Is your line of the Polish family noble?

if nobility were 10 per cent of the population in the mid of 18th century then as people started to mix more (with a kickstart in the middle of the 19th century and hardly any notion of nobility as a separate caste after the WW2) there is a great probability you have some ancestors from former nobility - simply remember that before 19th century the nobility mostly kept to themselves (if one was of nobility they had both parents of nobility 95 plus per cent of cases) - then mix the population thoroughly and in a couple of generations you can have 100 per cent of people who can claim their ancestors where of nobility - capisci??? - this is actually very similar to what actually happened

another issue is how come 10 per cent of the population were nobility - well nobility was not a case of owning a land only of owning a title - there were multitude of 'farmer-nobles' who worked their own land in certain areas of Poland or the Commonwealth (Podlasie, big swaths in Lithuania proper and Lithuania sensu lato (modern day Belarus) - there were also multitudes of non-haves szlachta who owned no land and lived off the service to the magnates ('golcy') - this was part of the reason why magnates were so influential - they had plenty of voting supporters and in need armed force in their noble clients)

in Podlasie many villages were in time ennobled en masse for their valour in service to the king - this is one of the reasons why there were so many 'farmer-nobles'

If someone has or has not got any nobility it's their business. I'm happy I made you laugh tho.

Thanks again for the information gumishu

Highly recommended reading:
Deklasacja drobnej szlachty na Litwie i Białorusi w XIX wieku, Declasse of lesser nobility in Lithuania and Belarus in 19 century, 2.7 Mb, 124 pages.

otworzksiazke.pl/images/ksiazki/deklasacja_drobnej_szlachty_na_litwie_i_bialorusi_w_XIX_wieku/deklasacja_drobnej_szlachty_na_litwie_i_bialorusi_w_XIX_wieku.pdf

Associations with royalty doesn't mean a person actually came from a noble family. For example, no one with the surname King would ever be mistaken for having had an ancestor who was a king of a country. Rather it is indicative that someone had an ancestor who worked in some capacity, like a common servant, for a king. Also, the British soap opera actress Barbara Windsor (a stage name) could never claim to be a member of the Windsor royal family who rule the United Kingdom and whose own ancestral family name is Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

And just like freed slaves in the Americas adopted "slave names" from their owners it is likely that surnames with supposedly noble origins were merely adopted by freed serfs in Europe in previous centuries. That and other societal reforms over the generations meant that anyone could pretty much adopt any name they wanted to.

Real aristocrats and royalty are very much aware of who is one of them and who isn't. If you are in doubt then just compare you own current station in life compared to theirs.

Besides, countries like Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine are republics now so there is zero chance of having any titles, lands or privileges recognized there no matter who you are.

my mother is linked to the noble Potocki family, my grandmother married a commoner so was exiled from the family, my mum remembers being taken to visit her grandparents to a big mansion weekly, i need to find out more but don't know how, Alexander Potocki is mentioned in the history books in the 1917 Russian revolution, the family is also mentioned in the film war and peace, how do i find out more?where do i go?

So what? considering that at onetime 10% of Poland population were nobles, it would means that nowadays at least 50% or Poles have one or other grandparent from the noble lineage.

Where to go? It depended whether you have the dough to burn or not.

Nowiccy

NOWICKI: Root-word nowy (new); most likely originated as a toponymic tag to identify an inhabitant of Nowica (Newton, Newbury).
In Polish heraldry people did not have coats of arms because of what their surname was but because of membership of a gentry clan. There were 11 noble lines amongst your Nowicki namesakes with as many different coats of arms. There was even an own-name clan & crest called Nowicki.

For more information on this please contact me.

Habowski

Yes, there were nobles amongst the bearers of the Habowski surname. For details, please contact me.

Hello. My great grandmother was a Kaczorowski, family from Jeleniewo Suwalki. Is that a common surname in Poland? Is it a Jewish name? There were whispers that she was Jewish when she left Poland in 1905 but not when she arrived in US but I have no evidence for that. Also, her husband was a Konetzki from Janowka Augustow, possibly left for US in 1899. Is that a common surname in Poland? A Jewish surname? Please, can someone tell me how to access birth, marriage, baptismal records in Poland to find out who they were as they seemed mysterious to me with different names, dates of birth, etc depending on the US document.

@TemporaryUsernam

Both names are not uncommon ones.

Kaczorowski seems quite common in the area you mention.

I don't think either are Jewish, but in Poland, you never know.

@Miloslaw Thank you

as far as I know there are no central registers of births, marriages etc before the second world war - you would need to hire someone to search for the records you are interested in in local parishes where your ancestors were born (most of these have survived the war(s) - at least since the beginnining of the 19th century)