THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME?

Thank you for your prompt answer. I notice you added a W into the name. Can I assume that is the proper spelling of my name?

Jarmużek can be a corruption of Jamrożek (metathesis could have happened because it is easier to pronounce Jarmużek than Jamrużek) - Jamrożek is a folk evolution of a first name Ambroży (Ambrose)

Grateful
Yes, -oski names are rare in Polish. However in English-speaking countries some Poels drop the 'w' of -owski to retain the proper pronunciiaton. Makowski gets Anglo-mangled into ma-COW-ski, whilst Makoski comes out perfect.

Polonius3
Thank you for researching this rare and unusual surname for me.

Would Kuranka be the feminine version or is this a case where the masculine and feminine are the same?

Not necessarily. It is a feminine noun so it would be declined as such: Widzę pana Kurankę....etc. But it is not one of the adjetival -ski names that changes with its bearere's gender, eg Kowalski~Kowalska.

If the kurhan or kur soruces are correct, then the -ka ending would be whimsical and inexplicable; in other words it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to definitively ascertain why it was not Kuranek or Kuranko or, for that matter, Kurhanek, Kurhanka or whatever. So many things have happened to names over the generations and centuries, loads of interaction with foreign influence and regional dialects not to mention the most elsive of all -- unique-case scenarios...

But all those speculations may be barking up the wrong tree, becaue it could simply have originated as a toponymic tag from the village of Kuranów in Masovia.

Another reader pointed out that there are quite a few people on the map with the surname Koronka. Many are located near Wągrowiec, the area where my gg grandparents were married. Meaning of Koronka?

KORONKA: can mean little crown, but even more likely lace. A koronkarka is a lace-maker. And then there is the toponymic option -- places such as Korona or Koronowo (Crown, Crownton).

What dis the meaning of my surname Stasiukiewicz?

Merged: Looking for the meaning of the last names Glowski and Zwolinski.

Looking for the meaning of the last names Glowski and Zwolinski.

Glowski is more likely short for a very popular name Głodowski. "Głód, głodny" means hunger, hungry.
Zwolinski could come from the meaning "Z Woli" (from Wola), which is a region of Warsaw

"Stasiu, Staś" is a popular Polish name from "Stanislaw", (Stanley, Stanislaus). Therefore the origins

G£OWSKI: root-word głowa (head); possibly nick for a big-headed fellow.

ZWOLIŃSKI/ZWOLEŃSKI: topo nick for villager from Zwola or Zwoleń.

a son (descendant) of Stasiuk - Stasiuk a son of Stanisław

FABRYCY: rare first name (used by only 2 people in today's Poland) but shared more than 120 as a surname (the largest single concenetration being in Kraków). It comes from the Roman clan-name Fabricius (its Latin root is the word faber or smith).

Not a last name, but I have a person in my ancestry with the nick name Wacie. Any ideas what the proper name might be?

Merged: Last name Heleski

I have always been confused about Polish last names and their meaning. My entire family line has names that end in "ski." Is there any particular meaning to this compared to other Polish names, such as those ending in ch or za? Short of attending Polish school outside of Detroit, I'm at a loss. Any help available??

Wacie - probably a corrupted form of Wacio (in nominative (N) case) or Waciu (in vocative (V) case) - one of several diminutive forms of Wacław.

N: Wacław, V: Wacławie
N: Wacio, V: Waciu
N: Wacek, V: Wacku
N: Wacuś, V: Wacusiu
N: Wacławek, V: Wacławku
N: Wacławuś, V: Wacławusiu
Meaning of WAC£AW - from Slavic (Czech) masculine name Vaclav (Více-Slav, More-Glory), semantically correlated with Bolesław (Bole-Sław, Great-Glory)
Other languages: Czech: Vaclav, Latin: Venceslaus, Wenceslaus, Italian: Venceslao, French: Venceslas, German:.Wenzeslaus, Spanish: Venceslas

-ski (and its variants -cki and -dzki) are adjetcival, hence they must agree with the person they modify: Kowalski for men, Kowalska for women. The adj. here means of, from or related to. So Brzezińdski comes from Brzezina (Birchville), Makowski from Maków (Poppyville), etc.

Amongst Polish nobles, the -ski and variant naems were the single most common group.
Adrzej z ·Zubrowa (Andrew of Bisonville) eventually evolved into Andrzej Żubrowski (ANdrew Bisonville).

HELESKI: This surname as well as Helewski, Heleński, Heleszko and toehrs are probably metronymic nicknames traceable to the woman's name Helena. Metorynmcis are rare in Polish but did occur esp. when an unmarried girl bore a bastard.

Okay so the original spelling of my last name (Kaneski) was Kaniewski and I'd like to know what it means, please and thank you! :)

KANIEWSKI: root-word kania (kite - small predatory bird); probably topo nick from Kaniew or Kaniewo (Kiteville).

What does the last name Bushinsky mean? Not sure if its Polish, Russian, etc etc. But the people I know, there great grandparents came from Warsaw in 1919. A lot of people belive that if a last name ends in sky, owicz,etc, it means they are Jewish, but there not. I've tried to research the name but found nothing. Thanks.

This is just not true in general. The suffixes -icz and -owicz suggest Belarussian/Lithuanian origin, -ski - Polish, -sky - Ukrainian. The latter suffix can be also a corrupted American version of -ski.

However, since a lot of Jews have assumed Polish sounding names over the 18th-19th centuries, you can find many -owicz, -ski names among Jewish population as well. As the late comers to the business of using surnames their names would be formed after the names of big cities they lived in (Warszawski - from Warszawa (Warsaw), Poznański from Poznań, Krakowski - from Kraków), traditional Jewish professions, such as Bursztyński or Bursztynowicz (a man dealing with bursztyn = amber), or Jewish first names, each as Ezofowicz (See "Meir Ezofowicz", a novel by Eliza Orzeszkowa, check the wikipedia).

Bushinsky is not one of them. But it must be a corrupted version of either Buszyński or Busiński. The origin can be either Polish or Ukrainian. Dropping the accent over the "n" character" is a natural thing to do - as there is no such character in English. However replacing "szy" or "si" by the anglicized "shi" is a conscious decision to match the original name to the English pronunciation. Poles usually retain the -ski suffix, Ukrainians think that the -sky is a better assimilation choice; they do not need to stick to -ski, as their original spelling involved Cyrillic anyway.

According to "moikrewni.pl" (Moi krewni=My relatives) there are 15 persons of the surname Busiński in Poland, all of them in North Eastern Poland: Augustów, Ełk and Suwałki. The same database lists 99 Buszyńskis, mostly distributed in Warsaw, Greater Poland and in Lower Silesia. The latter suggest repatriation of their ancestors from today's Belarus, Ukraine or Lithuania, after WWII.

On the other hand, "Great Genealogy of Minakowski" lists several Busińskis belonging to Polish nobility, such as: Jan Busiński from Busina, Grzymała coat of arms (ca 1500-1541).

My name is Besta and my grandmother was Sommerling.Any information please..Mike

No obvious Polish meaning for this but etymologically it's close to the modern day word from German meaning Best like the best at something. Also close to German for beast - biest.


Old Norse for summer warrior I believe.

BESTA: multiple possible sources: 1) Polish phonetic spelling of German Bester which is actually pronounced Besta. (Bester in German means ‘the best one’); 2) bestia – beast. animal (from Latin); 3) Masurianised pronunciation of beszta (from verb besztać – villify, brow-beat, smear (which I believe originally came from Hungarian – any Magyars on PF to verify this?); 4) verb bestwić – goad, tease, infuriate; 5) topo nick from places such as Bestwin or Bestwiny in Poland or numerous Best- localities in the German-speaking countries (including Besten and Bestenheid) as well as Turkey, Scandinavia and South Africa.

What is the origin/meaning of the last name Czapski?

Hi,does anyone know what the surname MALEŃCZAK means and if it originates from a particular area. Seems its not a common surname and all seem to be related to just one family.....x

I am curious to know what part of Poland the surname Wielgat is from. I've been told Ukraine area but I'd like some other opinions. Any information is valuable, thank you :)

CZAPSKI: most likely a toponymic tag from several localiteis called Czaple (czapla is a heron). The letter 'L' must have dropped out of Czaplski somewhere along the line becuase it was hardly audible anyway. Or maybe a long-legged bloke got nicknamed Czapla and his son got patronymically dubbed Czap(l)ski.

The webpage, stankiewicze.com/index.php?kat=44, category: Etymology of names (in Polish), derives the name Wielgat from the Polish "wielki" (great, big), or the Old Polish "wieliki, wieligi, wielgi". (same meaning). Other contemporary Polish names stemming from the same roots are: Wielg, Wielga, Wielgan, Wielganowicz, Wielgas, Wielgasiewicz, Wielgasik, Wielgaszewski, Wielgi ... and about 30 more)

There are some ukrainian names also stemming from the same roots, but they are spelled differently (in Ukrainian phonetics, Polish transliteration): Wełyko, Wełykanycz, Wełykanowicz.

According to one very incomplete database (Moi Krewni), there are 823 persons of surname Wielgat, mostly distributed in NE Poland. Another list, published in "wyborcza.pl" (forum.gazeta.pl/forum/w,95025,127754801,,Pochodzenie_nazwisk_sl owianskich_w_poszczegolnych.html?s=2&v=2), mentions 495 Wielgats in Masovia Province alone.

Finally, google lists 66,000 of Wiegat name occurrences, many of them around Chicago, Cook County, Illinois - some with Polish first names, some not.

MALEŃCZAK: The -czak ending is a dead give-away that this is a name of patronymic origin. Someone was nickanmed Maleńki (tiny, runt, little guy) and when he sired a son, fellow-villagers called the offspring Maleńczak (Tiny's boy). The largest concentrations are in the recovered lands, meaning that this name was most popular in the one-half of pre-war Poland annexed by Stalin and never returned. The Jelenia Góra area in the country's extreme SW corner contains one such concentration.

WIELGAT: root-woird wielgi (dialłectal for wielki - big, large, hude): wielgat and othjer such words (wielgas, wielgogh, wielgus, etc.) were used to describe a moutain of man, a big bruiser or the biggest and beefiest bloke in the village.