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

@kranskylover

There is a (very uncommon) Russian girl's name "Parasha", much more common in very old literature and folk stories than in current use. I can't think of anything, nor have I ever heard, anything like it in Polish.

yes it's true - the old Polish had an equivalent to this in the form of -owic ( i.e with a 'c' sound not a 'cz' sound) - it is fossilised in a very common type of place names - Katowice, Gliwice, Skierniewice and tons of others (-owice suffix was plural of - owic)

@gumishu

No. The "wice" in the town names you mentioned is not a patronymic ending. It's a toponymic ending. The patronymic ending in Polish has always been "wicz", and still is.

@kranskylover
Well, according to słownik języka polskiego PWN, parasza is a passage from the Torah read in the synagogue - parashah in English.
Surnames ending in 'icz' are indeed typical for and thought to have originated in Eastern Poland and kresy but used all over the country nowadays due to migration.

Not exactly. At present yes, but in earlier centuries it was just -ic as in Paweł Włodkowic, later it evovled into -icz and finally became -wicz. Similar endings are shared throughout Slavdom (in the Balkans it's -ić) as well as in Yiddish (eg Manischewitz -- a well-known Jewish wine company).

sorry Dominic - you are completely wrong - please educate yourself on it

Yes and no. It originated as a patronymic ending but evolved into the toponymic sphere. It also nicely illustrates that before -wicz there was -ic.

Let's take a place called Borkowice. A man known as Borek had a son who was called Borkowic (Borek's boy) by fellow-villagrers. He fathered additional sons and when they grew up, went off and set up shop in a formerly uninhabited place, people in the area would instinctively have called it Borkowice. Translatable as the holdings or land settled by Borek's sons.

An interestimg example of the -ic~-icz phenomenon is Poland's lost eastern town of Baranowicze. In genitive plural it is Baranowic (a reversion to the oldest patronymic form).

Out of curiousity What makes PUCYKOWICZ Polish in origin and not Belarusian or Russian? Is it the Start of the surname pucyk or the ending owicz? I'm very interested to know how it works.

Thanks again!

@faithfulpilgrim

The owicz or even more specifically the wicz or icz bc if it were Russian it would be anglicized to vich. There are no w's in Russian they instead use a v which is written like the letter b. Also there's no cz instead it's ch which is written as like an upside down h. The wicz ending is popular in pl and more often than not denotes polish stock.

The family memeber who surname is PUCYKOWICZ was from the Kresy region. Does that change anything ?

What makes it Polish other than its written in the Polish alphabet and not Cyrillic?

Out of curiousity What makes PUCYKOWICZ Polish in origin and not Belarusian or Russian?

Pucykowicz can well be Belarusian in origin - however higher levels of Belarusian society (mostly nobility) polonized during the times of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

It is often extremely difficult to conclusively determine the exact ethnic origin of many Slavic sruanmes. The -icz, -owicz and -kowicz endings have occurred in different Slavic tongues to mention only the great 20th-century Russian composer Шocтaкoвич.

Stankiewicz derives it from Polish: "Pucykowicz - od podstawy puc-, pucz-, por. puc 'usta, policzki, brzuszek', puczyć, pucyć 'gnieść'."

A Russian site derives it from Ukrainian: "Фамилия Пуцыкович ведет свое начало от прозвища Пуцыкович. Прозвище Пуцыкович восходит к украинскому слову «пуцьнути» - «упасть, бухнуться». Вероятно, его получил человек, не слишком осторожный, невнимательный. Не исключено, что основатель рода Пуцыкович был наездником. Однако такое прозвище могли дать и человеку, подверженному какой-либо болезни."

Personally, I find Stankiewicz's first etymology a bit more plausible, and his second one and the Ukrainian one as a bit of a stretch. Your mileage may vary.

As far as form goes, it conforms to both Polish and Ukrainian.

Should also point out that both Stankiewicz and the Russian site are only guessing. Without actual documentation, that is the best anyone can do.

dominicB

How did you come to the conclusion that PUCYKOWICZ is a rare Polish surname and originally from the Krosno area?

gumishu

Are you claiming PUCYKOWICZ is a Polish noble surname? I don't see how those comments relate to the question. Can you please elaborate?

Thank you all for your time and assistance

I always thought OWICZ was Ruthenian in origin which would be Belarusian and Ukrainian. I have some family too from the Kresy region with UK ending surnames. They were probably Polanized ruthenians. I think if you spoke Polish and were Catholic that made you a Pole. But can you be Orthodox and be Polish...? Historically? Or is a Catholic a Pole and an Orthodox a Russian? It seems languages and religions influenced people's national identity somewhat.

The distribution of the name in Poland. See this map:

moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/pucykowicz.html

Of course, these people may have settled there after the war, coming from what is now the Ukraine. Only documentation will reveal what the case was.


Essentially yes. That is what polonification means.


Yes, that is possible, and it did happen, though historically people who were Orthodox were less likely to identify as Poles, unless they were Russified Poles. It's actually pretty complicated and depended on the historical period in question.


Very much so. Ethnicity as we understand it now is a relatively recent development, from the Romantic Era. For Ruthenians and Ukrainians, the idea of ethnicity didn't catch on until much later. Most people just considered themselves "tutejsi", or "people from around these parts". And others had no problems with considering themselves members of more than one ethnic group.

@faithfulpilgrim

Mainly the ending. If it were Russian anglicized it would be pucykovich. To find out if you have royal polish blood you'd need to search records in krakow, churches, marraige certificates, etc or contact someone in pl who deals with thus.

My grandfathers surname was Gryszczuk any ideas on the meaning ?

Gryszczuk is a Ruthenian/Ukrainian surname - it means a son of Gregory (Griszka -> Griszczuk - Griszka is sort of a diminutive/nickname of Gregory)

Would many Poles in modern day eastern Poland descend from Ruthenians, wholly or partly? Was there a population in a Polands east historically that would be a transitioning people's where lechites and Ruthenians over lap?

Many famous "Poles by nationality" we're ethnically Ruthenian. Tadeusz Kościuszko is a great example.

@Krakowiak

I think it would be impossible to find a Polish person who did not have a "Ruthenian" ancestor as recently as five or six generations back. Or anyone living in Belarus or the Ukraine that did not have a recent Polish ancestor. The populations have been in intimate contact with each other for many centuries.

If you are talking about the languages, then there was an very large zone of overlap for centuries that included all of what is now Belarus and most of what is now the Ukraine, as well as the southern edge of what is now Lithuania and the easternmost parts of what is now Poland. The Belarusan and Ukrainian languages were highly influenced by Polish. Polish less so by either.

As for settlement patterns, many Poles settled in the east and many easterners settled in the west. Ethnicity was a lot more fluid at times, and was not necessarily mutually exclusive.

You need to be aware that modern's Poland borders had been moved significantly to the west.
It means that what you term eastern Poland today had been a central Poland about (approximately) 70 years ago.


- Lechties is no an ethnical term, it is not a term that had been used as far as we can tell - historically. It is a part of the national mythology created in the 19th century by idealistic writers, poets and historians while Poland had no state.

- Ruthenias is a name for a diverse group of people that had been living within borders of the Poland-Lithuanian Union. Their main characteristic was their religion-eastern-orthodoxy. It means that there had been a lot of mixing and honesty your question in the historical context makes no sense. If you're after some PURE DNA marker - you're wasting your time.


So much so that I question if those are really languages rather than a local version of the Polish language.

Indeed. A lot of our ideas about ethnicity evolved around that time. People from before that time had very different concepts of identity.


Very true. Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusans and Ukrainians are part of a continuous gene pool that stretches across northern Europe. There are no clear genetic dividing lines, and there are certainly no "pure" populations anywhere in Europe. Even highly endogamous groups like the Jews and Gypsies have an enormous admixture of European genetic material.

That would be incorrect. They are distinctly Eastern Slavic languages that have been highly influenced by Polish, to about the same degree that English has been influenced by Norman French. That doesn't make them dialects of Polish, any more than English is a dialect of French.

Who is a Pole? Make makes someone Polish?

People ask questions about surnames on this thread and get told the origin and meaning of their surname. Like the person above with the surname Gryszczuk it's ruthenian but that doesn't make it not Polish. That person could be 100% Polish.

It's very complicated. But the language and religion of one's ancestors have a lot to do with it. And nowadays, national borders and citizenship.


That's perfectly correct. And they could also have considered themselves 100% Ruthenian, as well. Or he might have identified as Polish, and his brother identified as Ruthenian. Or he might have identified as Ruthenian as a child, and then later as a Pole.

definitely not local forms of Polish, no Ironside.

Poland name research - discussion continues: https://polishforums.com/genealogy/name-mean-83663/