hello friends! i recently picked up a book on polish history and it has a lot of very interesting names in it, so i thought i’d share some of the fun ones with you!
not all of these are polish, many other european names are mentioned in the book
i don’t speak polish and i’m bad at describing pronunciations, i’ll do my best but these may not be perfectly accurate!
adalbertus
cosmas
mieszko (myesh-ko)
kazimierz (kah-ZEE-myezh)
emnilda
canute
richeza
yaroslav
izyaslav
salomea
evdoxia
henryk
leszek (LESH-ek)
zbislava
konrad
alfonso
oden
elžbieta
agafia
kaźko (KAZH-ko)
ulrich
sigismund
wincenty (vin-TSEN-tee)
sophia “sonka”
zygmunt
maciej (MATCH-eeay)
callimachus
erazm
dorota
mikołaj (mee-KO-lie)
fausto
marcin (MARCH-in)
łukasz (woo-kash)
andrzej (ahnd-zay)
melanchthon
klemens
bartłomiej (bart-lo-myay)
krzysztof (shee-shtof)
jakub (yah-koob)
szymon (she-mon)
fynes
albrecht
stańczyk (stañ-chik, i really struggle to write down how ń is pronounced, but i think this soooort of works )
jan (yan)
wilhelm
katarzyna (kat-ah-ZHEE-nah)
janusz (ya-noosh)
grishka
konstanty (kon-STAN-tee)
maryna
let me know your favourites! and if i should do a part 2 when i read the second half of the book
very interesting! coincidentally, I’m currently looking at Polish names from my family tree! I particularly like [name_m]Cosmas[/name_m], Emnilda, [name_m]Mieszko[/name_m], [name_m]Henryk[/name_m], [name_m]Konrad[/name_m], Kazko, [name_m]Fausto[/name_m], [name_m]Marcin[/name_m], [name_m]Wilhelm[/name_m] & Grishka!
I love [name_m]Kazimierz[/name_m], [name_m]Yaroslav[/name_m], Izyaslav, [name_m]Alfonso[/name_m], [name_f]Agafia[/name_f], [name_f]Sophia[/name_f], [name_m]Zygmunt[/name_m], [name_u]Jan[/name_u], [name_f]Katarzyna[/name_f] and [name_u]Konstanty[/name_u].
What a wonderful list! [name_m]Cosmas[/name_m], Adalbertus, Emnilda, Evdoxia, [name_m]Konrad[/name_m], [name_f]Agafia[/name_f], [name_m]Klemens[/name_m], and Grishka are my faves!
I love a lot of these, but because my mother is (half) Polish there aren’t many surprises for me. [name_f]My[/name_f] favorites are Evdoxia, [name_m]Mieszko[/name_m], [name_m]Maciej[/name_m] and Erazm.
[name_m]Just[/name_m] a little note: the Polish letter ł is pronounced as w and not L. So it would be mee-KO-wie and bart-WOH-myey.
Also, the letter i is pronounced ee in Polish and y is pronounced as the short ih.
i know that (which is why i said łukasz was woo-kash) but from what i understand, ł used to be pronounced like “ll” (a thick L i guess?) up until the 19th century. a lot of historical names like mikołaj have retained their original pronunciation. i checked like 5 pronunciation websites to make sure people really did pronounce mikołaj that way but every polish person seemed to say it like that, which lines up with my shoddy research :,)
if not, well at least in the context of this being a historical list the historical pronounciation could make sense that way pfft
i accept that though, that’s valid criticism i really just don’t hear a difference between the two. we don’t have differing ee/ih sounds in greek (η, ι, υ, οι, ει are all pronounced like that exact same “ee” sound, because greek sucks ) so it’s hard for me to tell them apart in other languages. but thanks for letting me know!
I’ve never heard it pronounced with a a double ll, which isn’t to say there’s no Polish person on earth who pronounces it like that of course. I checked forvo, which is usually very helpful, and all of the pronunciations there are with a “w” sound. That’s how it sounds to me, at least https://forvo.com/search/Mikołaj/pl/
maybe! it’s complicated to look into, i heard a few different pronunciations in voice recordings and i was mainly going off of the historical pronunciation notes in my book (which i double checked with other sources) so i just don’t know, people who are interested can do their own research
So this is one of my really specific interests (although the pronunciation notes in your book @tallemaja will be more accurate than me) and I wanted to pop in to second this! I loved seeing the historically accurate pronunciations used in this list.
I worked with an author a few years ago who wrote a short story set in the early twentieth century and I kind of put my foot in my mouth about the Polish names—author used Mikołaj and Mikolaj interchangeably and I was quick to point out that these two spellings indicated very different pronunciations and “Mikolaj” was a misrepresentation, then did some more research into it and learned that the pronunciation of ł was not completely standardized even at that time. Depending on when these historical figures lived, the modern Polish pronunciation of ł may not have existed at all, or may have had “low class” connotations and therefore wouldn’t be used for royalty etc
I found a book published in 1944 airing grievances about the modern pronunciation:
That’s so interesting, thank you for sharing! [name_f]My[/name_f] maternal grandparents (born in the 1920s) always pronounced it with the w sound, I had no idea that was considered “careless” pronunciation at some point.
Thanks for sharing! I love Polish names. [name_f]Katarzyna[/name_f] is my favourite of these. I also love [name_m]Konrad[/name_m].
Out of curiosity, what is the book?
Thank you for taking the time to share! I don’t know much about Polish names so these were really fun and interesting to go through (definitely would enjoy a part 2).
“poland: a history” by adam zamoyski !! i definitely recommend it, i think it achieves a great balance of giving you a lot of info without getting boring or rambling on for too long
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and if i should do a part 2 when i read the second half of the book
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) so it’s hard for me to tell them apart in other languages. but thanks for letting me know!
i just don’t know, people who are interested can do their own research 