Kszyczkowski?

Kszyczkowski seems to fit as my grandmother's family name.

My grand mother Emily Lillian Cripps grew up in Princess St,
Endinburgh,opposite or near the castle.
I know very little about her early years in Scotland
She looked after me when i was a child and i have many happy memories.
Married Walter Cripps in Australia .
Daughters Lillian and Audrey

Her family name was Keyes. changed from Kszyczkowski it seems?
She was Yiddish and we go back to Poland.
I do remember her saying none survived the camps.

But i hope there may be some relatives left or someone knows something?

Any help please?

caswilloughby at yahoo.au

Cas Willoughby

I cannot help much here in direct seeking of your relatives, but I'll try to clarify the spelling, which may put you on the right track. The last name Kszyczkowski could come from one of two Polish roots:

krzyk (noun) => a scream, shout, yell, call
krzyczeć (verb) => to scream, to shout, to yell, to call

kszyk (noun) => a snipe, common snipe (a bird)

The two are pronounced exactly the same, rougly [kshic]. However, the first one, which is more common in Polish, is formed accordingly to Polish grammar rules. The second one is a rare word - majority of Poles do not even know what it means until they are are told in grammar classes that grammatically this word is an exception.

So I am questioning whether or not that surname should not be spelled Krzyczkowski, rather than Kszyczkowski. I have no patience to go through various American or Australian databases in details, but ancestry.com summarizes that it found 177 historical documents & family trees with Krzyczkowski, compared with 42 records for Kszyczkowski.

Statistically, Google shows 1440 references to Kszyczkowski, but only 595 records if your particular new surname Keyes is excluded.
Compared to that there are 80,000 Google references to Krzyczkowski.

The Polish database "My Relatives" lists 341 males Krzyczkowski and 378 females Krzeczkowska currently living in Poland:

moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/krzyczkowski.html
moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/krzyczkowska.html

They are distributed here and there, but mostly in Masovia Voivodship, around Warsaw.

Compared to that the same database reports ZERO occurences of Kszyczkowska/Kszyczkowski in contemporary Poland.
The etymology of Krzyczkowski: from already mentioned "krzyk"(noun) and "krzyczeć", but also from Old Polish "krzykwa" (some kind of a plant) and also from the village Krzyczki (Gmina Nasielsk, Nowy Dwór County, Masovian Voivodship). Acually there are several settlements of similar name, close to each other: Krzyczki-Szumne, Krzyczki-Pieniążki, Krzyczki-Żabiczki.

Village Krzyczki is listed as a former sztetl in the Second Republic, but there is no such name as Kszyczki on the same list of sztetls, sztetl.org.pl/en/selectcity/?lts=K.

There is no village Kszyczki in Poland, as far as I know.

So my suggestion is: verify the spelling, or if impossible then start exploring around village Krzyczki and surname Krzyczkowski.