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| To: David_Smith@spartanstores.com, who wrote: ...My grandfather was born Jan Waclaw Rosiewicz. He changed his name to John W. Smith shortly after moving to the United States. He died long before I was born. Can you give me any information on the origin of this name? I believe he was from Eastern Poland. Rosiewicz is a rather difficult name because it could derive from a number of different sources. If we play it straight and analyze it just as it appears, Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut says Rosiewicz comes from the root rosa, dew. The -iewicz ending means son of, and son of dew doesn't seem too sensible at first, but I suppose Rosa could be used as a nickname, in which case the son of part is not so odd. The problem is, there are other, similar-sounding rooms this might come from. For instance, there is the feminine name Rose, which appears in various languages as Rosa, Roza, might be relevant; in Polish it's Ro~z|a, accent over the o, dot over the z, prnounced roughly ROOH-zhuh. Son of Roza makes good sense, and it's not impossible for Rosiewicz to come from that name. Also, Poles and Ukrainians often took the first syllable of common first names and added suffixes to it to form nicknames, so that Ros- could come from first names such as Roscislaw, Robert, Roch, etc. If so, Rosiewicz would mean son of Ros, and Ros could be short for any of several names. Rymut doesn't discuss these possible derivations, but to me they seem well worth considering. As of 1990 there were 231 Polish citizens named Rosiewicz. Here is a breakdown of where they live by province:
Remember, this means there were, for instance, 19 people by that name in Warsaw province, not just in the city of Warsaw. I wish I could give you more details such as addresses and first names, but the Polish government agency that controls the database from which the Polish Surname Directory was compiled will not release more info. What I give above is all that's available. All that data tells us is that this name appears all over Poland, north, south, east and west. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings RZESZUTKO - STA~POR - STOMPOR - Z*ESZO~TKO To: Steve Stapor, SStapor@aol.com Here is information on the distribution for the names you asked about:
This name has several sounds that can be spelled more than one way, so it's not surprising that more than one spelling of the name is possible. Keep your eyes open for the spelling Rzeszo~tko -- in 1990 there were 374 Poles who spelled the name that way, with the largest numbers in Bielsko-Biala (42), Krakow (72), Nowy Sacz (52), and Tarnow (45) provinces. The spellings Z*eszutko and Z*eszo~tko are also phonetically similar and therefore possible (note, I'm using Z* to stand for Z with a dot over it); they seem to be rare these days, but you might run into those spellings in old records... It's interesting that a slightly different form of this name, Rzeszutek, is even more common -- 1,763 Poles as of 1990! As for Sta~por, it is normally spelled in Polish with the nasal a, which sounds like om in this case -- so the name is pronounced as if it were spelled Stompor. So sometimes you will see it spelled Sta~por, sometimes Stompor, and in this country as Stapor without the tail on the A. Here are the numbers for the spellings Sta~por and Stompor in Poland as of 1990.
...I am at something of a loss in tracing Polish ancestry earlier then the late 1700s. Have you published or do you know of a book that might give me some ideas? Tracing ancestry before the late 1700's can be tough because in a lot of cases, records just don't exist -- especially if your ancestors weren't noble. In theory one can trace peasant ancestors back to, say, the late 1600's, but in fact a lot of parishes didn't start keeping track of peasants' births, deaths, and marriages until later. Also, it seems every time you read the history of a parish in Poland there'll be mention of the church burning down, sometimes twice or three times, till they finally were able to build them of stone or brick -- and usually when there was a fire, the records went up in smoke too. And of course you have to factor in the ravages of war. So there just may not be much in the way of surviving records to find. Rosemary Chorzempa's Polish Roots mentions some search strategies that people tell me they find helpful. The LDS's research guide on Poland might be useful, too. Other than that, I don't know of much in print. I know a couple of qualified authors are working on books that will probably be very helpful, but it's hard to say when those books will finally be finished. So except for Rosemary's book, and possibly the chapter on Poland in Angus Baxter's In Search of Your European Roots, I don't know of much that has appeared in print that would really help you. There are many good articles in the PGSA's Bulletins and Journal, of course, but that's not exactly what you're looking for. Sorry I couldn't help! William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings SAMOVITZ - SIMOVITZ - SOMOVITZ To: djs36@juno.com, who wrote: ...I got your address thru the GenPol newslist. I need some help, I have been doing genealogy research for the past two years. I have been unable to find any information in Poland on my grandfather family, due to not knowing the actual spelling of their name. My grandfather David arrived in the US about 1885. For the next thirty years records show them using the following names: Somovitz, Simovitz, Samovitz. In 1915 they changed the name to Seaman. In 1908 my great-grandmother was buried under the name of Sumovitz. The family is from the area between Lomza and Bialystok, Poland. I hope you can give me some idea of how the name would have been written in the old country. Well, the last part of the name is not difficult. -ovitz is a Germanized spelling of the common Polish (and Belarusian and Russian) suffix -owicz, which means son of. Much of Poland was ruled for long periods by Germans, and most Poles emigrated through German ports and thus had their papers filled out by Germans; so it's not unusual to see Polish names spelled according to German phonetic values. We can say with some confidence that in the old country the name originally ended with -owicz, and the other spelling is surely a result of later German (or possibly English) influence. But the first part is harder, and I really can't give you a definitive answer. Samowicz, Simowicz, Somowicz, and Sumowicz are all possible, but none of those is a common name by any stretch of the imagination. Of them all, Samowicz is the one that strikes me as most likely; it would mean son of Sam, literally, with Sam- being a nickname or shortened form of other name, possibly Samuel or any of several ancient Slavic names with the root sam- (meaning alone, oneself). As of 1990 there were only 13 Polish citizens named Samowicz; 6 lived in Warsaw province, 2 in Elblag province (not too far west of the Bialystok/Lomza area), 1 in Katowice province, and 4 in Lodz province. As of 1990 there were only 2 Poles named Simowicz (1 in Bielsko-Biala province, 1 in Katowice province, so both are in southern Poland, quite some distance from your ancestral area). There was no listing for Somowicz or Sumowicz at all. So if we go by the numbers, it would seem Samowicz is the most likely form. Polish a and o sound rather similar and are often confused, so it's not at all hard to imagine how Samowicz might sometimes come to be spelled Somowicz; it's a little harder to understand how Simowicz and Sumowicz came about, but let's face it, vowels are not reliable when we look at the ways Polish names can vary in spelling, especially under foreign influence. One other factor worth mentioning is that in Polish the simple s sound often gets confused with the sz (which sounds like our "sh"), especially in the part of the country you're talking about. So it is quite possible that the name was originally Szamowicz (borne by 15 Polish citizens as of 1990, 3 in Legnica province and 12 in Olstzyn province, which is also in northeastern Poland) or Szumowicz (115 bearers as of 1990, including 7 in Bialystok province and 6 in Lomza province). One thing that speaks against this is that German can represent the sz sound -- a Polish name Szumowicz would tend to become Schumovitz in German spelling. But again, in that part of Poland there is a dialect tendency to pronounce sz as s, so it could have been pronounced like Sumowicz and spelled Sumovitz by Germans even though the proper Polish form was Szumowicz. In summary, I'd have to say Samowicz seems the most likely form, but I can't positively rule out the others, and I feel Szamowicz and Szumowicz need to be taken into account too. I would approach it by saying Let's look for Samowicz first, and deal with the others only if that form leads nowhere. By the way, have you heard of the Polish Genealogical Society of the Northeast, aka PGS-Connecticut? The reason I ask is a great many of its members come from the Bialystok-Lomza area, so they may be able to give you some really good insights and leads. It's certainly worth a try. You can write them at this address: PGS-NE, 8 Lyle Rd., New Britain CT 06053. It is even possible that the president, Jonathan Shea (whom I consider the most knowledgeable man in the country regarding Polish genealogy) will recognize the name and be able to give you some idea where exactly to look. I can't promise that, but I've seen Jonathan do that often enough to know he's a good man to have on your side in such a quest. If you'd like to learn more, visit this Website: http://members.aol.com/pgsne/index.htm William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings SELIGA - SZELIGA To: Catherine Mariano CLM312@compuserve.com, who wrote: ...I would appreciate any information on my maiden surname, Seliga ... It has been rumored in our family that the name may have been changed during immigration to the US, possibly from Szeliga. Seliga is a rather common name in Poland, as of 1990 there were some 1,501 Poles by that name; they lived all over the country, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Warsaw (372), Lodz (162), Radom (152), and Skierniewice (355), and thus in the center of Poland. If that spelling is correct, I would think it probably derives from the German word selig, blessed, fortunate. But it is entirely possible that this is a variant form of the name Szeliga, an extremely common name (4,562 Poles as of 1990). There is some question about the origin of Szeliga, some experts suspect it derives from German Schell(ig), a noisy person. Szeliga is also the name of a prominent coat of arms in Poland, which may have something to do with its popularity as a surname. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings ...Could you tell me how many Siwinski's there were in the 1990 Polish Census and their distribution? As of 1990 there were 3,315 Siwinski's. Here is the distribution:
This seems to suggest a primary concentration in the central provinces of Warsaw, Konin, and Lodz. I'm not sure how much we can make of that, but that's the only pattern I see. ...Any suggestions as to the origins/meaning of the surname (from the Polish word Siwa meaning grey?). It seems pretty likely that's the ultimate root. The immediate derivation is tougher to figure out. It could well derive from a place name, but there don't seem to be a lot of candidates on the map: Siwki in Lomza province is possible, perhaps also Siwianka in Warsaw province; I could see either or both of those place names taking an adjectival form Siwin~ski, meaning person from Siwki or Siwianka. There are words such as siwien~ which mean the same as siwosz, a grey-haired fellow, also a greyish horse. A word siwien~ki also means greyish, especially something or someone that's attractively grey. So it's tough saying exactly what the name came from directly, but clearly it got started due to some kind of association with a greyish person or animal or thing, or a place with a name derived from such an association. Also, with 3000+ Poles by that name, it's highly likely the name arose in several different places, so this Siwin~ski might have gotten the name from one association, that from another, and so on. ...BTW I have recently had the pleasure of discovering the wealth of information contained in the Australian National Archives (fortunately in my home town), esp. in the area of post 1901 Naturalisation (all indexed on surname !!!) and post WW2 migration of displaced persons (one of which was my father). They have a WWW address (www.aa.gov.au) which details their holdings fairly well... I may even find the time to write a short piece on what's available there (and in the National Library) ;-) If you do, you know who'd like to see it and publish it! William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings To: Hank Skorny, hanks@microsoft.com, who wrote: ...I would love to find out any information that you might have about the name Skorny. As of 1990 there were only 72 Poles named Skorny, living in the provinces of Warsaw (2), Bielsko-Biala (1), Gdansk (1), Katowice (8), Koszalin (1), Krakow (5), Legnica (2), Opole (5), Slupsk (19), Walbrzych (3), Wroclaw (25). There are a couple of roots this name might come from. Many names beginning with sko~r- (i.e., with an accent over the o, making it sound like "oo" in "cook") derive from the word meaning "skin, hide," and some common surnames come from this, including Sko~ra (7,187 Poles by that name), Sko~rka (2,167), Sko~rnicki (390) -- but the name Sko~rny doesn't show up in the list, so I guess as of 1990 there were no Poles by that name. That doesn't mean there never was, some names have died out after members emigrated. Anyway, if the name Sko~rny (which is an adjective meaning "of, pertaining to the skin") originally had that accent but it was dropped after the family left Poland, that's the root that's probably relevant -- perhaps an ancestor worked with skins or hides. But there's also the root skor- meaning "swift, quick," and there is a dialect word skorny (no accent) that means "swift, quick" -- that also makes sense as a term for a guy who did things quickly. It can be very hard to tell which root a particular name comes from, and this is such a case. You'd need records from Poland to suggest which of the two is the more likely derivation. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings To: dsolarek@toledolink.com, who wrote: ...I believe that I previously asked you for the distribution of the surname Solarek by province, which was provided. However, despite my best efforts, I cannot find the message which details this distribution. Will you be so kind as to reproduce this information? Oh, I don't think that would be too much trouble. Here it is:
Looks like Lodz, Poznan, Sieradz, and Skierniewce provinces are the real hotbeds as far as this name goes: kind of a narrow band right in the center of the country. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings To: jstawski@frontiercorp.com, who wrote: ...I am currently researching my family history and any info you can provide on the origin or meaning of my surname would be greatly appreciated. My surname is Stawski and my relatives came from the Warsaw area in the early 1900's. Polish surname expert Kazimierz Rymut lists two basic roots that can give rise to this surname: one is the word staw, which can mean pond or joint, and the other is the verb stawac~ sie~, to become. Of these, I imagine the noun in the meaning of pond is most often related to surnames in Staw-, because in many European languages we see surnames derived from words denoting bodies of water -- usually because a person lived near one, or lived in a community named for one. There are, for instance, at least 5 Polish villages named Staw, 3 named Stawek, 7 named Stawki, and 2 named Stawy -- and the surname Stawski could easily have started out as signifying that a person came from, owned, or otherwise was connected with any of them! So while we can make a pretty good guess what the name started out meaning, it's impossible to tell just from the name which particular pond or place of the pond a given Stawski family was connected with. As is usually the case with a surname that could have gotten started in many different places, Stawski is a rather common name. As of 1990 there were some 3,962 Polish citizens named Stawski. Looking over the numbers, I see no real pattern to their distribution; the provinces that have the largest numbers (Warsaw 267, Bydgoszcz 271, Kalisz 223, Lublin 226, Lodz 320, Poznan 353, Torun 324) are simply provinces with larger populations. I know this probably isn't a lot of help to you, but I hope you may at least get a little satisfaction from knowing what the name means and how it probably got started. I wish you the best of luck with your research! William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings S~WIERCZEWSKI To: Joseph R. Swierczewski jski@icanect.net, who wrote: ...I am interested in Swierczewski which is my name. Can you assist with possible source for information ? Most Polish names ending in -ewski or -owski are from place names ending in -ew, -ewo, -ow-, -owo, that sort of thing. In this case I would expect the name Swierczewski to have started as meaning "person from Swiercze or Swierczewo" or "person who often traveled to Swiercze/Swierczewo," or if the family was noble, "owner of Swiercze or Swierczewo." Unfortunately, there are several villages in Poland with names that would work, including Swierczewo in Szczecin province, Swiercze in Czestochowa province, and several places name Swierczow -- all could yield the name Swierczewski. Those places, in turn, probably got their names from some association with crickets (s~wierszcz) or spruce trees (s~wierk). This is a very common name in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 2,338 Poles named Swierczewski. They lived all over the country, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Warsaw (669), Ciechanow (80), Czestochowa (87), Katowice (93), Lodz (88), Ostroleka (82), and Siedlce (251). I wish I could give you more details, such as first names and addresses, but the total for Poland and the breakdown by province is the only info I have access to. So that is a little information on the name; but without detailed research on where your family came from and such factors, it's impossible to say anything more definite than that the surname almost certainly indicates the family came from a place named Swiercze or Swierczewo or Swierczow. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings To: Ajzep Ajzep@aol.com, who wrote: ...Could you please tell me the origin of my maiden name, Szymula? Szymula is one of many names formed from the standard first name Szymon = English Simon. Poles love to take the first few sounds of a first name, cut off the rest, then add a bewildering variety of prefixes. Many of these prefixes don't have any real meaning we can give in English -- let's just say that where English has only one common suffix to add to names, the long e sound (as in Johnny, Davey, Mikey, Eddy) Polish has dozens. -Ula is one of those. It's more common in the eastern part of the country than the west, but it's hard to pin down any more closely than that. As of 1990 there were 1,154 Polish citizens named Szymula. They lived all over the country, but the largest numbers were in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (72), Jelenia Gora (70), Krakow (184), Lublin (191), Rzeszow (47), and Tarnobrzeg (132) -- most of which are in the southern and southeastern part of Poland, which is more or less to be expected. Other than to say that the name originated as a kind of nickname for Simon and that it is most common in the south and southeastern part of Poland, there's not too much that can be said about this name. But for what it's worth, I hope this is some help to you, and I wish you the best of luck with your research. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings WAN~CZYK - WIN~CZYK To: Kirk Van Ness KCVN@webtv.net, who wrote: ...My fiancee has shown an interest in finding her Polish roots so I thought a good start might be to find out the origin of the Surname of Wanczyk or may have been spelled Winczyk at one time , we are not completely sure. Thank you in advance! Wanczyk and Winczyk are both perfectly good surnames. Wan~czyk (using n~ to represent the n with an accent over it) was the name of 690 Polish citizens as of 1990, living all over the country, but with the largest numbers in the provinces of Czestochowa (84), Nowy Sacz (164), Rzeszow (43), Walbrzych (8), and Wroclaw (41). These provinces are all in southcentral and southwestern Poland, in its current boundaries... As to its origins, -czyk is a suffix usually meaning son of, and Wan- is a name root from the first name Iwan (Ivan), the East Slavic equivalent of Polish Jan (= English John). When I say East Slavic, I mean basically the languages Belarussian, Russian, and especially Ukrainian. So Wan~czyk is essentially an East Slavic name meaning the same as English Johnson! If you're not familiar with the history of Poland, you might wonder what a name of East Slavic origin is doing in Poland. But for centuries Poland ruled much of Belarus and Ukraine, and the peoples mixed, to the extent that purely Polish names are often found in Ukraine, and Ukrainian names are often found in Poland; the closer you get to Poland's eastern borders, the more often you run into names of East Slavic origin. To mix things up more, after World War II Poland's boundaries were shifted westward, so that it no longer ruled Belarus and western Ukraine. And many people of Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Lithuanian origin whose loyalty was questionable were forced to pack up and move, by the millions, to western Poland, to resettle the lands millions of Germans had been deported from. Ukrainians blame the Poles bitterly for this -- personally, I think dear old Uncle Joe Stalin is the real villain. Anyway, because of this we see names that are clearly of Ukrainian and Lithuanian derivation in western Poland, all the way across the country from where you'd expect to find them! The reason they're there now is the post-war relocation -- before 1945 Ukrainian names were far less common, at least in western Poland. (As I said, what are now the eastern provinces of Poland have always been a mixed bag, in terms of language and names.) Win~czyk is a far less common. As of 1990 there were 52 Polish citizens by that name, living in the provinces of Bielsko-Biala (2), Gorzow (28), Jelenia Gora (2), Katowice (3), Konin (2), Lodz (1), Torun (14). I don't see any real pattern to that distribution, except that the name is found almost exclusively in western Poland. The probable derivation is from Wincenty = Vincent, so that Win~czyk would mean roughly Vinnie's son. The root win- also can derive from the words for guilt, fault and vine, wine, but the suffix -czyk, meaning son of, strongly suggests derivation from a first name, and that's why I think son of Vincent is the likely meaning. Now, that's all true if these are separate names, and you're just not sure which spelling is correct. But I should add that there is a way Winczyk could just be a varint spelling of Wan~czyk. In Polish the combination -an~- sounds almost like English ine, so that Wan~czyk sounds almost like vine-chick (Polish w is pronounced like our v). An English-speaking official, for instance, who heard a Pole (or Ukrainian) say My name is Wan~czyk just might have written down Winczyk because he was confused by the sounds. This is kind of far-fetched, but it is possible, and I thought I should mention it -- especially because Win~czyk in its own right is such a rare name. I can't help thinking the odds are the name should be Wan~czyk. I hope your fiancee finds this information interesting. And of course if she wants to learn more -- well, she could always get my book! (Sorry, an author quickly learns never to pass up a chance to plug his books!). William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings ...What might be the meaning of the name Wojtowicz? I am grateful for any knowledge you might contribute. The suffix -owicz means son of, so the key is what wojt- means. There are two possibilities. In most cases it would come from the root wo~jt, which is a term for a kind of village official or headman, one who was in charge of a village or group of villages. The exact duties varied in different times and places, but I suppose you could say he was the "go to guy" in rural communities, one who took care of implementing local rules and policies. So the surname was probably applied originally to the sons or kin of the local wo~jt. The root can also come from the first name Wojciech (pronounced roughly VOJ- chek) which is usually rendered as "Albert" in English because the names were historically linked. Thus Wojtowicz could also mean son of Wojciech/Albert. I would think this particular surname would more often refer to the official, but we can't rule that in some instances it might refer to the first name. This is a very common name in Poland -- as of 1990 there were 5,319 Polish citizens named Wojtowicz, spread all over the country. William F. "Fred" Hoffman, Author, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings |
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