Does your last name end in CKI not SKI

My last name is Brarycki...but my family pronounces it like a SKI at the end. It is very hard to pronounce for people because people always say "It doesnt sound right" "Theres no "S" in it" I am 50 % Polish and i am wondering why it doesnt end in SKI and if it is common. Thanks

Actually you should pronounce more like -tski ;)

Bra-rey-tski

And welcome here ;)

No, but only Polish people know how to pronounce my last name correctly.

my last name is zbucki :] in polish, c is pronounced as an 's'

Well, it's kind of late but I just found this thread.

In Polish, the 's' comes after consonants. The 'c' comes after vowels. Otherwise, it's essentially the same.......

yup, well it's -ska to be precise ;)

because Polish 'c' is a 'ts' sound....besides cki and ski there's also dzki

so Sobieski should be Sobiecki?
my surname ends with ecki and people spell it eski, strange because i always tell them it's etski (ora etzki) but they understand eski

My last name is Merecki, and it has always been pronounced mer-eckee by my family. My great grandparents moved from Poland to New York City in the 30s, and I'm not sure if it was always pronounced like that.

Well that explains the 't' sound in Chojnacki; now if only everyone could make up their mind whether its 'Ch' or just 'H' out in front. I've found documents with both, the ones coming from Poland are Ch.

ch or h for non-polish speaker sound the same, like in a word "home". For Poles difference is in soft or more hard saying of it. Once upon a time when there was more social class distinctions you could hear the difference - more educated people used what English call "queen english" language.

On the other hand it is more of a hindrance to non-polish speakers, as ch might be pronounced by them as in "chocolade" . But sound ch is in polish written as cz

Confused? Should not be, take non-english trying to speak english. and i.e. why "u" is pronounced differently , words like "university" and in "umbrela"? springs to mind.

I think the only real substantial difference in those 2 languages in "the departament of difficulties" is have or not have rules! Once you master those rules it eazy peazy.

have a lovly day!

Thread attached on merging:
Polish Names

Can someone tell me why so many Polish names end in ski? Does it mean something? As a recent visitor to Poland, some have asked me this question and I am not sure of the answer. Maybe someone can resolve this question. Thanks.

i suggest you search the forums or at least look around. :)

Why do so many English names end in -man, -ton, -son, -ly, -ing, etc. Becuase that is their lknguistic and cultural tradition.
In Polish the -ski is an adjectival ending and (as you probably remember from school) an adjective is a word that describes someone or something as being of, about, related to, descended from, associated with or connected to someone or something else.

A kowal is a blacksmith in Polish and the adjective kowalski means of, about. concerning or (in the case of a person) descended from the blacksmith. So the name Kowalski means little more than Smithson, although at times it was also applied to the blacksmith’s helper or apprentice. Even more commonly the -ski ending was toponymic indicating that a person was from a certain place: Brzeziński hailed from Brzezina (Birchville), Gwizdowski from Gwizdów (Whistleton) and Wiśniewski from Wiśniewo (Cherryville).

Names evolved from Jan z Dębowa (John of Oakville) to Jan Dębowski.
Incidentally, a similar but not identical process occurred in English, where the Middle English John of Oakville became simply John Oakville.
In general, the -ski is a high-class ending in Polish. More Polish nobles had ski-ending surnames than those with any other suffix.

The information was very helpful and now I can answer the question, when asked. Thank you.

Good post Polonius. Very informative.

My g-grandfather's name before it was changed was Paprocki. Who wants to be among the millions of skis? haha CKI is better. My dad said the New Yorkers did not like immigrants and if they hear you have a foreign name it was hard to get a job. This is why he changed it.

The Brarycki name does not exist in today’s Poland. Could it have been Barycki (used by more than 400 Poles)?
Incidentally, of Polish suffixed surnames
-ski ending surnames account for 30.3% (eg Kowalski)
-cki - 4,9% (eg Balicki)
-dzki - 0.4% (eg Zawadzki)
All told -ski and related (-cki & -dzki) account for 35.6% of all Polish suffixed surnames.
Other common surname suffixes incldue -ak (11.6%) and -owicz/-ewicz (2.3%).

My family name is 'Yaroch' (my Grandfather is 100% Polish). I know that he pronounces it like 'Y-aero' with the 'ch' being silent. Some of my family says it more of a 'yar- row'. For generations we have been told that in Poland it is spelled with a 'J' instead of the 'Y', which makes sense for pronunciation. We have also been told that 'ch' is a common ending for last names, but I would like to know why is it common? Does it represent a working class or a location?

My immediate family and dads cousins family are all ski. Were in Canada and the government said its easier without ska at the end for the woman. (So both have same last name).

The rest of my family who lives in Poland (cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc) all have skis (and the woman ska)


Wow I thought it was more like 50 percent at least. guess I learn something new daily.

JAROCH is the correct spelling, whilst Yaroch was an attempt to phonetically make it more pronounceable to tongue-tied Anglos. The jar- root has to to with spring, something young (spring lambs or spring crops for instance), and it can also mean robust, spry or apply to vegetables: jarzyna is a cooked vegetable, a jarosz is a vegetarian. The saying "stary ale jary" means "old but "spry".

btb1060
Im 50% Polish too :D

^^ no worries my name is the same! Osiecki (Oh-sh-eh-ski) it's very common, and used to be a sign of polish nobility :) or at least that's what my family told me. (they always told me stories about being a princess in Poland lol) but anyways, it's pretty common to have a name like that.

-SKI is a common adjectival ending in Polish, from a grammatcial standpoint names ending in -ski, -cki or -dzki are all adjectives. So we have młot kowalki (blacksmith's hammer), and język polski (Polish) and slews of mainly toponymic names. Someone from Poznań is Poznański, Biłgoraj = Biłgorajski, Brzezina = Brzeziński, etc., etc.

During the Crusades men who fought for King and/or church - especially those who died - were honored with an addition to their family name to indicate that their family gave the ultimate sacrifice to their Lords. Each region interpreted that additional syllable, basically meaning "honored" within their own tongue. Thus families from what is now the land that is Poland have one spelling, while families from another region, say what is now Czechoslovakia, have another spelling.

What about ic... Dziedzic for example? Does that fall under CKI ?

If one wanted to adjectivalise it (all -ski, -cki and -dzki names are adjectives from a grammatcial point of view!) then it would be Dziedzicki. In fact there are about 600 poeple in Poland with that surname.

Our American name is Murawski, but when some of my family went back to Poland, the name was spelled differently. I wa ssurprised, but not so much as Elis Island did that a lot to immigrants.

MURAWSKI: from murawa (turf, grassy field, footbalłl pitch)

MORAWSKI: from Morawy (Moravia - region in Czech Republic).

However I'm sure these were often inadvertently interchanged on the immigrant/Ellis Island circuit. If the prongs of the handwritten letter 'u' were brought too closely together, someone might have taken it for an 'o'. That and simialr thngs happened all the time.

The point is illustrated by this old anecdote. In San Francisco there's a Kowalski's Chinese Hand Laundry. Naturally this piques the curiosity of visitng Polonians who drop in and ask about it. The owner replies: Me go through immigration. Man in front say his name Kowalski. Official ask me what my name so I say Sam Ting, and he write Kowalski, and it' stay like that ever since.

Dziedzic does not have any ck or ski since it is not location of profession indicator as it is itself a such. It means literally a heir (male)