Contemporary surnames of Podlasie derived from the names of professions, courtesy titles and professional titles Cover Image

Nazwy zawodów, godności i urzędów jako podstawy motywacyjne współczesnych nazwisk Podlasian
Contemporary surnames of Podlasie derived from the names of professions, courtesy titles and professional titles

Author(s): Michał Mordań
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
Keywords: językoznawstwo; onomastyka; antroponimia; nazwiska; nazwy odzawodowe; linguistics; onomastics; anthroponymy; surnames; trade names

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents contemporary surnames of Podlasie derived from the names of professions, courtesy titles, held offices and performed functions. Several groups of anthroponyms were identified through etymological analysis of the gathered material, primarily focused on the semantics of word roots. Contemporary surnames were formed from the following categories of words associated with: 1) crafts (Bondar, Kowalczuk), 2) agriculture, forestry and animal production (Fiszer, Pastuszak), 3) food preparation (Kucharczuk, Mielczarek), 4) trade (Budnik, Salnikow), 5) protection of objects and facilities (Leśnik, Pasiecznik), 6) mansion service (Dworańczyk, Pachołek), 7) music (Fidler, Grajko), 8) occasional functions (Drużba, Krzyżak), 9) religion (Kirchner, Monachowicz), 10) military service (Atamańczyk, Janczar), 11) public offices (Rejent, Tywonek), 12) social status (Dziedzic, Ofman), 13) others (Godun, Stangryciuk). Some surnames (e.g. Budnik, Hajduk, Pachołek) were allocated to more than one category because of their polysemous lexemes. From a linguistic point of view the analysed surnames come from Polish (Cieśla, Krawiec), East Slavic (Czebotariow, Monach), German (Rezler, Sznajderuk) or Baltic words (Dojlida). In terms of word formation, most surnames are the equivalents of common names (Kołodziej, Ogrodnik), although there are also derivative surnames with suffixes (Korolko, Szwajdych), some representing the patronymic model (Majstrowicz, Tokarzewicz; Puszkaruk, Szklaruk) or having genetically possessive suffixes (Kniaziew, Winnikow).

  • Issue Year: 2020
  • Issue No: 20
  • Page Range: 265-287
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Polish