What does Witz mean in a name?
Wolkwitz is a surname of German/Western-Slavic origin. “-witz” in this case is not the German word for wit/joke, but is a German variation on a Slavic suffix “-vich,” “-vic,” “-wits,” “-witz,” or “-wicz” (-wicz being a Polish variation) meaning “son of,” “child of,” “family of,” “clan of,” etc.
What does Vitz mean at the end of a name?
From a Slavic suffix meaning “son of”, such as Belarusian -віч (-vič, “-vich”), Polish -wicz, Old Polish -wic, Russian -вич (-vič, “-vich”), Serbo-Croatian -vić, Slovene -vič, or Ukrainian -вич (-vyč, “-vych”).
What does Berg mean at the end of a name?
Berg is a surname of North European origin. In several Germanic languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish [Danish: Bjerg]), the word means “mount”, “mountain” or “cliff”.
Why do Slavic names end in ski?
Suffix -ski/-ska “Ski” (also “Sky” in other regions) is a formative adjective, from the Proto-Slavic “ьskъ”, which defined affiliation to something. It was also used with names of territories and settlements to denote possession or place of origin.
What is a Polish last name?
The Most Common Surnames in Poland
| surname | number of citizens | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | NOWAK | 203,980 |
| 2. | KOWALSKA / KOWALSKI | 137,981 |
| 3. | WIŚNIEWSKA / WIŚNIEWSKI | 109,896 |
| 4. | WÓJCIK | 99,098 |
What does vich mean at the end of a name?
Women customarily take their husband’s surname at marriage, although not always. The middle name is patronymic, created by using the child’s father’s name with the suffix “vich” or “ovich” for boys, and “avna” or “ovna” for girls. This means ‘son of’ and ‘daughter of’.
Whats the difference between Berg and Burg?
In brief: A Berg “bairk” is a mountain, and a Burg “boork” is a defensive medieval castle. In English, we’ve merged the -er- and -ur- into just -r-, but in German the two are still fully distinct.
Is Sky Polish or Russian?
The rule of thumb, however, is that -ski usually is associated with Poles; -sky may be associated with Czechs, Ukrainians, Russians, etc. There are jillions of exceptions, but if you want a basic rule to go by, that’s it. That’s because Polish spelling rules say -k- can never be followed by -y, only by -i.
Do all Polish last names end in ski?
It’s also the most popular type of surname in the country today: structure-wise, surnames with the -ski suffix (and the cognate -cki and -dzki) comprise some 35% of the 1000 most popular Polish names.
Why are Polish names so hard?
Poland is a Slavic country and thus Slavic in culture. As a result, Polish is a Slavic language. It’s a culture shared with a lot of other Eastern European countries, so a lot of names are similar. Many Slavic names were dithematic – that’s a fancy way of saying they had two parts.