Polish Surnames in the United States

Abstract

HE NAME IS AN INTEGRAL PART of language. The change of a name or its modification is, therefore, primarily a linguistic phenomenon. However, the reasons for, and the factors leading to, such changes are not necessarily of linguistic origin. Of all the words constituting the lexicon of a language, a name in a language-contact situation is sometimes the only element which survives the impact of another language, being ultimately adapted to that language,' and may become a puzzle to the etymologist; it may also drop out of usage long before an immigrant abandons or forgets his native tongue. American English and Polish contact has been brought about by the extensive immigration of to the United States during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth. The changes or modifications of their names and those of their descendants result from the impact of the American linguistic and cultural reality. Louis Adamic makes the subjective observation that Poles and Polish Americans seem impelled to more name changing than any other group.2 The fact is, however, that Polish immigrants and Americans of Polish descent behave in this particular language contact area in the same way as do other national groups. The linguistic behavior-in this case, the changing and modification ofnames-is conditioned by the degree of relation of the languages in contact. The greater the linguistic differences (both structural and orthographic) between these languages, the more significant and striking (from the point of view of the native speaker) are the modifications and changes of the names. Of course, the social, political, and cultural differences also play an important role. The relatively slight structural correspondence between English and Polish is bound to produce both articulatory and orthographic deformities of the Polish names on the part of Americans, who approach these foreign words with their own linguistic habits. Some of the monolingual immigrants are quite surprised, others amused, still others indignant at the tricks that Americans play on the Polish names. On the other hand, to Americans these unfamiliar linguistic forms are real tongue twisters. During various periods in the history of the United States, the linguistic pressure was complemented by social, political, and sometimes cultural pressures which induced the Pole to renounce his original name. These pressures do not exist in the homogeneous communi-