What ethnicity is the last name Cylwik?

Question

What ethnicity is the last name Cylwik?

Answer 1

Looks Polish to me.  Should know live in the south of England and every other person I meet seems to be Polish.

Answer 2

It's a Polish name with Russian/Lithuanian origins. See website http://www.ipgs.us/iwona/surnames/surnam...

Answer 3

sounds polish sir

Answer 4

???????????? sounds welsh to me?

Answer 5

looks polish.

Answer 6

It seems to have Czech / Slavic origins.

I found the name listed among 3 separate documents that listed university/research personnel in the Czech region of Europe.

It is also seen among the Roma names....gypsies, if you will, that are thought to come from the area of Hungary...so that would still stand with the Czech / Slavic origins.

Polish is an off-shoot of those original older languages too.

Answer 7

I've looked through actual immigration records. People with that name came from Chlina and Krynce (Bialystok), Groda.

There seem to be 2 separate families who came over. One family settled in the Wilkes-Barre area and the other in Chicago. Researching immigrants in either area means there is a wealth of good documentation out there for you to use. If your family was from the Wilkes-Barre line, the Pennsylvania State Library and Archives will be the place to start. If your family was from the Chicago line, you'd want to start at the National Archives Center at 75th and Pulaski in Chicago (across the street from Daley College) and the Wilmette Family History Center.

Given the first names of the immigrants, they appear to all be Catholic. So doing a parallel search using parish records would also be fruitful. It's very possible that the Family History Center has access to the films of sacramental registers from those two towns. Start with baptismal records (replacing birth certificates that weren't used back then), marriage registers, and the "last rites" (sepulcher) records in place of death certificates. You can probably hit a couple of hundred years in the Russian partition of Poland and the former Kingdom of Poland using parish registers.