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What does my Polish name mean?


kaprys  3 | 2076
17 May 2018   #151
The first part of my post was addressed @Bromberg. He asked a question about Rozanska in #4646.

No relation between Rosenberg and Adinitz as far as I know.
Goodboi
17 May 2018   #152
Can anyone tell me what the last name Beca means? My family are ukrainians raised in poland.

Thank you
Batman1943  1 | 6
17 May 2018   #153
Ok, thanks for the clarification
kaprys  3 | 2076
18 May 2018   #154
@Goodboi
According to Stankiewicz it's derived from beczec-cry or bekac- burp ... but there was this Ukrainian/Soviet footballer and coach called Jozef Beca (originally Betsa) that was of Magyar/Hungarian origin.
Bromberg
20 May 2018   #155
Thanks for the thorough reply. Given that the name can be Polish, I suspect it is in this case. I wasn't sure, though. It sounded fairly Jewish to my untrained ear.
Bromberg
20 May 2018   #156
Merged:

Help with a Polish name



My great-grandfather made mention of a Polish aunt of his, who was called Palacha or Palachi (his spellings). I've not found a given name in Polish that sounds anything like this. Does anyone have an idea of what it might have been? Could it have been a nickname or a surname? I've never heard of an aunt being referred to by her surname in English, but maybe it's different in Poland. Probably it's just a gross misspelling - the man spoke English and German, but I doubt Polish - but I thought I'd give it a try. Thanks in advance.
kaprys  3 | 2076
21 May 2018   #157
Perhaps Pałacha or Palach. Another alternative would be Palacz (cz in Polish is pronounced similarly to ch in English) or Pałacki if his handwriting is hard to decipher.

But all of these are surnames.
Bromberg
24 May 2018   #158
Thanks again for your input. It is appreciated.
kaprys  3 | 2076
25 May 2018   #159
You're welcome. I hope it helps.
As for the name, are you sure the name's written in the Latin alphabet?
Gmpski
25 May 2018   #160
Hi, I am having trouble finding the meanings of the names Pelszynski and Walkuski. I was wondering if anyone can help.
kaprys  3 | 2076
26 May 2018   #161
@Gmpski
About Wałkuski:
cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-f7c27a8b-4b1b-4a97-bbdb-8c952df94582

Pełszynski or Pelszynski might be a Polonised version of German Pelz or derived from Pełczyska.

@Sylvio
Yeah, aren't we weird?
Since my BMI is just fine I must be twice as ugly.
Bullocks
29 May 2018   #162
Is Taitlowicz Polish or Jewish?
kaprys  3 | 2076
29 May 2018   #163
The ending 'owicz' usually means 'the son of'.
There isn't a Polish given name Taitl but I guess Yiddish Teitel (=date - the fruit) would be pronounced pretty much the same. There are Jewish surnames like Teitelbaum.

Just a guess though.
Dirk diggler  10 | 4452
29 May 2018   #164
@Bullocks

It's polish.

And kap it doesn't always mean 'son of' but more generally of or from. In the case of my last name (owicz) its after our patriarch but there's poles with names like tarnowicz meaning from tarnow, or lasowicz which cojld mean from the forest.

Ski is similar but often denotes occupation i.e. Kowalski i.e. a blacksmith, same with czyk.but ski can also denote geographic region or patriarch
kaprys  3 | 2076
29 May 2018   #165
I wrote 'usually'.
If it's Polish, what does it mean?

Just like Abramowicz or Lewkowicz - the endings are typical for our region but the names they're derived from were usually given to Jews. Even if the family isn't Jewish now, it's very probably an ancestor was.

I looked for taitl/tajtel/teitel and a Yiddish word came up. Apparently, Teitel and Teitelbaum were and are used by Jews, too.
Dirk diggler  10 | 4452
29 May 2018   #166
Taitlowicz cam be either son of that or from some wioska or neighborbood... it does sound like Yiddish mixed w polish
Atch  24 | 4368
29 May 2018   #167
If it's Polish, what does it mean?

Exactly. The name must have a meaning especially as 'owicz' is a suffix, added to a root word, so that is the meaning of the root. The root of the name doesn't appear to be Polish. I just did a bit of quick googling and came across a Polish mathematician, Alfred Tarski (1902-1983) born Tajtelbaum.
kaprys  3 | 2076
29 May 2018   #168
I have also found Chaim Tajtel and Hersz Tajtel - both Chaim and Hersz are traditional Jewish first names.
Perhaps the name Taitlowicz was given to someone brought up by a Tajtel, a student etc. Not necesarrily a son.
In many cases we may just guess the true origin of surnames.
Using Tajtel or Tajtelbaum (date tree) is interesting in our part of the world, too. I wonder if it was brought here from the Middle East or any other warmer country.
Bullocks
30 May 2018   #169
Thanks for the inputs. It was actually from my 2x great grandmother who was Jewish. I did find a couple Taitlobaum in the US. My great grand father was supposedly fully Jewish but my mother and I took DNA tests recently and no companies have found any Jewish. Just East Euro and 23andme labeled it as Polish. Also GEDmatch etc. He also looked really European if that makes sense. So I wonder if there was a conversion somewhere.
Dirk diggler  10 | 4452
30 May 2018   #170
found any Jewish.

Probably because they look as jewish as an ethnicity rather than religion so unless you had like israeli/middle eastern jewish blood it wouldnt show up. Nonetheless a ton of jews, perhaps the majority, lived in eastern europe and many still do
Bullocks
30 May 2018   #171
Jewish DNA in Europeans is the easiest to identify tho at about a 99% rate due to inter-marriage so it should have showed up. This is the case with almost all Ashkenazi Jews.
kaprys  3 | 2076
30 May 2018   #172
I know that marriages in prewar Poland were religious so a Christian might have converted to Judaism to marry a Jew (or the other way round - I have heard only of the latter like Jan Kiepura's mother). But if he had converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish woman, you would have inherited the Jewish dna after her.

I wonder if it's possible that he was gentile brought up by Jews and therefore he got this name?
Again Kiepura's mother is said to have been brought up by nuns but her birth name is known.
bullocks
30 May 2018   #173
He had a different surname then Taitlowicz, it was just a common German sounding Jewish one (think baum).

His given names were Josek Maeir. Then my great grandfather was Chaim.
kaprys  3 | 2076
30 May 2018   #174
All of these are typical Jewish given names.
bullocks
30 May 2018   #175
Yeah i know. Just the DNA thing throws me off. I guess i'll never know haha
hippomobile
5 Jun 2018   #176
Anyone have any information on the surname Borasky? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
KolanczikKid
7 Jun 2018   #177
I have ancestors whose surname was spelled Kolanczik, at least in the United States. Under that spelling I can find only a handful of genealogy records, all in the U.S., all involving a few recent ancestors about whom I already knew. Depending on which records one believes, great-great grandfather Andrew Kolanczik was born in 1831 in either Prussia or Poland. (If he had been born before the Partitions of Poland, this confusion would make sense, But 1831 was several decades later, so I'm not entirely sure what the problem is.)

I assume that Kolanczik is Polish; it certainly doesn't look German to me, although he did marry a girl with a good German name (Ziebarth) in Illinois in the mid-1800s.* I also assume that something was lost in transliteration when the family arrived in this country, and that in order to find more clues about Andrew's origin I'll need to correct that. Can anyone give me tips on alternative spellings that might be correct?

*Decades after he died, his daughter-in-law, my great-grandmother, vigorously denied that he was Polish. That seems hard to believe, and I have some doubt about her truthfulness and motives.
Kanemsky
7 Jun 2018   #178
What about Kanemsky?
kaprys  3 | 2076
8 Jun 2018   #179
Boraski kind of appears in Poland but it's pretty rare. Borawski or Borowski are far more popular but I don't know if the name was misspelled or it's just very rare.

Kolanczik and Kanemsky are almost certainly misspellings.
It's probably Kolanczyk - from kolano-knee.
As for the last name it might have been Kamieński or Kamiński but I don't know really.
Asgold
14 Jun 2018   #180
@Rae101
Kaluza means puddle


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