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Pages in category "Polish-language surnames" The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 2,005 total. This list may not reflect recent changes .
Polish names have two main elements: the given name, and the surname. The usage of personal names in Poland is generally governed by civil law , church law, personal taste and family custom. The law requires a given name to indicate the person's gender.
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For ease of use, the [i] in front of the last name, and the ending _ve, were dropped. If the last name ends in [a], then removing the [j] would give the name of the patriarch or the place, as in, Grudaj - j = Gruda (place in MM). Otherwise, removing the whole ending [aj] yields the name of founder or place of origin, as in Lekaj - aj = Lek(ë).
A second unspecified person would be called Nowak ("Newman"), with the choice of first name being left to the author's imagination, often also Jan for a man; this surname is unisex. Jan is one of the most popular male first names in Polish, and Kowalski and Nowak are the most popular Polish surnames.
This dependence of grammatical gender of adjectival surname on the gender of its owner is not considered to be changing the surname (compare the equivalent rule in Polish, for example). The correct transliteration of such feminine surnames in English is debated: the names technically should be in their original form, but they sometimes appear ...
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In Polish culture, Jan Kowalski is a placeholder name for an average Polish person, the usage being similar to "John Smith" in some English speaking cultures. The surname Kowalski/Kowalska is the second most common surname in Poland (140,471 people in 2009), with the leader being Nowak (207,348 in 2009). [1]