Polish surnames hide small stories in their endings and spellings. A name ending in -ski often began as a way of saying someone was “of” a place, or later simply followed a pattern people already respected.
These thirty surnames are among those documented as most frequent in the Internet Dictionary of Polish Surnames (IJP PAN). Its frequency figures come from Poland’s PESEL register as of 2014.
List of Polish Surnames
| # | Surname | Meaning and language |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nowak | A nickname from nowak, someone new to a community. Women usually share this spelling today; older records may show Nowakowa for a wife or Nowakówna for a daughter. |
| 2 | Kowalski / Kowalska | From kowalski, “of the smith,” or from places named Kowal, Kowale, or Kowalskie. In Polish the feminine form is Kowalska—the same family name, not a different line. |
| 3 | Wiśniewski / Wiśniewska | From places named Wiśniewo, Wiśniowa, and similar cherry-place names. Many villages share those names. American records often drop the accent: Wisniewski. |
| 4 | Wójcik | From Wójt, a village head, or a short form of the given name Wojciech, with a diminutive ending. Clerks often write Wojcik after the ó is lost. |
| 5 | Kowalczyk | An occupational name from kowalczyk, a smith’s apprentice or journeyman, or from the personal name Kowal. Related in sense to Kowalski, not automatically the same family. |
| 6 | Kamiński / Kamińska | From places named Kamienna or Kamień—“stone” place-names found in many provinces. |
| 7 | Lewandowski / Lewandowska | The dictionary connects it to the personal name Lewanda, related to the word for lavender, with the familiar -owski ending. The feminine form is Lewandowska. |
| 8 | Zieliński / Zielińska | From green-tinged place-names such as Zieleniec or Zielina. IJP lists more than one possible village type. |
| 9 | Szymański / Szymańska | From places named Szymany, or from the personal name Szymon (Simon) and related forms. Search Szymanski in American indexes as well. |
| 10 | Woźniak | The dictionary gives two paths: a nickname from woźniak, a draft or riding horse, or from the personal name Woźny, a court or municipal officer. Records often show Wozniak. |
| 11 | Dąbrowski / Dąbrowska | From the many places named Dąbrowa or Dąbrówka, an oak grove. Prussian-area records may use the German-influenced spelling Dombrowski. |
| 12 | Kozłowski / Kozłowska | From the many places named Kozłów or Kozłowo. American papers usually flatten the ł: Kozlowski. |
| 13 | Jankowski / Jankowska | From very common place-names such as Jankowice, Jankowo, and Janków, a widespread -owski place-name type. |
| 14 | Mazur | From mazur, a person from Mazowsze (Masovia), or the related nickname. It is a regional-origin name, not the name of a single village. |
| 15 | Kwiatkowski / Kwiatkowska | From flower-related place-names such as Kwiatków, Kwiatkowo, and Kwiatkowice. Several localities share those names across Poland. |
| 16 | Wojciechowski / Wojciechowska | From places named Wojciechowice or Wojciechowo, built on the given name Wojciech. IJP lists more than one, including a place-name now in Ukraine. |
| 17 | Krawczyk | From krawiec, a tailor, or krawczyk, a tailor’s apprentice. An occupational name that can arise independently in more than one town. |
| 18 | Kaczmarek | From kaczmarek or karczmarek, an innkeeper’s helper, or from the personal name Kaczmarz. Related to the old word for a tavern. |
| 19 | Piotrowski / Piotrowska | From places named Piotrowo, Piotrowice, or Piotrów—Peter-places found in more than one region. The feminine form is Piotrowska. |
| 20 | Grabowski / Grabowska | From the many villages named Grabowa, Grabowo, or Grabów, names tied to the hornbeam tree. A widespread -owski place-name type. |
| 21 | Zając | A nickname from zając, a hare. American records often show Zajac once the ą is dropped. |
| 22 | Pawłowski / Pawłowska | From places named Pawłowice, Pawłowo, or Pawłów, built on Paweł (Paul). Clerks commonly write Pawlowski. |
| 23 | Michalski / Michalska | From places named Michały or from the personal name Michał (Michael). IJP notes several Mazovian villages of that name. |
| 24 | Król | A nickname from król, “king.” It is a descriptive or joking name, not evidence of royal descent. American records may show Krol. |
| 25 | Wróbel | A nickname from wróbel, a sparrow. The accented ó often disappears in English-language papers: Wrobel. |
| 26 | Jabłoński / Jabłońska | From apple-related place-names such as Jabłonna, Jabłonka, and Jabłonica. Many localities share the type; American indexes often show Jablonski. |
| 27 | Wieczorek | From wieczorek—“evening,” and in dialect also a dance party or a bat—or from the personal name Wieczór. A nickname that can arise in more than one place. |
| 28 | Nowakowski / Nowakowska | Related to nowak, a newcomer, or to the personal name Nowak, with an -owski ending. Related in sense to Nowak, not automatically the same family. |
| 29 | Majewski / Majewska | The dictionary connects it to maj, the month of May, or to the personal name Maj. The feminine form is Majewska. |
| 30 | Olszewski / Olszewska | From places named Olszewo, an alder-place name found in more than one province. The feminine form is Olszewska. |
In records a husband may be Kowalski and his wife or daughter Kowalska—the same family, inflected for gender. Marks such as ł, ń, ś, and ą are easy for an American clerk to drop, so Wiśniewski becomes Wisniewski and Dąbrowski may appear as Dabrowski or Dombrowski. Those shifts are leads: a German-looking Dombrowski on a New York record can still be the same name as Dąbrowski in a Polish book.
These thirty surnames are among those documented as most frequent in the Internet Dictionary of Polish Surnames (IJP PAN, Institute of the Polish Language). The dictionary’s frequency figures come from Poland’s PESEL register as of 2014, and it reports men and women separately. For adjectival names such as Kowalski, IJP also keeps a feminine lemma (Kowalska) and ranks the family name using both forms together. The numbers in the first column follow that IJP order. They are a reference to a dated source, not a 2026 ranking, and the raw headcounts are not reprinted here.
Please read this before you scan for your name: two families can share a spelling and come from different villages, faiths, or partitions of the old Polish lands. Use the notes to decide what to search next. A meaning is a clue, not proof of a hometown.
Do you know the surname, but not the town or parish? We can help trace the connection between your ancestor in America and a place in Poland. Tell us what you already know through our contact form. For a flat $99, our Beginner Genealogy Project gives you a documented starting point: a visual family tree chart, a written summary of what was found, and copies of the records we used. The $99 project does not guarantee that we will pinpoint the exact hometown in every case. If a deeper search looks worthwhile, we will talk through the scope and cost with you before any extra work begins.
Endings, women’s names, and lost accents
Names formed with -ski, -cki, or -dzki behave like adjectives. A man is Kamiński; a woman in Polish records is usually Kamińska. IJP treats those as a pair when it ranks the surname, even though the feminine spelling has its own dictionary entry. Women living abroad sometimes keep the masculine form, so a Brooklyn directory may list both.
Names that do not take -ska, such as Nowak, Wójcik, or Mazur, are typically the same for women today. Older papers can still show a wife as Nowakowa or a daughter as Nowakówna. Those historical endings are worth searching, but they do not mean you are looking at a different surname.
When you search American indexes, try the name with and without Polish letters: Ł/ł as l, ń as n, ś and ć as s and c, ż and ź as z, ó as o, and ą or ę as a/e or sometimes om/en. Dąbrowski and Dombrowski are a good example of a spelling that shifted under German-language clerks.
Why the town—and the partition—matter
Between 1772 and 1795, Prussia, Russia, and Austria divided the Polish lands. The empire that governed a village decided the language of the books and the office that kept them. The same family name can lead to German civil registers in one district and Russian-language civil acts in another. That is why a New York record that names a town or parish is more valuable than the surname alone.
In the Prussian partition, a uniform civil registry (the Standesamt) separate from the church was introduced in 1874, and a German Empire law applied the system from 1876. Those books are usually in German. In the Duchy of Warsaw, Napoleonic-style civil registration began on 1 May 1808 and continued, with changes, in the later Kingdom of Poland under Russian rule. Entries there were first kept in Polish; from 1 January 1868 they were to be written in Russian. In Austrian Galicia, church metrical books were given the force of legal civil records in the 1780s, often in Latin and organized village by village within a parish.
Poland was restored in 1918, and borders moved again after 1945. An ancestral parish may now sit in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, or Germany. The research question is still the same: which town and which church or civil office wrote the record?
How we trace a town or parish
Start in America. New York death and marriage records, church registers, passenger lists, and naturalization files sometimes name a town, a parish, a province, or at least “Poland,” “Russia,” “Austria,” or “Germany.” Those old country labels are clues to the partition, not contradictions.
Once you have a place, the Polish State Archives search (Szukaj w Archiwach) is the official portal to digitized books. Geneteka, from the Polish Genealogical Society, offers free indexes that often point you toward the right parish and years. Open the IJP dictionary for historical spellings and feminine forms of the name you are chasing. You do not need to order a certificate until a specific entry is worth reading in full.
Religion matters as much as spelling. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Greek Catholic (Uniate) communities kept their own books, sometimes in the same town. A passenger list that says “Russian Poland” and a marriage record that names a parish can pull those strands together. If the village name is common—there are many places called Dąbrowa or Kowale—the parish dedication or the nearest larger town is what separates one family from another.
Find the place behind your family name
Recognize a surname but not the place your family came from? Tell us what you know about your ancestor, or start with our $99 Beginner Genealogy Project. Finding an exact hometown is not guaranteed; deeper research is scoped after we review your question.
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