How did Leszek Miller get the surname Miller - is it a Polish name?

I think we can all agree that Miller is not a Polish name.

How did Leszek Miller get the surname Miller?

i suspect it came from his father.

Haha thanks guys! What would i do with out you??? So your saying his dads a Brit? Maybe Scott??

Miller is a Polish surname. Plenty of poles are using it as their last name.

Nothing of the sort.
Miller is polonized Műller so the name is as British as MacClusky is Polish.

Mac = in Polish mak - poppy
Clusky = in Polish kluski - noddles

i.e. MacClusky would have to be a short form of "kluski z makiem" (noodles with poppy seed)

This probably comes from the name Müller; Janusz (Korwin-)Mikke ancestors surname was Mücke.

I had a friend by the name of Müller. Not Miller, not Muller, not Mueller, but Müller. Extremely patriotic Polish family, but with obvious German roots some time in the 17th century, as the family legend said. They had a whole lot of trouble under the commies for this very reason, but the family tradition was that the surname was the surname, and nobody fvcks with it. Miller's family must've been more pragmatic.

Not necessarily. The name Miller predates communism in Poland by quite a bit:

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_%28herb_szlachecki%29

he said in an interview that he's of German extraction, and that during the 60's and 70's had trouble in school because of that, but his children don't nowadays.

So they had been more pragmatic long before commies came here.

I am not saying Millers are Germans. The name is a Polonised German name, though. Most probably, as the English didn't flow to Poland en masse.

And I guess the OP knows this perfectly well, just trying to be funny.

MILLER/MILER: originally from German occupational nick Müller (miller, mill owner); more than 6,000 people in Poland called Miller and over 4,000 spelling it Miler. Originally the soruce was German but that could have been many generations if not centuries ago. Probably Leszek Miller has got only a few drops of Teutonic blood contaminating his otherwise Slavonic circulatory system. Incidentally, there were blue-bloods amongst Poland's Millers entitled to use the Pomian c-o-a. It is unlikely that Comrade Leszek was one of their descendants, but one never knows for sure.

No, but the Scots did.

There was a fair bit of English movement to Russia, Germany and Poland but probably not as much as the Scots.

In fact, Chaucer's Knight in "The Canterbury Tales" has ridden with the Teutonic Order in Lithuania and Prussia (as a number of English and Scottish knights did). Now... which tale follows his? Yes, "The Miller's Tale"

It is not uncommon for a Pole to have a German surname, and vice versa.

Merged: Miller surname origins - is it Polish?

My last name is Miller. I'm an American.

My father is 100% Polish, but I never understood how that name could be Polish.

Miller is originally a German name from what I understand.
There are many full-blooded Poles, who carry German surnames.
That's my interpretation anyway :)

The original German name was Müller and some 1,800 people in Poland use that original spelling. Most have phonetically respelt it to Miller (6,000) or Miler (4,000). So the name was originally German but after centuries of Polonisation most of them probably have few drops of German blood left in them.

Incomplete information. Polonization, where and when? Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia belonged to Germany/Prussia for many centuries, and during the partitions names were actually germanized, not polonized. So depending on the time frame and where the immigrants originated, 'Miller' is just the anglicized version of the German name 'Müller'. It has nothing to do with a previous "polonization".

If the subject is a surname of somebody living in Poland, then Anglicizing makes very little sense (although it is not improbable), while Polonizing makes a lot of sense. Keep in mind that there are plenty of surnames that came from the German words Miller / Müller, but which have typical Slavic sounding: Milera, Milerczyk, Milerowicz, Milerowski, Milerski, Milert and Milerz. They have nothing to do with German=>English transformation.

Does this answer it? ;)

Actually no. :-)
There are several possibilities:
1. His father came to America with the name Miller from Poland. Miller, Millerowicz, Millerowicz, Millert, with double LL, also exist in Poland. As Polonius already stated there are 6000 people of that name currently living in Poland.

2. His father came to America with the name Müller from Poland(?), which has been later anglicized to Miller. He could be brought as a Pole, even though his name was German. We know of many such cases: General Anders, General Juliusz Rómmel, Christine von Habsburg (*), etc.

3. We actually do not know, whether his father is the first generation immigrant. And that opens up to many possibilities, such as German Grandpa, Polish Grandma, bringing his father up as a Pole, etc.

(*)


I just want to add this:


Most of the time - yes. But the reverse process existed in many communities.
Some examples include names of Catholic Bambers, settled around Poznań. The current mayor of Luboń, south of Poznań, Dariusz Szmyt is a descendant of one of the first 60 Bambers that settled there, Karol Józef Schmidt.

The Poznań city scribe, Jan Rzepecki, wrote in 1730s a settler contract between owners of Dębiec, south of Poznań, and the 16 Bamber families. He spelled their names the way he heard them. They were illiterate, they signed the contracts with crosses and they were in no position to check their names spellings. Only later the German spelling was reintroduced by the Prussian oficials:

1 - Andrzej Hirsz z żoną Dorotą i dziećmi
2 - Piotr Wagner z żoną Elżbietą i dziećmi
3 - Jan Remlei z żoną i dziećmi
4 - Michałowa Ferczowa, imieniem Kunegunda, wdowa z dziećmi
5 - Jan Szmdt z żoną Małgorzatą i dziećmi
6 - Hans Jurga Ruth z żoną Anną i dziećmi
7 - Michał Hiller z żoną Dorotą i dziećmi
8 - Jan Baierlam z żoną Kunegundą i dziećmi
9 - Kasper Rysz z żoną Barbarą i dziećmi
10 - Hans Sznayder z żoną Anną i dziećmi
11 - Frans Hirsz z żoną Katarzyną i dziećmi
12 - Jurga Hirsz z żoną Maryanną i dziećmi
13 - Adam Petz z żoną Barbarą i dziećmi
14 - Konrad Sznayder, syn Hansa Sznaydra, z żoną Marianną
15 - Elżbieta Fischerowa, wdowa z dziećmi
16 - Frydrych Sznayder, syn Hansa Sznaydra, z żoną Magdaleną i dziećmi

Another example involves descendants of Taubdeutsche, Walddeutsche (Polish: Głuchoniemcy) settled in Lesser Poland, Jasło Pits, around XIV c. and later, and finally becoming Polonized around XVI c. The Polish wikipedia page,

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C5%82uchoniemcy
provides a long list of polonized surnames., such as:
Bartman (Barthmann)
Miler/Mylar (Müller)
Gucwa (Gutz)
Janas (Janess)
etc.

Okay, you have a point here.


Yup, I know.


Although, until 1874 there were no official rules for the spelling of surnames. That changed when the civil registration offices were introduced.

My great grandfather's original name was Klusinsky but because of the jokes it was changed to Miller which was his wife's maiden name. I guess your ego is everything. In 1900's they migrated to America because of jobs to make money.

It likely comes from the Polish-Jewish "Maka" or "Monka", aka "Miller". "Munka" is Czech-Jewish for "Shlomi".

Leszek Miller has said that Florian Miller, his father, was of German origin.
The surname Miller in Poland can come from any of the Germanic/Nordic languages from nearby countries. Also remember that a good half of Poland was Prussia and people migrated frequently. So the surname Miller is quite common across the North, West and Central Poland because it comes from many languages: German and Yiddish, Swedish and Danish, Dutch and possibly English too. The most famous admirals of the Polish Navy in Gdansk which fought against Sweden was a Scottish admiral and a Dutch admiral, they became wealthy and settled there.

My surname is

miller surname in poland can have many origins ashkenazi jewish prussian teutonic german

Hi all,

I found this thread through google as I am into genealogy and ancestry.

I'm from Poland and I also have a "Miller" surname in my family. My family is actually from eastern Poland in the Podlasie region near Belarus 😂, so that is not necessarily tied geographically to North or Western Poland as indicated above. I have my genealogy researched well thanks to my mum. In my family, this surname, along with other more Dutch sounding ones, comes from 16th-17th century Dutch Mennonite settlers from Friesland in Poland. We used to be called "Olendrzy" or "Olender" for singular, Polonized from for "Hollander".

Wikipedia article about the settlers:
"According to studies conducted so far, from 1527/1547 to 1864 on the terrain of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, later divided into three parts in the Polish partitions, at least 1700 Olęder settlements were established. Of those, in at least 300 settlements, the settlers were ethnic Dutch." 🇳🇱

Therefore in the case of my family it is ethnically Dutch and it is connected with Anabaptist tradition of Menno Simons (1496-1561) of Friesland. They were pacifist, devout Christians, very honest people. I don't know how representative this is for other "Millers" in Poland but being a miller as in occupation was popular among the Mennonite Dutch community in the Olender settlements.

What's perhaps most cool is that I did some ancestry testing recently with various companies and it turns out I have a lot of distant cousins today in:

- The Netherlands
- Pennsylvania in the United States
- Even in South Africa (wow - how cool is that?)

I think that's super cool and interesting. I think this may be the result of the historical Mennonite tradition which incentivizes having many children.

Of course this is more of a trivia rather than anything else because I feel Polish more than those other branches of my genealogy but it's interesting to know your partial roots.

Miller-derived surnames can be from Poland and from all over Europe. Miller-derivative surnames are common in all European countries and the United States.

I live in Warsaw and know 3-4 Millers personally. That's a common Polish surname and there is no way of telling individual family history as each family may be different. I am occasionally asked about my surname because it's a long Greek surname but my family has been in Poland since forever; even before the Partitions of I Rzeczpospolita.

My maiden's name was Miller and it was always spelled as such in my paternal lineage. Yes, it is a Polish name too. Take a look at Miller surname distribution globally, it is almost as common in Poland (1496 - 7231) as it is in the UK (1774 - 7956) locatemyname.com/density-map/Miller.jpg

I am very late here, but I happened to have had a former work buddy who is Polish born and bears the name Miller though he claims his family is further down the line Swedish.

Since my Polish dad's DNA test revealed a low 45% Slavic percentage and almost as much Baltic DNA along with a 10% Celtic DNA I found a lot of reports that Gdańsk or Danzig was the target of many Scots who eventually constituted 2,5% of the city population. This is not much, but it explains a sizeable Celtic DNA admixture into today's Polish DNA.

Miller used to be a frequent name among those Scots.
I happen to have inherited almost nothing of these DNA....my test showed a minor drop of blood from NorthWales indicative of Celtic ancestry yet so weak that it does not score any percentage.