In his comment to the Bielsko-Biała post Mchl posed an interesting question: what do you call a person who lives in Bielsko-Biała? Yeah, indeed…
An inhabitant of Gdańsk is called gdańszczanin (masculine; gdańszczanka – feminine). A person who lives in Warsaw? Warszawiak or warszawianin, if a male, and warszawianka, if a female.
In Kraków? Krakowiak, or krakowianin, if a guy, and krakowianka, if a woman.
There’s really no rhyme or reason to how those names are formed. And those are just the easy ones. It gets a lot more complicated when you’re talking about a person who lives in Pruszcz Gdański, for example. Or Bielsko-Biała.
And yes, if we’re back on the subject of people who live in Bielsko-Biała, what do you call them? Hmmm… Bielsko-bialski, if a guy, and bielsko-bialska, if a woman. Yeah, where did that come from I have no clue, but that’s what it says in my dictionary. Many people mistakenly assume, it’s bielszczanin and bielszczanka, but those are people who live in Bielsk Podlaski.
And since we’re gluttons for punishment (and because we love Polish), we might as well go all the way and figure out how to call an inhabitant of Białystok. Białostoczanin, if a male, and białostoczanka if a female.
And maybe you noticed one thing – all those nouns are not capitalized. If you see “Krakowianin” that means a person who lives in Krakowskiem, which is a general area where Kraków is located. But an inhabitant of a city is always written using a small letter.
So yeah, what do you call an inhabitant of Pruszcz Gdański? I think I’ll stick with “an inhabitant of Pruszcz Gdański” (mieszkaniec Pruszcza Gdańskiego).
And since we’ve been talking about Bielsko-Biała a lot lately, I thought I’d show you some photos from that city. All photographs were taken by Artur Guzy and you can see more of them on his blog – Bielsko-Biała i wszystko jasne.
Pretty, isn’t it?
And I don’t know about you, but I had no idea that Bielsko-Biała was such a lovely town.
And for those who complained about the rain, here’s złota polska jesień, also in Bielsko-Biała.
For more photos, go to Artur’s blog and practice your Polish!
Comments:
Mchl:
Wooo!! I inspired a post!!
My trzy grosze.
Though bielsko-bialski might be a correct name for an inhabitant of Bielsko-Biała, it seems that ‘bielszczanin’ is the name in common use. Just compare Google results for both.
As it often happens, we have a gramatically correct form, and a form to be used if we want to be understood 😉
BTW: I am a ‘lubelak’ even if correct name is ‘lublinianin’ 😉
Ian:
This is an unrelated question: I apologize. My maternal grandmother’s surname was Kubisz, and her mother was from near Kraków in Poland. I was just wondering if you had any idea what this name might mean if Polish surnames have meanings. I imagine that it is probably a diminutive of something else, but I have no idea what that may be. Any help you could offer would be appreciated. I’m also learning Polish on my own, as grandmother doesn’t remember much of her Polish spoken at home, although I’m sure the skills are still there somewhere: she probably just needs someone to speak it with.
John:
After reading this and others I was wondering if the Polish Microsoft Word has polish spell check and how did they figure everything out? And is it always right?
Ola:
I think that bielszczanin would be more understandable for Polish people because I am a native and I here about bielski-bialski for the first time in my life and that sounds a little bit weird.
barsorro:
Anna,
I have little idea to argue the point much, but I have some doubts regarding the dictionary you quote. Well, the adjectival forms “bielsko-bialski” (“bielsko-bialska”) would be something of a real monstrosity when used as terms of reference to an inhabitant of the town. This would be a thing quite out of the regular patterns of word formation and usage, wouldn’t it?
And — as Mchl rightly points out — the actual usage goes definitely the way of “bielszczanin / bielszczanka”.
Most importantly, however, though I’m out of clues (and out of mood, to be quite frank :)) to research the issue profoundly and, possibly, prove your dictionary totally wrong, let me just offer a claim at it being at fault at least in pronouncing the forms “bielszczanin / bielszczanka” not applicable to inhabitants of Bielsko-Biała. Whether then there be any other, alternative, terms of referrence to use with those people, or not, both my “Słownik ortograficzny i słownik poprawnej polszczyzny PWN” (2000) and this PWN online resource
http://so.pwn.pl/lista.php?co=bielszczanin
confirm that one should feel very safe in using “bielszczanin / bielszczanka” with regard to people who live in Bielsko-Biała.
barsorro:
Dear Ian,
I feel it would take somebody really knowledgeable in name origins to tell you something substantial there. Polish surnames — probably similar to surnames in other languages — do indeed have meanings, but it is not always easy to find out what they are. Some of them are pretty straightforward, but some are more obscure. That, unfortunately, seems to be the case with “Kubisz”.
What I can tell you is that the root “Kub-” seems to be a rather popular one, especially in the south of Poland. You may recall the name of the successful Polish F1 driver Robert Kubica, who — incidentally, also comes from Kraków. I think Kubica is particularly common among the highland people of Podhale. My guess is that this “Kub-” root might bear reference to the Polish first name “Kuba” (“Jakub”).
The suffix “-isz” doesn’t look like being a diminutive. I would assume that it’s function is attributive — it might have originally been “Kubiszów”: “one of the the kin of Kuba”, and only later got shortened. This ending “-isz” looks to be a trait of Slavic names of people who lived under the German or the Austrian administrations at a certain point in history: probably because the German language also features an adjectival suffix “-isch”. (Kraków was under Austrian rule for over a century.)
Just a bit of speculation from me. I can’t vouch for it, but that’s the only line of thinking that comes to my Polish mind 🙂
Incidentally, I’m from Kraków myself, and… I can’t crack the etymology of my own name 🙂
Ian:
Barsorro,
Thank you so much for your reply to my post. I now know more than I did before, as I incorrectly believed it to be a diminutive of something. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me.
Na zdrowie!
Ian
barsorro:
Cała przyjemność po mojej stronie, Ian 🙂
Pozdrowienia! 🙂
John:
I have to laugh at these endings regarding the towns and the people.who live there. In the USA we like to joke that “If a person from Poland is called a “Pole,” is a person from Holland called a “Hole?” And is a person from Paris called a “Parisite?” (Actual spelling is Parasite though!) Don’t forget John F. Kennedy when he said ‘I Am a Jelly Donut’ (‘Ich bin ein Berliner’)” http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm
I am from Pittsburgh, PA, USA and we are Pittsburghers, yes like the hamburgers!
Tomek:
And that’s why I decided to move to Warsaw not to Bielsko Biała or Zimna Wódka 😀 😀
Jessia:
Don’t you think it is usually the case that where there is more than one town with a similar name (e.g. Bielsko-Biała and Bielsk Podlaski), the inhabitants of both are known by the same name and the town in question deduced from context? Not many people are going to mix up B-B and B.P. since they are at opposite ends of the country. 9 times out of 10 the context will indicate which is which.
Slightly off-topic, I wonder if historically there were two names for the inhabitants of what was originally two towns – bielszczanin/-ka for inhabitants of Bielsko and Białczanin/-ka (??) for the residents of Biała (for a long time, being something of a pedant with regard to grammar, I was phased by how it could be Bielsko-Biała and not Bielsko Białe. Context is everything…
And to really stick a spanner in the works, what about inhabitants of Kędzierzyn Koźle…
Go figure ;-))