BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Polish Culture Dabrowski/Dombrowski why and where did this change

My last name is Dabrowski, and several uncles, and grandparents where Dombrowski. I was told that this was changed when my grandparents came to the U.S.A. Why did they change? Which is correct? Are there both in Poland? Why?

I am working on my family background, and this is a problem, not knowing the correct one. Can someone help me with this.

How the ruddy hell would I know!

If you don't have any help, why would just get on to post as you did. Keep your ruddy hell to yourself.

There are several possibilities.

1. When people come through the U.S. immigration center, they are asked their names. Many years ago, the immigration official wrote down the name as he/she heard it. This generated many new spellings of old names.

2. Some immigrants simplified the spelling of their name on purpose, to make it sound more American to to make the name easier for Americans to pronounce. Obviously, some Polish letters don't even exist in the English alphabet, and so can't be spelled in English! I wonder, for instance, if in Polish the second letter of Dabrowski, that "a", had a "tail" under it. This makes the "a" into a different letter, that has a "swallowed m" sound.

3. Sometimes there were variants in the country of origin. My grandfather Waclaw Frontczak came from Poland in about 1908. When I have gone back to Poland to visit relatives, I have found that some relatives spell the name "Frontczak" and some spell it "Fronczak", without the "t". Even they can't tell me when this change occurred!

Susan Marie

See the Frazak and Fronczak info here:

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My mom's husband (Polish) cringes everytime he's asked for his mother's maiden name - he's never seen it spelled the same way twice on official documents (including documents from the Polish speaking priests at their church.) We have to remember that spelling wasn't standardized until very recently - even now there are spelling differences between the US and Canadian English. When you transliterate a name from one language to another, you add in even more chances for different spellings.

Julie

If you haven't used surnamenavigator.org yet try that. You can set it to Poland and USA settings and run it two different times, to see what you can come up with. You may end up seeing a more standard way to spell the name in Polish, looking at the older records at familysearch.org also.

Just realized these messages are pretty old, so not sure if you will see this!

probably happened at Ellis Island like susan marie suggested in #1

My great-great-grandmother"s name was Frances Dombrowski. She came from Prussia in the 1850s and married a Joseph Prescach. Do you know where your family is from?

Maureen,

My grandparents came from Poland, two small villages just, south or south east of Warsaw. They came to the U.S.A. around 1900, and I am unable to find out anything on their life in Poland. I am looking for others with my name, who may be able to help.

Michael Dabrowski