AboutMaciej St. Ziêba 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.
Expert: Maciej St. Ziêba Date: 6/21/2007 Subject: name last name.
Question Maciej,
I was reading up about what my last name meant in Polish, and all I could find was that names ending in -ski showed that you were possibly of noble social status in Poland. Is that true? Also, what does my name mean?
Answer Dear Stefan,
(Supplement added in the end, see PS.)
the general idea that the Slavic names ending in -ski (or -cki, ) (Russian -skoi,-tskoi and -skiy, tskiy; Ukrainian -s'kyj, -ts'kyj; Czech -sky, -cky; etc.), and the female version of them ending in -a (Polish and Czech -ska, -cka; Russian and Ukrainian -skaya, -tskaya) are of noble origin is only part true. Soem of them are, some of them not.
In general they are adjectives formed of the name of a village possessed. So they are the names of the noblemen. At least if they were formed by the XVIIth century.
But in the case of names containing the names of towns and cities within them (Warszawski, Krakowski, Lubelski), they are just the names of the inhabitans of these towns, like "the one born in or living in or of origin from Warsaw/Cracow/Lublin" and are very frequently (but not uniquely) surnames of the Polish Jews. Mostly formed in XVIIIth century.
Of course the situation of the first group of names (of the small localities) could be similar - in the XIXth century the Austrian and Russian authorities were giving surnames by the office decision to those (peasants, town-dweller and Jews living in towns or villages) who hadn't possesed them by then. And it happened that they have given any names, sometimes derivative of the name of the village, sometimes even the name of the actual of former noble owner of the village (even if the former peasant-subjects or Jews-inhabitans or Gypsies-dwellers etc. were not relatives of the owner).
Most Gypsies (Roma, Cyganie) have their surnames in -ski /-cki, although they were not noblemen. Most of those names have been invented on spot and have no relation to any factual origin (etymology) whatsoever.
So "Jakubowski" means:
1) "the owner of Jakubów"
or:
2) "the inhabitant of Jakubów"
and "Jakubów" is "the village or land of a certain Jakub" -
in previous ages when the possesions(*) were divided among the children of the nobleman, they were often given the name derivative of the first name of the new owner, like "Zofiówka" of Zofia, "Maciejowice" of Maciej, "Tomaszów" of Tomasz etc.
of Jakub these could be: "Jakubów", "Jakubowice", "Jakubówka", "Jakubowo", "Jakubowizna", "Jakubice" - such names are VERY common throughout Poland.
(*) the possesions = land etc. with villages, including the peasants ascribed to land, who would work for the owner, as they were not free to leave the village, although they were not considered slaves in theproper term as they were free to make other decisions by themselves and they could even have paid their freedom to leave the land with their work; although the latter was rather very difficult
See also some of my previous answers on All Experts concerning the names in -ski:
only pay attention that both answer hav the follow-ups which are on top and the orginal, longer answers are on the bottom of the page, below the Sponsored links.
PS. Remember that the Polish name "Jakub" and its diminutive "Kuba" correspond to BOTH English "Jacob" (after the Biblical Patriarch Jacob) and "James" (after the Apostles: Jacob/=James/ the Greater or Jacob/=James/ the Minor of the Gospels and Letters), as they were in fact one name in Hebrew/Aramaic.
