Most Common Polish Last Names and Their Meanings

Polish Surnames · Common surnames

A handful of surnames are shared by hundreds of thousands of Poles, and the top twenty alone cover close to two million people. If your family name is on this list, the name will not find the family for you. The village will.

The twenty most common Polish surnames

The list below shows the twenty most common surnames in the Polish population register, roughly in order. Counts shift a little from year to year, but the names at the top have been the same for decades. The meanings are the usual derivations; a single surname can have more than one origin in different regions.

Rank	Surname	Meaning or origin
1	Nowak	from nowy, new: a newcomer to the village
2	Kowalski	from kowal, smith, or from a village called Kowale or Kowalewo
3	Wiśniewski	from wiśnia, cherry, through villages named Wiśniewo or Wiśniew
4	Wójcik	from wójt, the village headman, with a diminutive ending
5	Kowalczyk	son of the smith
6	Kamiński	from kamień, stone, or a place called Kamień or Kamionka
7	Lewandowski	from a place name such as Lewandów, linked to lawenda, lavender
8	Zieliński	from zielony, green, through places named Zielin or Zielonka
9	Szymański	from the first name Szymon, Simon
10	Woźniak	from woźny, a manor or court official
11	Dąbrowski	from dąbrowa, oak wood, a very common place name
12	Kozłowski	from kozioł, billy goat, or a village called Kozłów
13	Jankowski	from Janek, a form of Jan, John
14	Mazur	a person from Mazovia, the region around Warsaw
15	Wojciechowski	from the first name Wojciech, Adalbert
16	Kwiatkowski	from kwiat, flower, or a place called Kwiatkowo
17	Krawczyk	son of the tailor, from krawiec
18	Kaczmarek	from karczmarz, innkeeper
19	Piotrowski	from the first name Piotr, Peter
20	Grabowski	from grab, hornbeam, or a village called Grabów or Grabowo

Why the same names repeat

Most Polish peasant families took fixed surnames only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, often from the father’s trade, his first name or the place the family came from. Every village had a smith and every region had places called Dąbrowa or Kamień, so the same names appeared independently hundreds of times. Two Kowalskis from different parts of Poland are almost never related through the name.

Regional patterns

Some names point to a region, which is useful when the village is unknown. Surnames ending in -ak and -ek, such as Nowak, Woźniak and Kaczmarek, are especially frequent in Greater Poland around Poznań, which was in the Prussian partition. Names ending in -ski and -cki dominate Mazovia and Podlasie in the former Russian partition. Endings in -wicz and -uk become more common towards the east. These are tendencies, not proof: treat them as a hint about where to look first.

Common name, common problem

A search for Jan Kowalski born around 1880 in Poland will return hundreds of candidates. What separates them are the details only your own records hold:

the parents’ first names, and the mother’s maiden name from a Social Security application or a death certificate
the village or parish, from naturalization papers, draft cards or a Polish-American parish register
the exact date of birth, which in Polish records is often the day before the baptism
the names of godparents and witnesses, who were usually relatives or neighbors

Never attach a Polish record to your tree on the name alone. With a common surname, at least two independent details must match, and the parish must fit what the American records say.

How the spelling changed in America

American clerks dropped the Polish letters, so Wiśniewski became Wisniewski, Dąbrowski became Dabrowski or Dombrowski, and Wójcik became Wojcik or Woycik. Search every variant, and read our guide to how Polish names were Americanized.

How we can help

Ancestral Village Identification is designed for exactly this problem: we use the family details in your American records to separate your Kowalski from every other one, then confirm the parish in the Polish registers.

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