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Before explaining the meaning and origin of the most common Polish surnames, it is important to know a little more about this country. The Republic of Poland is one of the twenty-seven sovereign states that make up the European Union (EU), constituted as a democratic state of law, whose form of government is a parliamentary republic. Its territory, whose capital is Warsaw, has an area of 312,696 km² and a population of 37.97 million, making it the fifth most populous country in the EU. It limits to the north with the Baltic Sea, comprises for the most part in the north part of the great European plain and includes in the south the mountainous territory of the Sudetenland, the Carpathians and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Going a little deeper into the subject of Polish surnames, as with most surnames, they fall into three categories: toponymic, patronymic/matronymic, and cognominal. This article analyzes the meaning and origin of the most common Polish surnames. Below is a brief explanation.
toponymic surnames
A toponymic surname is a surname derived from a place name, which may include specific places, such as home, residence, or land individuals owned, or may be more generic, derived from topographical features. These types of surnames were originally non-hereditary personal names and only later became family names. The origins of surnames and toponymic names are attributed to two trends that are not mutually exclusive.
One of these tendencies was to link the nobility to their place of origin and their feudal possessions and to provide a marker of their status, while the other was related to the growth of the gentry class in the cities, partly through the migration from the field. It is worth mentioning that the growing popularity of saint names is also related to this process, leading to a reduction in the number of names used and a personal need or desire for distinctive names to distinguish an increasing number of saints. individuals with the same name.
In fact, throughout history, many places in Poland have had the same name, while others have changed names over time, for example because they were subdivisions of a local town or farm too small to find. on a map or because they simply disappeared over the years.
Surnames ending in the letters owski are often derived from place names ending in y, ow, owo, or owa, for example, Cyrek Gryzbowski, meaning Cyrek from the town of Gryzbow.
Patronymic and matronymic surnames
A patronymic surname is a proper name designating ancestry, lineage, or descent. These surnames may be a family name or a derived form of the father’s or ancestor’s name used after the name. This custom is still in force in Russia and other Slavic countries, such as Poland. It is also possible that some surnames of this type derive from the name of a wealthy or respected female ancestor. Surnames with suffixes such as icz, wicz, owicz, ewicz, and ycz often mean “son of.”
As a rule, Polish surnames with a suffix with the letter k (czak, czyk, iak, ak, ek, ik and yk) have a similar meaning, which translates to “little” or “son of”. The same happens with the suffixes yc and ic, more frequent in names of eastern Polish origin. For example, Pawel Adamicz, which means Paul, son of Adam; Piotr Filipek, which means Peter, son of Philip.
cognominal surnames
There are two basic types of cognitive names. The first category includes names based on a person’s profession. Some of the most common professional names are derived from what were traditionally the most important professions in Polish society throughout history, for example blacksmith (Kowalski), tailor (Krawczyk), innkeeper (Kaczmarek), carpenter (Cieślak ), carter (Kołodziejski) and cooper (Bednarz). For example, Michał Krawiec would be Miguel, the tailor.
On the other hand, we have descriptive surnames, often derived from nicknames or pet names that emphasize a physical attribute or personality trait of the original bearer of the name, for example, Jan Wysocki, meaning Big John. Surnames with the suffix ski and their equivalents cki and zki account for almost 35% of the 1,000 most popular Polish names, and the presence of these suffixes almost always indicates Polish origin.
50 most common Polish surnames
- Adamczyk
- adamski
- borkowski
- chmielewski
- czarnecki
- czerwinski
- Dabrowski
- Doubt
- Dudek
- Gorsky
- Grabowski
- Jablonski
- jasinski
- Jaworski
- kaczmarek
- Kalinowski
- kaminski
- kowalcyzk
- kowalski
- kozlowski
- Krol
- kucharski
- kwiatkowski
- maciejewski
- Majewski
- michalski
- Nowak
- nowakowski
- Nowicki
- Olszewski
- Ostrowski
- Pawlak
- Pawlowski
- Piotrowski
- rutkowski
- Sawicki
- Sobczak
- sokolowski
- symanski
- szczepanski
- Tomaszewski
- Walczak
- Wieczorek
- Wiśniewski
- Wojciechowski
- Wozniak
- wysocky
- Zajac
- Zawadzki
- Zielinski
Sources
- Gorny, H. (2019). Polish Anthroponomastic Terminology . Towards Systematization and Normalization
- Sosiński, M. (2005). Polish place names in the spelling of the Royal Spanish Academy.
