Hey everyone, my boyfriends second name is Jarczewski and he is always insisting that it is an extremely old and aristocratic name. Is this true? What does his name mean?
In general, Polish males by nature are members of a knightly breed and, as such, are noble in spirit. But regarding the Jarczewski surname per se -- yes, there were three separate noble lines amongst the Jarzczewskis belonging to the Garczyński, Kuszaba and Nałęcz clans and entitled to use their respective coats of arms. The name is toponymic in origin and traceable to villages or estates called Jarczew or Jarczewo. The jar- root in Polish can mean spring, yearling or spry.
Hi, could it be Dargevicius? I found 339 names with root darg (lith dargus/dargana means rainy, foul weather).
Anything’s possible. Dargiewicz surname originates from Pomorze region of Poland and so I would look to the Kashubian language for its meaning instead of Lithuanian. The root "darga" in Kashubian translates as "road" in its archaic form "dike" often used as a road or a pathway, so (son of dike builder or road builder) sounds good to me.
Yes, the -czuk (-чук) or just -uk (-ук) alone are typical Ruthenian patronymic endings, so the two surnames you have listed would have origianted to mean Leon's boy and Greg's kid.
Belarus was never 'under Polish occuaption', it was part of the grand Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, at times Europe's biggets land empire straddling the continent from the Black Sea to the Baltic and encompassing all of Ukraine, Belarus and hefty swaths of Muscovy (Russia).
MINKIN: the -in is an Old Slavonic adjectival ending indicating possession or descendance. It is most typcal amongst the eastern Slavs as seen in such names as Pushkin, Lenin, Stalin, etc. It was also found in Old Polish, vestiges of which can be noted in such words as żonin (wife's) no longer used. Minkin may have been dervied from Miniek, Mingo or some other endearing form of the old Slavonic first name Minigniew. It is definitely not Hebrew, but the Jews of eastern Europe eagerly snapped up Slavonic words and names.
thank you for the information :) i disagree about not being occupied as my family saw it they were occupied by a government who tried to polanise them for a very long time. but in the end we are all human. thank you again for the information :)
HIRSZKOWICZ: Polish spelling -- from German/Yiddish Hirsch (stag), so this statred up to identify teh son of someone known as Hirsch.
KUŚ: old Polish for teenaged boy or young whipper-snapper (from adjective kusy: short, runty, pint-sized). BTW that accent mark over the 'ś' makes all the difference in this case. Without it, kus (kęs) was the old Polish word for morsel or bite of food.
CHOMCZYK: Someone got nicknamed Chom (from chmoiak, chómik, chomik = hamster) because he looked like the rodent (protruding teeth, twitching nose, etc.) or because he hailed from a village such as Chomiaki or Chomice. When he fathered a son, fellow-villagers could have given the offspring the locally prevalent patronymic ending producing Chomowicz, Chomczak, Chomczuk, Chomiak, Chomiuk or Chomczyk. I detect nothing Tartar about it.
ROS£ANIEC: (no accent over the 'ń') from the first name Rosłan which originally came from the Turkish word for lion. Roslaniec probably originated as a patronymic (son of Rosłan).
KOLENDA/KOLĘDA: dual meaning: Christmas/New Year's gift (archaic); Christmas carol (contemporary).
Koranko, Kouranko, Kurina Are any of these names or some related spellings Polish? Conflicting family stories and a few obits claim these to be the surname of a Polish great grandmother, possibly from the area of Wągrowiec.
No Koranko, Kouranko or Kurina, but there is Kuryna (having an eastern flavour to it) and a more Polish form -- Kurzyna. The-ina/-yna in Polish is often the ending for a deprecatory diminutive (my term). Kura is the normal word for hen, but when we turn it into kurzyna it could mean 'that sorry excxuse for a hen' or 'that skinny, mangy, weather-beaten chicken'.
I am an American. When my great grandfather arrived in the United States his last name was Wienskowicz, but it was changed to Winskowicz. I do not know much about my ancestry, I am just curious as to know what my family name means.
if Kurzyna were the correct form, then it would be pronoucned koo-ZHI-nah. In Modern Polish the ż and rz are pronounced identically, although centuries ago there was a difference.
[Moved from]: Are Kiflies and Kolach Polish or Hungarian?
I grew up eating Kiflies and Kolach and believed that they were Polish pastries. Now I'm hearing people say they are Hungarian pastries. Are they Polish or Hungarian?
I'm looking for Polish ancesters in the region east of Poznan. The name is Guzek (also spelled Guzack in some records). I see a town called Guznil not far from where I believe the family to be from. Is it likely they would be named Guzek because they were from that town?
I am looking for information about two Polish names in my family tree and would love any assistance you can provide. Both families immigrated to the Pennsylvania coal mines in the late 1800s, and I have not been able to track down exactly where they came from or any documents from before they arrived in the United States.
One family name is KWATERSKI. Immigration records and family history indicate that this family came from a part of Poland that was occupied by Russia at the time. Family members could speak Polish and Russian. I found one record for a Kwaterski immigrant that had his ethnicity listed as Ruthenian. I think the root word kwater or kwatery may mean military quarters or a hostel, according to some online dictionaries. So maybe some ancestor owned or worked at or lived near a military quarters?
The other name is NAPIERALSKI (which was possibly misspelled in some documents in the United States as Nebraski or Nebroski, which look anglicized to me). Family members recall that these immigrants came from Galicia, and some of them spoke Polish and German. No one in the U.S. seems to have a clear idea what this last name means; I've seen some genealogy message board posts exploring a possible connection to the Scottish Napier clan that doesn't seem to have panned out, and another website said that it's a variant of Napierała (napierać=to advance, to press forward, to urge, to claim). Any ideas? Thanks for your help.
