If my great grandmother is Polish, why is her surname Edelman?

Question

My great grandmother is a Polish Jew and immigrated here from Poland and couldn't speak any English, but why does her surname end in -man and not -ski which is Polish?

Answer 1

Her ancestors would have been Ashkenazi Jews, meaning they had German roots. Not all Polish names end in -ski. Some end in -ing, -vic, -wicz or -man. She was Polish because the borders moved even if her family stayed put and never left what used to be Germany. Germany only unified in 1871 and Poland was only a free country in 1918. So regardless of how they ended up in Poland, they took their name with them and it is what it is.

Answer 2

The simple answer is your great grandmother is Polish because she was born in Poland, but that doesn't mean at some point her ancestors didn't live someplace else.

If you are talking about ethnicity that is a different kettle of fish.  Your great grandmother can be a different ethnicity and she just happened to have been born in Poland.

Its like how you have so many X-Americans here in the US.  There are Irish-Americans, African Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc.  

Its all in how you choose to identify yourself.  If your great grandmother chose to identify herself as Polish then she was Polish and her surname may be circumstantial.

Answer 3

In the late 1700's there was a large scottish immigration to Poland which probably explains why your grandmother has the last name edelman

Answer 4

The native language of the Polish Jews was Yiddish.  Which is a Germanic language, closely related to German.  And in Yiddish language the word 'man' is very common.

"The vocabulary of the Yiddish spoken in eastern Europe during recent times comprised about 85 percent German, 10 percent Hebrew, and 5 percent Slavic, with traces of Romanian, French, and other elements."

http://www.leonfeinberg.org/yhistory.htm...