As my bedtime reading I am reading “Poland” by Mitchener.
A lot of Polish names end in -ski, but when a woman is refered to the ending is -ska. Does anyone know what the ski or ska means?
A good book BTW.
http://www.polishroots.com/surnames/surnames_endings.htm
What does -ski mean? In Polish it’s an adjectival suffix, meaning simply “of, from, connected with, pertaining to.” The form X-ski is an all-purpose way of saying “somehow associated with X.” Thus Warszawa means “Warsaw,” and Warszawski means “of Warsaw.” The noun piekarz means “baker,” and the adjective piekarski means “of the baker, the baker’s.”
In surnames, X-ski usually began as a short way of indicating some close connection with X. Thus Piekarski would generally mean either “kin of the baker,” or “one from the place of the baker.” There are subsets of the -ski names that are especially likely to refer to place of origin – we’ll look a them in a minute – but clearly a name such as Warszawski would mean “one from Warsaw,” or in a broader sense, “one connected with Warsaw in some way clear enough that calling this guy Warszawski makes sense.” Similarly Bydgoski, literally “of Bydgoszcz,” would mean “one from Bydgoszcz, one connected with Bydgoszcz.”
Thank you. Almost the same as the Dutch prefix ‘van’ or ‘van de’ or ‘van der.’
That didn’t answer my -ski vs -ska question but I found that in the article you linked to. Masc. vs fem.
Mr. of Warsaw vs Mrs. of Warsaw.