What can a Polish surname really tell you, and what can't it?

In its description of the Internetowy słownik nazwisk w Polsce (Internet Dictionary of Surnames in Poland), the Institute of the Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IJP PAN) notes what people want to know about a surname: what it "means", when it arose, and who the earlier bearers of the same surname were and where they lived.

A surname answers some of these questions well, some only roughly, and some not at all. This post goes in order: from what is known most surely, the data on today's bearers, through the surname's structure and meaning, to old records. At the end we gather what a surname cannot tell you.

Who bears it today

The surest knowledge about a surname is about the present. The Ministry of Digital Affairs publishes a list of surnames from the PESEL register on dane.gov.pl. It covers living people and their current surname. It leaves out surnames that occur only once, and people who have died. Men and women are on two separate lists. The newest lists are dated 20 January 2026.

On a surname's page on Name Atlas these figures are in the chapter "How many people have this surname?", each with the date of its list. We show the two separately and never add them up. The chapter "Who well known has this surname?" lists people from Wikidata who have a Wikipedia article, with the caveat that sharing a surname does not mean being related.

What it tells you: that the surname is in use today and roughly how many people bear it. Not who those people are to you. And if a surname is not on the list, that does not mean nobody bears it. It may have a single bearer.

How common it is

The same list gives the surname's rank: where it stands counting from the most common. Name Atlas shows it in the chapter "How rare is this surname?", with a "1 in X" figure and the neighbours on the list. The masculine and feminine forms are on separate lists, so they have separate ranks. IJP PAN's dictionary treats them the same way: forms in -ska, -cka and -dzka have entries of their own, because they hold their own place on the list of surnames.

What it tells you: how hard the search will be. A common surname gives many results in the indexes, which you have to narrow with first names, dates and the parish. A rare surname is easier to follow, but it too need not mean one family, because the same surname could arise more than once.

Where its bearers live

The ministry also publishes the lists by voivodeship of permanent registered residence. The map in the chapter "Where is it most often registered?" comes from them.

What it tells you: where the surname's bearers have an address in the register today. The surname page says plainly that this is not an actual address, and not information about a family's roots. People moved, and voivodeship borders changed. A voivodeship missing from the list does not mean zero either, because the lists leave out single occurrences.

How it is built

This is where linguistics begins. An entry in IJP PAN's dictionary separates the surname's base from its suffix, for example Anton-owicz, Bartk-owiak, Klimcz-ak, and says what the suffix did when the surname was formed. Examples from the dictionary:

• -ak was patronymic, pointing to the father,
• -ek could do the same or form a diminutive,
• -ski first showed that someone came from a place or owned it, and later also formed surnames on the model of those.

A structure can sometimes be read two ways. The dictionary says Jachimczak may come from the personal name Jachimek or from Jachim. The feminine forms also say something about old customs: in the dictionary, Kowalowa is the form taken from a husband's surname, and Kowalówna the form taken from a father's. There is more on endings in our post on -ski, -wicz and -ak.

What it tells you: how the surname was formed. Not who the people who bore it were.

What it may come from

According to IJP PAN's dictionary, the most common Polish surnames today are those formed from ordinary words, then those from place names, many of them in -ski, then those from given names. The dictionary often gives several possible motivations, because the word a surname was formed from could have several meanings, and those meanings changed over time.

The dictionary shows this with the surname Krupnik. In Old Polish a krupnik was a craftsman who made groats, later a groat soup, and later still an alcoholic drink of honey and roots. Surnames that sound the same could therefore arise at different times from different meanings. A surname may also have two possible sources: Lenartowski may come from the place name Lenartowice or from the surname Lenart.

On Name Atlas the meaning is in the chapter "What does this surname mean?". We give one only when a scholarly work supports it, with its source and a word for certainty, such as "Likely" or "Possible". For now only some surnames have a meaning. When there is no such work, we say so and do not guess.

What it tells you: which word, given name or place the surname was formed from. Often that is several hypotheses, not one answer. And it is about the word, not your family.

When it appears in the sources

Entries in IJP PAN's dictionary have a section of historical records: a quotation from the source with the attested form of the surname, the document's date, an abbreviation of the source's title, the volume and the page. The oldest records, from the 12th to the 15th century, come from the Słownik staropolskich nazw osobowych (Dictionary of Old Polish Personal Names). Records from the 16th to the 18th century come from the Antroponimia Polski od XVI do końca XVIII wieku (Polish Anthroponymy from the 16th to the End of the 18th Century), among others, and later ones from studies of personal names in different regions. The records include the old names of wives and daughters too. The dictionary gives, for example, a record of Grabowszczanka from 1663, a form for the daughter of a Grabowski. The authors suggest such a form may have told a daughter apart from a wife, Grabowska.

When the authors did not find a surname in the sources, the entry says "brak poświadczeń w dostępnych nam źródłach historycznych", no attestations in the historical sources available to them. That note is about the sources that were searched, not about when the surname arose.

On Name Atlas the chapter "Where does it appear in old print?" shows how many results Polona, the National Library's digital library, returns for the word, and from which years. These are results for the word in any inflected form, not a count of people or of mentions of anyone's family.

What it tells you: an old record shows that someone bore the name in a given place and time. It does not prove that person was your ancestor. When bynames became hereditary surnames is in our first post.

What a surname cannot tell you

• Whether you are related to someone. Surnames that sound the same arose at different times and for different reasons, so the same spelling does not join people into one lineage.
• Where your family comes from. The map shows registered residence today, not where your ancestors lived.
• Whether your ancestors were nobility. According to IJP PAN's dictionary, a significant share of surnames in -ski were formed from the 16th century onwards from ordinary words, on the model of surnames from place names, which were seen as "better".
• What nationality your ancestors were. The dictionary describes foreign surnames that were made Polish in several ways, such as Keler, Kieler, Kielar and Kilar from the German Keller. Where a word comes from does not say who the people bearing the surname felt they were.
• One certain meaning. Dictionaries often give several possible etymologies.

Why you need the records

Everything above is about the surname: a word, and the people who bear it today. Your family is particular people, linked by records of birth, marriage and death. Those are in parish registers and civil registration records. You will find indexes to many of them in Geneteka, and scans on Szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl.

Only once the records lead you to a particular ancestor does knowledge about the surname start to mean something. Then you know whose surname you are studying, where that person lived and how the name was written. Our post on finding your ancestors goes from the papers at home to a record a hundred years old.

A surname's page on Name Atlas shows in one place what can be read from a surname, each answer with its date and source. Our step-by-step guide shows how to read it chapter by chapter.

Look up your surname on Name Atlas.