GAZDECKI: root-word gazda (highland farmer); Gazedcki (patronymic) would be his son.
PIERZYNOWSKI: root-word pierzyna (featherbed, down-filled comforter; someone making or dealing in featherbed of hailing from the locality of Pierzyny could have earned such a nickname.
BUDZIŃSKI: root-word budzić (to wake); colloquially "the waker"; or toponymically from localities east of the border such as Budin or Budino.
NOTE: Coats of arms accompany all three above surnames. For more info please contact me.
Not really, though it could have been one of the more creative surnames given to Jewish people in Warsaw by ETA Hoffmann. As names can change over time, and just as the word Friday has an etymology, so does Piątek. That name could also have referred to five something (brothers, houses, hectares, whatever) and ended up as Piątek with time. It may also have been a variant of Piatka (a Czech and Slovak surname).
I knew a very nice lady in Poland called that (who ran a well-known childrens' charity), now sadly recently dead. She wasn't Jewish, however I've no idea if any of her forebears were.
Although with surname origin most everything is possible, more likely is the toponymic angle -- a great many Polish surnames are derived from place-names (toponyms). Here we have localities such as Piątek, Piątak, Piątki, Piątkowa, Piątkowo, Piątków, Piątkowiec, Piątkowice, Piątkowizna, Piątkowisko and probably a few more.
Hello, my father was born in Krakov/w Poland in 1935, he is not aware of any ancestors from England, is it possible that the Morton surname goes back to 1800's or earlier in Poland? Morton just doesn't sound very Polish to me. Does anyone know any Morton's still living in Poland?
MORTON/MORTOŃ: Some 100 people use the first version and a quarter as many the second. Onamastician Dr Ewa Szczodruch feels it was derived from names such as Marcin or Marta.
A tiny village. The records would be in the nearest larger town. Which Pomarzanki is it? There are several Note to Mods: maybe pop this in a separate thread?
Merged: Grudniewski - Surname meaning and/ research
I am trying to find the origin of my father's surname, Grudniewski. I have read here that it might be a name given by the Catholic Church to Jewish converts who became Catholics in December. I think it is a relatively rare name and also I have found a couple of 19th century vital records with this name and Jewish first names from an area then called Radom. Any information would be appreciated.
BARSZCZEWSKI: root-word barszcz, the name of an invasive weed once used by poor peasants in the Commonwealth and Muscovy to make soup to which the plant gave its name. Since -owski and -ewski ending surnames are nearly always of toponymic origin, this one most likely is traceable to Barszcze (1) or Barszczewo (2 such localities), all three in NE Poland's Podlasie region, or similarly named localities in Belarus and Russia.
GRUDNIEWSKI: Most likely a toponymic nick to identify an inhabitant of Grudna or Grudno. The Jewish connection, of course, cannot be ruled out, but if December were the root I think it would have been Grudziński. Etymologically it was probably derived from the old adjective grudny describing frozen clumps of earth when the ground freezes over.
Couldn't find Tenski, Teński or Tęski. Maybe it was originally Tęskny and got misspelt between the Old Country and the New. The adj. tęskny means wistful, longing, yearning. It is quite a rare surname and on the verge of extinction as only half a dozen people in Poland sign themselves that way.
KUKIE£KA: from kukła (puppet, doll, effigy); kukiełka is the diminutive version (a grammatical form that makes something some sound smaller, cuter, daintier, etc.)
BTW, in the eary days of American TV (late '40s early '50s) there was a kids puppet show called "Kukla, Fran and Ollie".(Fran was the human member of the trio, the other two were puppets.)
1. Surname with suffix -ec is suggesting that the surname comes from "father's name". Something like "Petersen" in Scandinavian surnames. I don't know how English surnames are created, so I can't tell if it is a good equivalent, but Jakub is Jacob/James. So if suffix "-s" is an equivalent of suffix "-ec" it may make sense.
2. Not necessarily Jewish, what makes you think so? As far as I know, surnames with this suffix may be of Ukrainian origin.
JAKUBIEC: derived from Jakub (James, Jacob), popular both amongst Jews and Goyim including Poles. This would most certainly have originated as a patronymic nickname-turned-surname, the equivalent of English Jacobson or Jacobs.
Other patronymic endings have produced Jakubiak, Jakubik, Jakubczak, Jakubowicz and Jakubowski.
My mother's maiden name is Jakubiec. She was born in the early 1930's in a village just outside Brody, which was then part of Poland (as you may know) and is today within the territory of the Ukraine. Brody had an exceedingly high Jewish population prior to WWII and there was a significant Jewish population in the outlying villages. So I am speculating whether my family origins may have had Jewish roots. So far my lines of enquiry are inconclusive on this point.
Considering that Brody was 80% Jewish in the 19th century, there's a good chance your ancestors were amongst the local Jews. However, a name such as Jakubiec alone is no indication, since Jews have been known to use various Polish and other Slavic names. If they had had a typically Jewish name like Baruch, Szapiro, Margolis, Lewita, Segal, Rubinsztajn, Birnbaum, etc., that would have been a different story.
