?!?!?! Somone who wrote it is such a lemon!!!

but that is what it is.

Funny memory. I had an EngLit professor at Glasgow, Professor Hobsbaum. His opening line of his first lecture with us was, "My name's Phillip Hobsbaum, it's of German extraction and means 'fruit tree'. You can say you are plucking from the 'tree of knowledge'."


Cohen, I believe, is something to do with a priestly caste in Jewish culture. This is why it's a common name.

My maiden name has neither ski or ska ending. Jozwiak. Someone told me it's common like Smith. Can anyone enlighten me?

JÓ-WIAK: pronounced YOOZHvyahk originated as a patronymic nickname to mean "son of Józef/Joseph". Its fairly popular (with some 19,000 users in Poland) but it is well below the front-runners. Poland's equivalent of the Angloworld's Smith and Jones would be Nowak (over 200,000) and Kowalski (140,000). For more information please contact polonius3@gazeta.pl

I was a school secretary and was confused by the surname on record of a foreign student. She explained it to me. Father, brother, uncle = *ski; mother, sister, aunt = *ska. All the rest of the name was the same but the surname suffix was gender recognizable.

Its daft to say that Polish letters should be used say in the UK, with all the dots above etc. What then - Russan? Greek? Papa New Guinean? Its a lovely idylic idea which totally ignores practicality. Our keyboards don't have these unless one digs and digs and stillthey will not all be there. But typing has to flow. Gee....... some people live in a bubble.

Ted

Why is it daft? It's their name. It takes a second or two to type them using the relevant alt-code, and it's a matter of basic respect.

German and Swedish

@Lyzko
I have russian Jewish friends with the surname Khadzinski.

Sure, why not? There was once a famous Polish-Jewish conductor active in the US named "Artur Rodzinski"! One couldn't tell he was Jewish by his name either.