AboutMaciej St. Zięba Expertise I am native Polish and I used to teach Polish to foreigners. I know (passively of actively) more than 15 other languages - so I can answer many questions concerning Polish grammar, pronounciation, spelling, ethymology and usage - as compared to English, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto or Norwegian. Also questions concerning other Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, or general linguistics, especially scripts (writing systems and transcriptions) - are welcome.
Experience Teaching English and French to Poles, Polish to foreigners, teaching Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan to philosophy students.
Question Hello Maciej, I am trying to find out the root of the last name of Lilje. My great great grandfather was born in Prussia (1855). It would be exciting if this is a Polish name because my husband is half Polish. Have you ever heard of this last name in Poland? If it is Polish, how would I pronounce it?
Thanks for your time.
Answer Hi Kim,
Thanks for the nice words.
I want to add a folow-up explaining a word on pronounciation. In the Northen Poland (Eastern Pomerania, Masovia, even here in Lublin, where I live) the word would be pronounced [LIL-yeh], whereas the standard Polish pronounciation would be rather [LEEL-yeh]. I have a tendency to overlook the fact that I am used to the "marked" regional pronounciation of the letter -i- after l, and that the common Polish pronounciation of this letter is everywhere -ee-.
Maciej
Dear Kim,
I have never heard of such a name in Poland. If it were Polish it would be pronounced the same way as in German:
[LIL-yeh]. In Polish it might mean "lilies" - i.e. plural of Lilja (Lily, the flower) (old spelling "lilja" - after 1933 spelling reform of Polish = "lilia") (even older spelling "lilija", plural "lilije", found in the early 19th century).
In Eastern Pomerania (which was called Westpreussen or Pomerellen by the Germans) which is now Pomorskie Voivodship of Poland, there is another language in use: Kashubian. Its close to Polish (albeit difficult to understnd by the general Polish population) and its users consider themselves Poles. In Kashubian the ending -e of the name is quite frequent, as it is in German names of Pomerania and Prussia (I do not remember where I have read that; but being been born in Gdansk I used to have several colleagues with the names ending in -e, maybe rather in -ke, like Jeszke, Ponszke). This -e does not imply plural in such a case; maybe in Kashubian "lilje" means the same as "lilja" in Polish?
On the other hand the name "lilje" sounds to me Dutch (the original spelling would be Lilië, or "Lilie-with-two-dots-(trema)-above-the-final-e" (in case you can't see the character). There were many Dutch (as well as Scottish) settlers in the surroundings of Gdansk, especially in the delta of Vistula river, area called Zulawy (Żuławy).
Othewise the spelling "lilje" is typical od Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish) for lily.
In all the languages and spellings the pronounciation is (practically) the same.
About the etymology of Lily, including lilje, see:
- 3 of them (No. 1, 2 and 5) refer to the German Lutheran Bishop Hanns Lilje (although 2 of them write Hans, not Hanns) - unfortunaltely neither of the entries in English version mention this name, and only the last one in German refers to him, so see in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Lilje),
- one (No. 4) to James Lilje, the founder of "The Offspring" musical band and its LP (the English Wikipedia gives: James Lilja: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lilja),
- the last one (no. 3) is but an example of the usage of old spelling instead of the modern one.
but try googling the Internet for:
lilje etymology
or for:
lilje surname OR "last name" OR "Family name" OR Familenname OR "nazwisko" ...
or combine the two, e.g.
lilje surname etymology
or with advanced options, for the words:
Lilje name
with Dutch, Danish, Norwegian or Swedish etc. language checked
