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Polish surnames are known from the Middle Ages, but only 200 years ago the inherited surnames become compulsory. The most popular Polish names Nowak, Nowakowski, Nowacki and Nowicki are variants meaning a new man, Przybyszewski and Przybylski mean incoming man. There are many names comming from a profession, e.g Kowalski and Kowalczyk come from kowal (=smith), Woźniak means a driver. There are surnames coming from the first names like: Wojciechowski from Wojciech (=Adalbert), Jankowski from Jan (=John). Other names come from the trees: Wiśniewski, Wiszniewski, Wiśniowski and Wiśniowiecki from wiśnia (a cherry, cherry-tree); Dąbrowski from Dąbrowa (=an oak-wood). Large quantity of surnames with -ski and -cki suffixes come from a place name, usually place of origin, for example Poznański means from Poznań
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Top 15 most popular surnames in Poland:
- 1. Nowak : 203,506
- 2. Kowalski : 139,719
- 3. Wiśniewski : 109,855
- 4. Wójcik : 99,509
- 5. Kowalczyk : 97,796
- 6. Kamiński : 94,499
- 7. Lewandowski : 92,449
- 8. Zieliński : 91,043
- 9. Szymański : 89,091
- 10. Woźniak : 88,039
- 11. Dąbrowski : 86,132
- 12. Kozłowski : 75,962
- 13. Jankowski : 68,514
- 14. Mazur : 66,773
- 15. Wojciechowski : 66,361
Top 3 most popular surnames by region:
See also:
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