Polish name
Traditionally, Polish names consist of one or two first names and a surname.
First names
The female first names in Polish usually end with -a , as in Magdalena or Justyna . The male first names, however, usually end with a consonant.
If people know each other, they often address each other with the diminutive of their first name. The last name is generally only used in formal or official encounters. It is also common to use the first name to make a Siezen . This also applies in combination with the diminutive (e.g. Panie Janku! Dt. About Herr Hansi! ).
Common first names and their common diminutives
Female
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Male
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Legal
In Poland, the first names given to a newborn child are regulated by law in accordance with the Civil Act ( pln.Prawo o aktach stanu cywilnego ):
- No more than two first names may be given (this was introduced in 1952 and does not affect people born before).
- First names must not be grotesque or crude.
- Short or nicknames (diminutive) are not permitted first names (e.g. only Maksymilian can be entered, not Maks ).
- The first name or first names must be clearly assigned to a gender.
Surnames
In Polish , as in the other Slavic languages , surnames can be given an appended -a as the appropriate ending when applied to female carriers . Unlike in Russian , this only applies to names with the adjectival endings -ski , -cki or -dzki . The wife of Mr. Kowalski (German e.g. Schmidt ) is called Kowalska (regionally in German Schmidten ). The same applies to the declination. The plural form Kowalscy ( Eng . Schmidts ) then appears on the family's door sign . The word pan (pln. For gentleman ) or pani (pln. For woman ) is always placed in front of a distanced or polite address .
The endings -ski , -cki or -dzki ( e.g. in Lewandowski , Kotecki , Zawadzki ) are adjectival derivatives of so-called origin names . That is, they give an indication of a place, a clan, a class or a historical feature. The name Podolsky accordingly corresponds to from Podolien arise , the Podolic or of Podolien .
These endings often, but not always, indicate a remnant of aristocratic roots, as the Polish nobility often had a name of origin .
Other adjectival surnames whose meaning is recognizable as such, but which originally do not indicate an origin, but a property, may optionally also take on feminine forms outside official communication, depending on the personal preference of the wearer (e.g. the wife of the Lord can Dymny are also called Dymny or Dymna ).
The also common ending -wicz ( e.g. with Adamowicz or Filipowicz ) corresponds to the Germanic suffix -son or -sohn and represents solidified patronymic names that are still used today in Russian as patronyms .
Names ending in -ak and -ek ( e.g. with Kaczmarek ) and -ik and -iak ( e.g. with Foreniak ) are personal designations derived from adjectives. So Nowak (from nowy for German new ) roughly corresponds to the German name Neumann , Górniak (from górny corresponding to the German Berg- or Ober- ) about Obermann . The suffix -ek can, however, also represent a diminutive , as in the first name Lech , which becomes Leszek .
Often there are also name endings such as -cik ( e.g. with Wójcik ) and -czyk ( e.g. with Tomczyk ).
The most common Polish surnames
The most common surnames in Poland in 2009 were:
- Nowak 207.348
- Kowalski / a 140.471
- Wiśniewski / a 111.174
- Wójcik 100.064
- Kowalczyk 98.739
- Kamiński / a 95.816
- Lewandowski / a 93,404
- Zieliński / a 91,522
- Szymański / a 89,698
- Woźniak 89.015
- Dąbrowski / a 87.304
- Kozłowski / a 76,657
- Jankowski / a 69.280
- Mazur 68.090
- Kwiatkowski / a 66.917
- Wojciechowski / a 66.879
- Krawczyk 64,543
- Kaczmarek 62,399
- Piotrowski / a 61.844
- Grabowski / a 59.052
- Pawłowski / a 55.877
- Zając 55,706
- Michalski / a 55.319
- Król 54,918
- Wieczorek 51.377
- Jabłoński / a 50.873
- Wróbel 50.820
Legal
In Poland, the use of the family name is regulated by the Family and Welfare Code (pln. Kodeks rodzinny i opiekuńczy ) from 1964.
coat of arms
Name and coat of arms have been closely interwoven in Polish society since the Middle Ages .
A special feature of Polish heraldry is the common coat of arms of several, often unrelated families, who form so-called coat of arms communities. Both middle-class families and families formerly belonging to the Polish nobility can use a coat of arms (pln. Herb ).
The use of a coat of arms is neither regulated by law, nor does it justify any rights. The designation of the coat of arms is not part of the civil name, because this only consists of the first name and the family name. In some cases, however, the coats of arms have found their way into family names and have become their hyphenated components (e.g. with Korwin-Mikke ). The addition herbu Pomian after the surname is also common (e.g. for a person from the Pomian coat of arms ).
See also
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Prawo o aktach stanu cywilnego. on: sejm.gov.pl (accessed on July 10, 2012)
- ↑ Statystyka 50 najpopularniejszych nazwisk w Polsce. (Polish), Listed surnames with more than 50,000 relatives
- ↑ Ustawa z dnia 25 lutego 1964 r. - Rodzinny i opiekuńczy codes. on: sejm.gov.pl (accessed July 10, 2013)