Poles in Diasporas
When Poles emigrate to countries with different languages and cultures, the often-difficult spelling and pronunciation of Polish names commonly cause them to be misspelled or changed; sometimes indirectly by transliteration into, e.g., Cyrillic.
For example, in English often changes w to v and sz to sh. Similar changes sometimes occur in French, as well as the addition to aristocratic names of de (la particule fr:Particule (onomastique)) or von in German or Van/van in Dutch. However, it is not very correct as the ski/cki/dzki surnames already contain the de/von/van meaning.
Changes in Spanish may be even more extreme. A Spiczyński may become simply Spika, for example while the proper translation will be de Spiczyn. Hyphenated double-barrelled names are often rearranged: Erasmus Bogorya-Skotnicki becomes Erasmo Bogorya de Skotnicki or Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya.
Read more about this topic: Polish Name
Famous quotes containing the word poles:
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)