Genealogy /
Czajka name? And Poland questions. [25]
This is one vast and highly complicated realm which would take volumes to explain. In the briefest of terms, Czajka was never a clan-name but a surname that started out as a nickname. Why someone was nicknamed Czajka is anyone's guess. He could have resembled the lapwing (tufted hair, beaky nose, beady eyes) or he could have lived in a place locally known as a lapwing nesting ground or maybe he hailed from some such locality as Czajki, Czajków or Czajkowo.
People usually became members of noble clans through heredity, marrying into one or adoption for a variety of reasons. Since there were two noble lines of the Czajkas, perhaps each received their coat of arms for different reasons. In most cases, only a minority of your namesakes (ie people named Czajka) enjoyed noble rank -- from several to a dozen percent in most cases. The percentage of nobles was normally higher amongst the bearers of ski-ending names.
And finally, no-one can conclusively say Czajka is Polish or Russian or Ukrainian or Slovak or anything else, because it could be any of them and then some. One example -- a Russian soldier surnamed Чайка was sent in the 1790s to help keep the Poles in check, but he fell in love with a lovely Polish lass (aren't they all?!), married and settled down. Naturally in Poland he spelt his name Czajka, most likely converted to Catholicism and when he fathered a child it had Czajka in its baptismal certificate. After even 2 generations, 3 at most, nobody in that family regarded themselves as anything other than pure Polish.
I hope everything is now clear as mud!?
