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"Powiat’s and
Wola’s and Gro~d’s, Oh My!"
by William F. Hoffman, 107 Rush Haven Dr., The Woodlands
TX 77381-3228, WFHoffman@prodigy.net
Polish-Americans trying to trace their roots are often
reduced to shaking their heads and moaning "Why can’t these
guys just speak English?" As a linguist, of course, I find this
attitude rather narrow-minded—what would translators like me
do if everybody spoke English? Yet I must admit I understand the
feeling. Even the simplest records seem infested with terms that
either don’t appear in dictionaries, or, if they do, have definitions
that leave you scratching your head and saying "Huh?" Some of the worst offenders appear when you try to
decipher something as simple and obvious as the name of the place
your ancestor came from. Again and again you run into terms such
as okra~g and ziemia and obwo~d and gmina. With
commendable zeal you turn to a dictionary; but when you discover
that they all seem to mean "district" in English—well,
it is enough to make you forsake genealogy and take up something
less painful, perhaps bee-keeping or body-piercing. To be fair, Polish is no worse than any other language
in this regard. Imagine trying to explain to a Pole what a "shire" is,
why hillbillies live in a "holler," or why in Louisiana
a county isn’t a county, it’s a parish… The problem is, languages are not created from scratch
by precise, logical scientists determined to make each word concise
and unambiguous. They develop "on the run," as people come
up with terms that serve as verbal shorthand for the political, geographical,
economic, legal and cultural circumstances of their daily lives.
Since those circumstances vary from one place to the next, it’s
understandable that the terms for them don’t always translate
easily.
Civil Administrative Divisions: Forty Words That
All Mean "District"
It’s not too difficult to get a handle on the
terms for the largest administrative divisions, such as wojewo~dztwo, "province"—any
decent map shows the provinces, and functionally they equate reasonably
well to our states. In ancient times a wojewo~dztwo was the
territory ruled by a wojewoda, literally "war-leader" often
rendered with the Latin term palatinus (thus we also see palatinatus for wojewo~dztwo).
Once you have encountered the term for the same thing used by the
Russian Empire (gubernia), or the German terms Land or Provinz, it’s
not difficult to keep them straight. But what, is, say, a powiat?
The short answer is, a powiat was much like
our "county." And they will be again — the powiaty, abolished
in 1975, are being restored as part of an administrative reform,
effective at the beginning of 1999. (But of course they will not
have the same borders they had before 1975; they’ve been redrawn
from scratch — surely you didn’t expect otherwise? You
can find a map that shows the new powiaty at (http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/pro/plp1.html).
At any rate, the powiaty are the units into
which the wojewo~dztwa were/will be subdivided, much as our
states consist of counties. But this answer is too simple; if you
really want to understand what role the powiat plays in the
scheme of things, Bronisl~aw Chlebowski provided a good explanation
of this in the article he wrote for the entry "Powiat" in
the late-19th-century gazetteer Sl~ownik geograficzny Kro~lestwa
Polskiego i innych krajo~w sl~owian~skich. I believe it’s
worth translating and quoting in its entirety.
Powiat: in [Latin] documents also districtus,
regio, an administrative region encompassing a certain number
of administrative units known as gmina’s. Both
in the Kingdom of Poland and in adjacent provinces this division
is primarily of administrative and political significance. Other
districts [okre~gi] of greater or smaller size
(judicial, educational, electoral) have been created in relation
to other functions of governmental life, but they are usually
based on powiat divisions.
In our past the powiat originally appeared
as a judicial district, concentrating in itself the interests of
the landed class, which was, naturally, noble. The ancient divisions
of the country into ziemie [plural of ziemia, "land,
district"] had been based on certain natural boundaries which
separated and protected them, but often also on communality of
the distinct physical features of a given territory (Kujawy, L~e~czyca,
Podlasie), with which certain features of living conditions, as
well as economic, social, and often also political relations, were
connected. When the union of a certain number of ziemie gave
rise to a central princely authority—primarily a military
and judicial authority—along with the organs of that authority
there had to come about a division of the land into regions, called "castellanies," since
that organization’s main purpose was to keep the border gro~d’s [fortified
military camps] in good defensive condition. The centers of
these regions, the gr—d’s, were situated mostly along
the ziemia borders and especially national borders, so this
division was not advantageous for administrative purposes.
As the royal authority lost its original character
as a source of military leadership, there appeared on the one hand
the starosta’s, as administrators of royal estates
and representatives of the police and judicial authority, and on
the other hand the sa~dy ziemskie [courts of law deciding
disputes between nobles as well as between nobles and commoners],
as an expression of the state and region’s emancipation from
the authority of the princes.
With the development of manorial farmsteads came
growth in material wealth, and the szlachta [nobility] began
to develop political ambitions. The old princely institutions,
their representatives, and the administrative divisions associated
with them lost significance to the developing interests and institutions
of the szlachta—which, in view of the increased population,
required new divisions with new centers. The powiaty, the
centers of which are towns concentrating the varied affairs of
the landowners, suited these ambitions and needs. Some of the old
castellan gr—d’s disappeared as they lost significance,
others became the nuclei of urban settlements and centers of political
life of the powiaty. The old ziemie were divided
into powiaty.
The new division was not based on a law regulating
judicial, political and administrative relationships for the whole
country, but rather sprang up slowly on the basis of the conditions
of szlachta life. The ziemia courts, originating
in the 14th century, increased in relationship to the growth of
the nobles’ possessions, which required the creation of smaller
districts. For administrative purposes (the collection of taxes)
the division into powiaty, along with the ecclesiastic divisions
(parishes), served as a basis.
The most important factor, however, which gave
the powiat the character of an autonomous part of the governmental
organism, was the development of sejmiki [regional councils,
as contrasted with the national Sejm or congress] in
the 16th century. Both political life and the institutions and
divisions connected with it sprang up first in Mal~opolska [Little
Poland, roughly the southeastern part of modern Poland] and
Wielkopolska [Great Poland, roughly the northwestern part of
modern Poland] and spread from there to the other provinces.
Just as the gro~d courts of law continued
to exist and function alongside the ziemski courts, similarly
the okre~gi [districts] did not cease to exist, but rather
functioned alongside the powiaty and bore the ancient names
of the ziemie. [Bronisl~aw Chlebowski, Vol. 8, pp. 888-889].
Chlebowski has given us a lot of information here.
He has told us what a powiat is, what a gmina is—basically
a smaller, rural administrative unit—and what an okra~g is
(plural, okre~gi: a district set up for overseeing courts,
education, conscription, etc). But, more important, he gives us the
context in which these divisions were created.
It is essential to understand that when the history
of Poland as an entity began, it was a rather sparsely-settled country,
much of it heavily wooded, and most settlements that existed developed
within the walls of a fortified military camp known as a gro~d (this
same root appears in Russian place names, e. g., Leningrad,
and also as the Russian word for "city," gorod).
The administrative districts of the time were referred to with the
term ziemia, and in records dating back to the 14th-15th
centuries we often see that institutions such as courts of law were
characterized as either ziemski (of a ziemia) or grodzki (of
a gro~d).
But gradually Polish society developed into one divided
mainly into two classes. One class was the szlachta or
nobles—typically armed men on horseback, subject to the summons
of their overlords to ride to the defense of the land. For their
service they were given ownership of the soil and its produce, so
that they could fight as needed without worrying about having to
earn a living. But obviously they could not work the land—they
had to be free to go fight invaders at a moment’s notice. If
the nobles were responsible for raising crops, and an enemy invaded,
they might fight off the enemy, only to return home to a starving
land.
So another class developed, the peasants [wl~os~cianie or chrzes~cijanie or kmiecie],
who were bound to the soil owned by the szlachta and did the
actual work of farming. Most of Poland’s population fell into
one of these two categories; there were craftsmen, townsmen, freedmen,
and such, but they were a comparatively small percentage of the population,
at least during Poland’s early history.
Eventually the nobles realized that the more of their
land peasants were working on, the more wealth would be coming in.
So if the nobles owned wooded areas, and had more peasants than were
needed to work existing farms, the nobles told some of them to go
make clearings in those woods and create new revenue-producing settlements
there. This not only increased the nobles’ wealth, it also led
to population growth and shifts in where that population was concentrated.
The grody and ziemie had not been located with such
conditions in mind and were not well situated to deal with them;
so powiaty arose to meet the need, and gminy developed
as subdivisions of the powiat.
In the context of other activities such as running
courts of law, schools, conscription boards, etc., the political
authorities would set up an okra~g, sometimes called an obwo~d (both
come from words meaning "circuit, circle"). These were
created and their jurisdiction defined in terms of their functions,
much as in America a school district or water district may be created
with no particular correspondence to county lines.
When Poland was partitioned, three different empires
took over the administration of the regions they had seized. Often
the divisions they created followed the Polish ones fairly closely:
the German Kreis usually corresponds reasonably well to the
Polish powiat, as does the German Gemeinde to the Polish gmina. Under
the Russian Empire the uyezd functioned much as the powiat had,
and the gmina differed little from the Polish gmina.
Vital records in the Kronland of Galicia—the part of
southeastern Poland and western Ukraine seized by Austria—are
usually in Latin, and such terms as districtus seldom cause
anyone too much trouble.
Of course, nothing’s allowed to be too easy.
There are plenty of terms one does encounter in post-partition records
that can bewilder you. Still, if you understand the pre-partition
set-up in Poland, you stand a better chance of making sense of what
has happened since.
Terms Seen in Place Names
So much for terms designating political and administrative
divisions. There is another kind of term connected with place names
that causes many researchers trouble. Certain words show up again
and again in place names, so often that researchers can’t help
but realize they meant something specific, and it might be helpful
to know exactly what. Terms appearing in the names of many villages
and settlements include: Budy, Huta, Ka~ty, Kolonia, Kuz~nica,
L~azy, Ligota, Majdan, and Wo~lka.
At this point another entry written by Bronisl~aw
Chlebowski for the Sl~ownik geograficzny becomes helpful:
the one on Wola:
Wola, in
Latin libera villa, libertas, a name given to agricultural
villages, appearing as early as the first half of the 13th century
and constituting a separate category of settlements, by comparison
to others, in terms of the populace used to settle them and the
freedoms they were granted. The need to make use of empty wooded
lands belonging to princes, clergy, and knights, along with the
growth in numbers of free men, the end of the slave trade, and
the decreasing inflow of prisoners of war, brought about the founding
of villages with free populace, either Poles or new arrivals from
other countries, mainly Germans. These settlers were given plots
of land and exemption for a certain number of years (up to 20)
from all rents, fees, and taxes, and in most cases separate institutions
and charters based on German law. That free villages (Wola’s)
existed based on Polish law is attested by the fact of their conversion
to German law. Thus, for instance, in 1328 Wl~adysl~aw, Prince
of Dobrzyn~, conferred Chel~mno law on Wola and other villages
in Dobrzyn~ ziemia (Kodeks dypl. pol. II, 658). In
1363 King Kazimierz transferred the villages of Chothow and Wola,
property of Krzesl~aw, from Polish law to that of S~roda (Kodeks
Mal~op. III, 168).
An important indication as to the populace used
to settle these villages is given by a Latin-language document
which "Boliziarus dux Polonie" issued in 1255 to the
monastery in La~d: "We have granted [to the monks] the freedom
to locate a new free village between the river called Wirbec and
their monastery, which is to be called Libera villa and
is to be populated by Germans or free Poles with full German law" (Kodeks
Wielkop. No. 331, 600). In a document from 1325 that village
is called "Wolany alias Villa Gerlaci." Here we learn
that it was founded on land of the village of Dolany and populated
by German settlers. It is mentioned in a 1255 document endowing
the monastery in Krzyz|anowice: "Volia, which in the vernacular
is called Grochovisko" (Kodeks dypl. pol. I, 75). We
also encounter this Wola in an act of endowment for the monastery
in Zawichost in 1257. In Silesia and adjoining parts of Wielkopolska [Great
Poland] and Mal~opolska [Little Poland] such settlements
were called by the name Lgota or Ligota.
A document from 1369 mentions a Wola and Ligota near each other,
in the vicinity of Z|arnowiec (Kodeks Mal~op. III, 229).
Wola’s appear most frequently during
the 14th century in areas of northern and eastern Mal~opolska and
the eastern borderlands of Wielkopolska, in the 15th century in
Mazovia, Podlasie, and Rus~ Czerwona, and finally extended as far
as Volhynia. The name Wola sometimes disappeared, superseded
by the original name of the area, or sometimes it changed its second
part along with a change of owner or connection with a nearby settlement.
As the differences were gradually erased between free people and
those bound to the soil, the name Wola came to mean a newly
founded settlement, and one therefore free from taxes for a certain
period, just like Nowa Wies~ [which means literally "new
village"]. Also used in the same meaning was the name Wo~lka [a
diminutive form, literally a "little wola"]. [Bronisl~aw
Chlebowski, Vol. 13, pp. 774-775].
In this passage Chlebowski again comes through with
information not only on the meaning of the terms, but also the economic
and political situation that caused such names to get started. The
nobles’ efforts to augment their income led to the creation
of many new villages and settlements, and the names of those places
often reflect their origins. Thus Wola, W—lka, L~azy, Ligota, and Nowa
Wies~ are all names for newly-founded agricultural settlements
which were exempt from taxes until they’d had a chance to get
off to a good start.
The term Kolonia applied to new settlements
formed by subdividing large stretches of land belonging to folwarki [manorial
farmsteads]. At one time the kolonie were most often settled
by foreigners, especially Germans or Dutch—we see the term ole~dry, from
German Hollander, used for such "colonies." In records
the term kolonista was once applied mainly to those immigrants,
but after the abolition of serfdom it came to be used for Polish
farmers, too.
Most of the other terms I mentioned—Buda,
Huta, Ka~ty, Kuz~nica, and Majdan—involved wooded
areas initially settled to generate revenue by producing something
other than crops. The ready availability of wood was a key factor
in their operation, so clearing the trees first was not necessarily
part of the process, as it was in setting up a wola or l~azy. Now,
centuries later, all the woods may have long since been cleared
away and used up, and yet the villages that grew out of these settlements
may still bear names from these terms.
Chlebowski does such a good job explaining things,
I might as well quote his entries on these terms as well:
Buda, plural Budy [literally "shed"]: a
general geo-topographical name for settlements in forests or founded
on former wooded areas cleared of trees. Originally buda just
meant the residence of a settler in the forest, and in hunters’ terminology
a shelter of branches serving to hide the hunter from the prey
for which he was lying in wait. When settlements whose inhabitants
earned their living from hunting, bee-keeping, distilling pitch,
and other such industries, began to be converted into agricultural
settlements, they might retain their original name, although the
shelters gave way to huts. We find places named Buda most
often in the area of ancient Mazovia (the gubernia’s
of Warsaw, Pl~ock, and L~omz|a), although we encounter the name
all over the lands of ancient Poland, in connection with Mazovian
colonization. Compare Ruda, Majdan, Huta, etc. — [Vol.
1, p. 439].
Huta: from German HŸtte, a
structure set up to produce either metal from the appropriate ore,
or else glass. The name indicates that German settlers spread this
branch of industry among us. Huty were always established
in forests, in order to draw income from large wooded areas. In
addition to the general name Huta, such a settlement usually
bore a second name, from the name of the village on whose grounds
it was built, or more rarely from the name of its founder. As a
means of exploiting forests the huta represents a certain
step forward over buildings and majdan’s. A hucisko is
a site on which a dismantled huta once stood.— [Vol.
3, p. 229].
Ka~ty: these are settlements established
in woods for the purpose of exploiting them by producing potash,
glass, pitch, staves, etc. So they correspond to buda’s, majdan’s, huta’s, kuz~nica’s,
and l~azy’s. — [Vol. 3, p. 943.]
Kolonia, a name for small settlements
created by dividing large areas of manorial farmsteads into smaller
sections of a dozen or more mo~rgs, acquired by peasants
or by immigrants from neighboring German provinces. In earlier
times this name was also applied to villages consisting of small
Dutch or Romanian settlements…. Near larger towns these settlements
were usually named for their first owners, e. g., near Warsaw [Kolonia]
Elsnera, Ewansa, Mintra, Detkensa, etc.; in rural areas they usually
are named for the villages on the territory of which they were
created. — [Vol. 4, p. 267]
Kuz~nica, a name for settlements
that grew up around factories, much more numerous in the past than
they are presently because the cheap price of wood made the existence
of small-scale factories feasible. Thus today this name attests
only to the existence of factories in places that do not have conditions
that allow them to exist in this kind of industry. Compare Kuz~nica in
the Grand Duchy of Poland. — [Vol. 5, p. 11].
L~azy: these were areas of farmland
obtained by burning off the bushes and trees covering them; settlements
founded on such areas often received this name. [Vol. 5, p.
624].
Majdan: a Turkish expression designating
an enclosed four-sided space used as a fairground, a site for military
exercises, or a gathering place. In Polish camps the majdan was
what they called the open central space where knights gathered
to share the booty equally. From this the name came to be used
for the campsites of forest workers, who set up their budy in
a closed quadrilateral. These campsites often became the beginnings
of villages founded in cleared forest areas; the name Majdan could
then pass to the village as well. Majdany differ from budy in
that they served as gathering point for a larger number of workers,
which made it necessary to set up some sort of administrative and
judicial authority, whereas budy were usually individual
forest settlements. Majdany were founded in order to exploit
the wealth contained in the forests by melting down tar, burning
coal, etc. They usually took their names from the estates to which
the forests belonged. The majdan plays the same role in
wooded areas on the right bank of the Wisl~a up to the Bug and
Narew as the huta plays in areas on the left bank. [Vol.
5, p. 908].
In case you’re wondering just how common these
terms are in Polish place names, I did a quick count in the index
of the Euro-Atlas Polska, Atlas Drogowy. (Note that in most
cases the Sl~ownik geograficzny lists far more places by each
name, but I only counted those that bear the names now and are big
enough to appear on 1:200,000 maps). There were 88 places bearing
the names Buda, Budy, or Budki, or those names plus
a second component, e. g., Budy Zaklasztorne (literally, "the
sheds on the other side of the monastery"), to say nothing of
the 6 Nowe Budy’s ("new sheds"). There were
94 Huta’s, 2 Hutka’s, and 5 Hutki’s,
as well as 46 Ka~ty’s, and 41 Kuz~nica’s.
There were 78 Majdan’s, 7 Majdany’s, and
3 Majdanek’s (including the section of Lublin where the
Nazis set up a concentration camp). As for the agricultural names,
there were 115 places called Nowa Wies~, another 43 with Nowa
Wies~ plus a third name, 259 Wo~lka’s, 33 L~azy’s,
35 Ligota’s, 13 Lgota’s, 343 Kolonia’s,
and almost 400 Wola’s. 
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November 28, 2004
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