USA, Canada / Are there any Polish people in Florida? [311]

This is only a partial listing, but may be the place to start….
Vero Beach has an unusually large (for Florida) concentration of Pol-Ams.
Polish American Social Club of Vero Beach, Florida, Inc. 7500 North US 1,
Vero Beach, FL 32967
PO Box 6508, Vero Beach, FL 32961-6508
Tel: 561-778-0039
Florida. Sounds of the South at the Polish American Society, 1343 Beach Dr. SE., St. Petersburg, Fla., dinner 2:30-4:00 p.m., $7.50; music 4:00-7:00 p.m., $5 members, $7 non-members. For details call (727) 526-6835.

Florida. Northern Sounds at the Polish American Pulaski Association, Holiday, Fla., 7:00-11:00 p.m. Check locally for details.
Polish-American people and activities may also be encountered at the Polonian parishes of OL of Częstochowa in Pompano Beach and St Joseph’s in Davies, FL.

There is also a Polish club in Titusville.

Food / Polish Milk Soup [72]

Milk soups are an excellent way to use up the preceding day's leftover noodles or any kind of pasta, cooked rice, buckwheat or barley groats.

To 2 pint hot milk add 1-3 cups of any of the above, and let your diners either salt or sweeten it to taste. A pat of butter may be added.

If there's nothing leftover from the day before, into the boiling milk pour egg-batter in a thin strema to make lane kluski: 1 egg beaten with a heaped tablespoon flour a pinch of salt and just enough liquid (boiling water or milk) to get a nice pourable batter. Cook several minutes and serve as above.

Food / Polish Potatoes [48]

Nowadays many people process raw, peeled, cuebd ptoatoes in a blender or processor instead of the knuckle-scraping manual grating. These can then be mixed with an egg and a bit of floor to form pyzy or kluski śląskie and boiled in salted water. The same mixture can be fried in lard or oil for potato pancakes (placki kartoflane). Pursits claim: Jeśli nie tarte to gówna warte (meaning only the hand-grated kind are any good).

Genealogy / Polish surnames - Origin and Meaning [29]

The -ski, -cki and -dzki in Polish surnames are adjectival endings (that is why they must agree with the person they describe: Mańkowski for males and Mańkowska for females). In the majority of cases, these are surnames of toponymic origin, ie they were derived from the name of a region, town, village or, in the case of nobility, estate.

In general, the -ki ending surnames were used by more people of noble stature than other surnames. In the olden days a nobleman owning the village and/or estate of Dąbków (Oakville) would have been known as Jan z Dąbkowa (John of Oakwood), but in time it got adjectivalised into Jan Dąbkowski (in English tradition the ‘of’ got dropped and it became simply John Oakwood).

But peasants living in the village would also be referred to by the Dąbkowski nickname which eventually evolved into a bona fide surname..
According to rough estimates, at various times in Polish history up to 10% of the population enjoyed noble status. The percentage among the bearers of ski-ending names would be somewhat higher.

The main reason for many non-ski-type surnames amongst the nobility was the practice of ennobling entire villages in exchange for defending the local prince’s castle or performing some service to the Crown. We therefore got a whole class of impoverished gentry who differed little from peasants in a neighbouring village in terms of wealth but had a coat of arms and sword to prove their noble status. This was especially true of the Podlasie region along the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian borderlands. That area’s castle-towns were frequently attacked by the pagan Jadvingians and the local peasantry had to be enlisted to fend off the assault.

Genealogy / Surnames Gall / Figura / Odrowaz [34]

The surname Petin probably started out as the French Pétin. Most likely many wounded Napoleonic soldiers were nursed back to health by Polish maidens and decided to settle down and start a family. The name appears derived from the French verb péter (roughly pronoucned payTAY) which means... to give off a loud cracking sound, let 'er rip or, to put it mildly, to break wind. The related word péteur means farter or sorry individual, a miserable excuse for a human being. On Polish soil the etymology was not widely known, as only the upper classes knew French.

You may be interested to know that Odrowąż is the name of a Polish coat of arms whose origin is quite unusual. In genral Polish coats of arms are surrounded by medieval legends explaining the circumsatnces of their emergence. The rather gory legend surrounding the Odrowąż coat of arms is said to go back to a hand-to-hand encounter that took place in the Middle Ages in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic) between a Polish knight and a pagan warrior. The knight became so frustrated that he could not topple the resisting pagan that he grabbed him by his bushy moustache and ripped it off, nose and all, impaled it on an arrow and presented it to his lord as a trophy. The lord was so revolted at the sight of the mutilated noseless pagan that he forced the knight to use the Odrowąż coat of arms which means something like "moustache-ripper" and depicts what is supposed to symbolise a white moustache impaled on a stylized arrow set against a blood-red shield. The heraldic device may be viewed online at:

republika.pl/akromer/armorial_pocz.html

Genealogy / Surnames Gall / Figura / Odrowaz [34]

There are more than 5,500 Figuras in Poland, the major stronghold beiong in southern Poland's contiguous Bielsko-Biała. Katowice and Nowy Sącz areas. Figura is obviously of Latin origin and in Poland meant a religious statue or a bigshot /celebrity).

Gall is used by only 268 Poles. It means Gaul, ancient forerunner of the Frenchman. The first chroncler of Poland was called Gallus Anonimus (the Anonymous Gaul).

Genealogy / Polish surnames - Origin and Meaning [29]

You may be interested to know that there is only 1 person in Poland currently using the Szpital surname, but 31 people are named Szpitalak (a patroynmic meaning son of the bloke called Szpital).

Szpital nowadays means hospital but back when the surname was emerging it had a broader range of meanings including: poorhouse, homeless shelter, hostel for travellers, etc. BTW etymlogically the words host, hospital, hotel, hospice as well as the Germanic Gast, the English guest and the Polish gość all go back to the same Indo-European root.

Genealogy / Polish surnames - Origin and Meaning [29]

Polish and probably all otehr european surnames following a similar pattern. Polish ones are based on ia the following:
1) Occupation (eg Piekarz = baker)
2) Place of origin (Brzeziński = the bloke from Brzezina/Birchville)
3) Characteristic (Cimięga = duffer, clumsy oaf)
4) Common household and barnyard objects, animals, food, etc. -- typical of peasant names: £opata = spade; Wróbel = Sparrow)
5) Nationality (Niemiec = German)
6) Polonised foreign names (Michejda derived from Scottish McCleod) -- BTW itinerant Scots traders were once so common in the sprawling Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that a (now obnolete) English saying once referred to "a Scots pedlar's pack in Poland" - meaning everything but the kitchen sink.

History / Is there a list of those in the Polish Army during WWII? [193]

Try faxing your inquiry to the following military-research bureau: Prof. Krzysztof Komorowski, Wojskowe Biuro Badań Historycznych; tel. (+48 22) 682 5873.
Be sure to include as much vital data as you possess.

Genealogy / Justewicz and Szawatkowski [11]

Only two people in Poland sign themselves Justewicz and a mere 12 share the Szawatkowski surname. That makes it much easier to trace long-lost relations than with more popular surnames.

Genealogy / Any information about Dziedzic Surname? [35]

A nominal fee is charged. Send me email for details.

Genealogy / Polish & Prussian/German town name cross-reference. [100]

A partial lsit is found at:
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niemieckie_nazwy_polskich_miejscowo%C5%9Bci

Genealogy / Looking for a person living in Warsaw - any online phone book in Poland? [33]

A major concentration of Kłopotowski family members is in the Greater Warsaw area. Another is to the NE in and around the city of Białystok.

Genealogy / Leszczynski surname, Balcerzak [51]

Lescinskis appears to be the Lithuanian translation of Leszczyński. The latter incidentally was the name of one of Poland's kings.

FYI the following people are researching the Leszczyński surname:
Leszczyński -- Montpellier & Carmaux, FRANCE; Strzelno, POLAND -- laurent.leszczynski@wanadoo.fr -- Feb/05
Leszczynski ---- BrennaJne@aol.com -- Feb/98
Leszczynski ---- gbarnes@unicomp.net -- Oct/96
Leszczynski -- Bielsk k. Płocka -- john@prodicus.com -- Aug/98
Leszczynski -- POLAND > SWEDEN -- k1mart@cox.net -- Sep/03
Leszczynski ---- kathyrt@dreamscape.com -- Mar/99
Leszczynski -- Pennsylvania, USA -- Keepersmom@worldnet.att.net -- Jan/98
Leszczynski -- Rekitnica -- kowallek@iglou.com -- May/04
Leszczynski -- Biechów, POLAND > Depew, New York; Toledo, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan, USA -- meliasz@em-group-llc.com -- Nov/02
Leszczynski ---- mike@eliasz.com -- Mar/07
Leszczynski -- GALICIA -- ripr@pipeline.com -- Mar/01
Leszczynski; Leszczyński ---- malachowo@yoyo.pl -- Apr/01
Leszczynski; Leszczyński -- Bereza Kartuska i okolice -- p_towpik@poczta.onet.pl -- Nov/00

Genealogy / Any information about Dziedzic Surname? [35]

Yes, more than 20,000 in Poland share the Dziedzic surname. The biggest concentrations are found in southern Poladn in the Katowice, Bielsko-Biała Kraków, Tarnów and Rzeszów areas. Two different coats of arms accompany the related surname Dziedzicki. For more information please contact resaerch60@gmail