Expert: Mara Date: 10/15/2007 Subject: Name Definition
Question QUESTION: Hello Mara,
I am so glad I found you. I am hoping you might be able to tell me the meaning of my Polish name. My last name is Butki. I believe that “but” means shoe or boot but I’m not sure what the “ki” means.
I would appreciate any help you could offer.
Very kind regards,
Brian Butki
ANSWER: Hello,
You're close. but means shoe or boot. "ki" suffix is added as an indication that something is small, nice and so on.
I suspect, however, that it's not the real root of your name. In fact, the name Butki does not occur in Poland. The first guess is than that your name was misspelled or shortened at some point. My guess is Butkiewicz, but without more data and/or documents it's hard to say for sure. That also means that the original form of your name might mean something completely different.
Hope that helps
Mara
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QUESTION: Hello Mara,
First of all, I can't thank you enough for all of your help. I thought I would wonder about this forever.
I am told that the original name was Butka and that they changed it to Butki to make it sound more "American" when my Great Grand Parents moved to the USA.
If it was butka, what does the suffix "ka" mean?
Thanks for all of your help.
Answer Hello again,
Butka is a name that occurs in Poland nowadays. So everything seems to be fine here...
"ka" does not have any specific meaning. In this situation it is one of the standard ending added to form names (like 'ski' or 'cki'). I think it used to form adjectives, but I have not investigated that matter. And then, quite many Polish names are adjectives, in fact.
