Common surnames in Poland NOT of Polish origin ?

common surnames in poland NOT of polish origin

Define "common".

com·mon/ˈkämən/
Adjective:
Occurring, found, or done often; prevalent.

C'mon, tell us at least ten most common names in Poland.

I know THAT.
I mean "common" in the context of non-Polish origin surnames in Poland. It's not as simple as you might think. Many such surnames stick out and you tend to remember them, so you kind of see them as common, but when you start counting the no. of people you actually know with that surname, you realise it's actually rare. E.g. the surname Szulc. I have known only one person with that surname in my life. And that was in primary school. But when I read your question, it was the first name that sprang to my mind.

I think the question speaks for itself

example of some Surnames in Poland NOT of Polish origin

Klose - German

Czech- Czech (Bohemian)

you asked for COMMON surnames of non-Polish origin.
BTW, the surname Czech doesn't have to be Bohemian in origin. A Czech immigrant could be called that by his Polish community, you see ;-p

OK then:

German: Szulc, Krause, Handtke, Miller, Szmyt, Braiter, Toeplitz...
Czech: Hornik, Holoubek, Tichy...
Latin: Cellary
Other: Borzobohaty

That's just off the top of my head.

Czech is Cech which means Bohemian

houseofnames.com/czech-family-crest

Czech is just Czech - somebody from Czechia. It sounds the same in Polish and the name could have independently originated in many locations. As Magdalena says, it was just describing an immigrant from Czechia, just like the names Litwin (a Lithuanian) or Rusyn (a Ruthenian). Certainly not all Czechs were crested nobility.

Many names ending with - uk or -icz are of Eastern origin (Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Lithuanian, whatever) - Wasiluk, Bohdanowicz, Hawryluk.

Speaking of the surname Czech - the surname Bem is a nice example of linguistic mixup. It's actually from the German "Bohmisch" and means Czech (someone from Bohemia).

and General Bem, a Pole, is a national hero for the Hungarians. That's Mitteleurope for you :)

One of the most well known must be Miller. I don't know how prevalent the name is in Poland but it's definitely not of Polish origin.

According to the Internet there are over 6000 mostly in Warsaw and £ódź. Including of course a former Premier.

Because it is actually the winner of my little test. :-)

I started with a list of the most popular Polish surnames, referring to number of persons of a given surname and living in Poland at the beginning of 1990s, registered in PESEL database. The list begins with Nowak (220,217 occurences), followed by Kowalski (131,940) and ends with Lęcznar (270 occurences). That amounts to a total of 20,000 surnames. [The full list, including very rare names, has about 400,000 names]

The topmost foreign sounding name on that list is Szulc (25,556). And there is also Schulz, its cousin. The next on the list are: Serafin, Stelmach, Stec, Misztal, Majcher, Sołtys (sic!), Dec, Koper, Furman, Miller, Lenart, Szwarc, Herman, Roman, Werner, Gut, Szot, Ferenc, Krauze, Wach, Lange, Lorenc, Hoffmann, Knap, Wagner, Bernat, Szubert, Pelc, Frydrych, Schmidt …

If you know the pattern of some typical German names, you can easily create a list of surnames for such pattern by using GREP facility (Regular Expression). For example, the search pattern .+mann$ means: find a line of text that is made of one or more (+) of any character (.) and ends with ($) "mann". When applied to the list like this:

...
6221 Miller
....
4882 Wagner
...
1017 Hermann
...
the "1017 Hermann" will be found.

So here are some samples:
-mann pattern: Hoffmann (5187), Neumann (4259), Lehmann (2050), Hermann (1017), Erdmann (865), Hallmann (825), Ziemann (800), Lademann (685), Stoltmann (598), Reimann (587) ....
-man pattern: Furman (6575), Herman (6249), Roman (5730), Hofman (3167) ...
-ler pattern: Miller (6221), Miler (4216), Winkler (3223), Meller (3140), Keller (2109), Müller (1816), Adler (1371) ...
-ner pattern: Werner (5575), Wagner (4882), Langner (2848), Wegner (2731), Hibner (1308), Bitner (1150), Budner (1028), Lindner (1018) …
Etc., etc.

how did it find its way into the list?

A very interesting list, looks almost like the list of names from my elementary school or from my childhood neighbourhood, and I live in south-eastern Poland. Looking at it, I recognized most of the names, I wouldn't have remembered these people otherwise.

Another popular one is Szmit/Szmidt with the polonized spelling.

A girl I know from Wrocław has the surname Sołtys. I wonder if she knows her surname has Germanic origins? lol

sołtys: Hungarian szóltes, from German Schultheiss, today shortened to Schulz(e). It once meant an alderman. Schuldheissen means imposing sentence on a guilty party,

Former spelling of the office was: sołtestwo, sołectwo, sołestwo (in XIV and XV century).
etymologia.org/wiki/S%C5%82ownik+etymologiczny/so%C5%82tys

And since we are already here let us try "wójt":
wójt, wójcik, wójtowa, plural wójcia, wójtować - from German ...
etymologia.org/wiki/S%C5%82ownik+etymologiczny/w%C3%B3jt
Wójt, a village mayor. The word comes from Germanic dialectic "Voigt", this in turn from Latin "vocatus" (advocatus).

"Too Many German Words in the Polish Language!" I think we should start a new thread ;-p

You can blame the Scottish that hung around this part of the world in the 16th century for that ;)

Miller could come from anywhere as it is also a German surname (spelled both Miller and Müller), as well as English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, ...

But there are other less known Polonized Scottish names, used by persons currently living in Poland - as confirmed by Moi Krewni database:
136 Brun, from Brown
489 Drews, from Drew
64 Frybes, from Forbes
3121 Gawin, from Gavin
799 Gordon
5 Gordonowicz (Oh, no - ruining the -owicz Jewish claim again :-))
105 Gorski, from Gore. (As opposed to about 45,000 Polish Górski/Górska , from góry, mountains)
8 Loson, from Lawson
9 Lendze and Lenze, from Lindsay
338 Ryt, from Reid
64 Rossek, from Ross
6210 Rusek, from Ross or from Slavic Rusek
102 Szynkler, from Sinclair
4398 Szmidt, possible from Smith but mostly from Schmidt
796 Wajer, Weir

Other Scottish names, known from historical documents, which are not confirmed by "Moi Krewni" database, are:
Argiel <= Argyle, Czamer <= Chalmers, Czochran <= Cochrane, Dasson <= Dawson, Driowski <= Drew, Hebron <= Hepburn, Dziaksen <= Jacson, Machlajd <= Macleod, Ramze <= Ramsey, Tajlorowicz <= Taylor, Tamson <= Thompson

There is interesting paper "The 1651 Polish Subsidy to the Exiled Charles II By ANDREW B. PERNAL, Professor of History, Brandon University, and ROSANNE P. GASSE, Associate Profesor of English, Brandon University", available in PDF format.

The appendix 2, taken from Polish archives, lists about 500 Scots (and some English), that volunteered (or rather were forced by King Jan Kazimierz and the Polish Diet) to pay the tithe (1/10 of their worth) in support of Charles II. Why only 500 names, when the number of Scots in Poland, Royal Prussia, Ducal Prussia and Lithuania was estimated then at 50,000 is another issue. And why some could only afford few florens (1 floren = 1 zloty; 1 ducat = 3 thalers = 6 zlotys), while the richest of them were not listed at all is yet another story. And there is also a sad story of all that money being appropriated by one of the Charles II officials.

But the point is that the appendix 2 was prepared by many local tax collectors, and the Scottish names were written down the way the collectors handled them: some in good English, some in Polonized version.

The appendix 3, translates all those names, such as Gaspar Czamers, into modern English. But dozen of them escapes this categorization. And here is why:
Andrzych-owicz, John => Patronymic, not clue as to his surname. (again the -owicz pattern, :-))
Danielczyk, Matthias => Probable Polonization of Daniels or Danielson
Dziakowski, Albert => From Deacon, Deakin, or Deakan
Jerzewicz, Sebastian => Patronymic. He was the son of the deceased George Anderson, a burgher from Dobrzyń.
Pacierznik, Andrew => It might have been derived by folk etymology from "pacierz" (prayer) to produce an equivalent of Prior or Pryor
Papuga, Catherine => Equivalent of Parrat(t) or Parrot(t).
Skórdziak, David => May have been derived from "skóra" (leather) to produce equivalent of Skinner, Tanner or Tawer
Stróżewski, Daniel => May have been derived from "stróż", guard, watch" as an equivalent of Guard or Gate.
Sutorowska, Agnes; Sutorowski, Thomas => Polonized Souter.
Zarejski, Peter => It may be a Polonization of Prey, Quarry, or MacQuarrie - from "żer", prey

Czarnecki. It may have been brought by Sephardic Jews from Spain. See my thread on this.

But what about the Bear Jew?

I have little to no idea about him.

Hi there, everyone. I'm American of partial Polish descent, and I've been wondering about the surname Sapko. I've been wondering about this surname for a while because it is not a typical Polish surname. Though the suffix "-ko" hints at a Ukrainian origin and the suffix means "of or of the...", it is the base of the surname "sap" that I am inquiring about. My Polish ancestry is located at the Galician regions (SE Poland and a part of western Ukraine--once part of Poland as well). The only thing that I was able to remotely find for "sap" is the Old Slavic word "sup", which means heron, if this is correct (I only found one source for this). So, taking this into consideration, Sapko means "of the herons", I guess. That doesn't sound unrealistic for a surname origin for someone could have called him/herself "I am so-and-so of the (land of the) herons" perhaps. However, there seems to be no other European last name, pertaining to herons. (I have nothing against the birds: herons in general, just letting you know. I like them too). Yet, there is something about "sap" that indicates a different origin, maybe from European lands, a bit more westward perhaps. So, hence, here I am asking around. I hope that someone can at least discuss this with me. I'd just like to know where Sapko came from or could have come from. That's all. Any plausibilities in anyone's replies are welcome, just no jokes please. It also seems that the Polish surname Sapkowski and the Russian/Ukrainian surname Sapkov derive from Sapko as well, if I may add. Thanks!

I've no idea if it's relevant at all, but sap is a type of soil and sapać means to breathe loudly and heavily.

Right. According to Stankiewicze web page "sapać" is one of the possible roots for family of surnames:

- Sapis, Sapiska, Sapiszczak, Sapiszczuk, Sapiszko ==> from Belarusian Sapega, this from Eastern Slavic sopet', sapać
- Sapiuk, Sapjuk, Sapka, Sapkiewicz, Sapko, Sapkowski, Sapnia, Sapoch, Sapocha, Sapociński, Sapocki, Sapoćko, Sapok (Silesian), Sapoliński, Sapolski, Sapoł, Sapołyga ==> from sapać or from Old Polish "sap", now "syk" (English hiss)

The word "sapa", "sapka", in the dialects around Kraków, Lesser Poland, has two meanings:

- meal based on flour
- big mud, not very thick, often referred to as "taká sapa"

According to database "Moi Krewni" *My Relatives" surname Sapko appears 253 times in contemporary Poland, especially in its Eastern part:

- Krasnystaw county (61)
- Świdnik county (36)
- Lublin city (33)
- Kraków city (22)
- Chełm county (10)
- £ęczna county (9)
- Gdynia county (8)
- Słupsk city (8)
- Chełm city (8)
- Przeworsk county (6)

Been wondering for the longest time where my surname 'Pajdo' is from. Haven't ever gotten a conclusive answer on that, even from a Polish geneologistLOL

isn't Sapieha from the same family of names?

Yes, absolutely. Thanks. :-)
I missed another big group of 60 or so surnames, starting with SAPI- . This includes Sapiecha, Sapieha, Sapierzyński and Sapieżyński.

Seems that your family comes from southern Poland. As you probably know already, "pajda" means a thick slice of bread.