Polish ancestry - why would the last letter in the last name change?

Question

I'm researching my genealogy and finding that a lot of my Polish ancestors have used many spellings throughout the years. Is there a reason for this or could they just be spelling errors? Ex - Jackowski is often spelled Jackowska, Sieczkowski is spelled Sieczkowska, etc.

Answer 1

Spelling was not formalized until fairly recently. After 1800 in Britain and US, later for many countries. Most people could not recognize their written name, much less write it. A barely literate clerk would record names for tax purposes.

Answer 2

Does it change due to weather the relation is female/male...or because of the maternal blood line and paternal bloodline maybe?

LOL. Although, I've heard Pollocks don't always have a rhyme or reason to what /why they do the things they do. lol

Answer 3

Typical Polish surnames (ending with -ski, -ska) have grammatical form of adjectives. It's because of history of creating them - e.g. mentioned "Jackowski" means "belonging to/coming from Jacek (English equivalent: Jack)", so in a far past their ancestors must have been associated with a Jacek, probably head of their family. Notice, that some English surnames are similar (Johnson, Richardson) - btw to PiratesGirls - I can bet you didn't have any idea about structure of English surnames, so don't tell about Polish unawareness;P

In regard to misspelling: there may be some differences in the core of surname throughout years as Polish language evolved. Moreover, there were no rules for writing surnames in the past, so people not knowing correct spelling could just spell it wrong.

BUT, as you mentioned different endings, it's completely correct! As I've written, surnames behave like adjectives, so have different form depending on gender (like in most of Indo-European languages). That's why I'm Piotrowski, but my mum's and sister's surname is Piotrowska - however, it's still the same surname.

EDIT: to Hektor - you're telling about something different. In Russia, they have "patronyms" - something like surname created from father's name, just like you've written, but it doesn't replace your surname (it does e.g. on Iceland). In Poland we even don't have ones.

Answer 4

rofl @ Pirate Girls.

But I think she is right. It's probably because the form of the name changes depending on if they are a son or daughter. For example the Russians take their middle name depending on their gender and the name of their parent; so if my father was named Malkom (if I were Russian) then my name would be Christoff Malkovich (my father's name + "vich" meaning "son" I believe). But if I were a girl then my middle name would be "Malkova" instead.

Just an example of how Polish names might change over the generations.

Answer 5

The "-a" at the end just means it's a female.  

When people came here from overseas, the border officials were too lazy and too condescending to try to understand that the same family could have 2 ways of spelling a surname, one for the boys and one for the girls.  Besides, it would have made a mess of their primitive recording systems.

Answer 6

to an "a" is female. and they celebrate their saints day - one of their other names like a birthday the way I understand it.

Answer 7

If you mean in America - it probably was due to whoever was signing them in when they got off the boat.  Seriously.  Not as many people were as literate THEN as are NOW.

If you mean in Poland - it might be whether someone is male or female.