Help with a Polish name?

[Henryk Duda]

Clive Porter<CPORTER%ESA.bitnet%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU at plearn.edu.pl> wrote:

> [...] I wonder if anybody out there could help me
> with the spelling of a Polish name? The name is Myszkowska, but I'm not
> sure whether there should be any accents on any of the vowels or not,
> e.g. a ' over the o? I am asking on behalf of a friend who is changing
> her name to the 'real' surname of her father - he had to change his name
> when he arrived in England following the second world war because the
> English imigration people had a hard time with the spelling...
> [...]
> Clive Porter
> ESA-HQ Paris, France.


The spelling is (probably!) OK. I think, this name may be derived
from the place name Myszkow <small city near Czestochowa> - with '
over the o. The alternation o // u <spelled by o with the '> is
common in Polish however. Etymologically this is an adjective.
Masculine form Myszkowski means <a man from Myszkow>, feminine
Myszkowska. The names ending -ski, -cki in Polish were used by
noblemen earlier. This endings generally were added to names of
their villages//towns, but there are a lot of exceptions. So to be
sure, in any case you must know the history of the family.

Henryk Duda
--
<duda at zeus.kul.lublin.pl>
The Department of Polish Language
Catholic University of Lublin