Jankowski

Jankowski (feminine: Jankowska, plural: Jankowscy) is the 13th most common surname in Poland (33,612 people). There are, in fact, 12 separate and unrelated families with this surname as the result of many village estates being named Jankowa or Jankowice in 13th and 14th century Poland. The owners of these estates took their surnames from them in the typical manner by adding the suffix '-ski', meaning 'of', to the estate name. These families each used an additional identifier signifying their armorial crest, or 'herb' (see Boniecki, "Herbarsz Polski"). These herbs are as follows: Amadej, Bialynia, Cielatkowa, Jastrzebiec, Junosza, Korab, Kuszaba, Nowina, Ogonczyk, Poraj, Rawicz, and Strzemie. Each denotes a separate family originating in one of the villages named Jankowa located throughout Poland. Each family has its own history and line of descent. With the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the subsequent Polish diaspora, these secondary identifiers were largely forgotten and descendants may no longer know which family they are connected with. Furthermore, the surname Jankowski can be phoneticized in a number of different ways, with even the same family varying its spelling. This all creates a daunting, but not impossible, task for researchers who simply need to know the region of Poland from which their ancestors originated.

The complexity of the evolution of these families can be illustrated well by the Jankowski h. Jastrzebiec family which is initially of Polish origin but has subsequently major Byelorussian-Lithuanian influences.