It is hard to say definitely without seeing the actual registry entry, but it was not uncommon, to add a nickname (vel in Latin) to the real name in order to differentiate people of the same first and last names living in the same village or parish. >From what you describe, I'd rather read the record as Martinus [Marcin in Polish, Martin in English] Grzymałowski, a son of 'bednarz' [a cooper]. It was very common to add an occupation of either a person himself, or of a person's father to the records. In your case, you can probably assume that even the grandfather was a cooper because Marcin's father Casimir [Kazimierz] was already described as a son of 'bednarz' in the record of Marcin's brother Josephus [Józef in Polish, Joseph in English]. But, as I said above, it is impossible to know for sure without 1)seeing the original record, and 2) without further research on the whole branch of Grzymałowski/Bednarz in the village and maybe even in the neighbouring localities. Over time, some of these nicknames were adopted (assumed) by the descendants as their last names for whatever reason or just because that was the name by which they were commonly known to everybody in the vicinity. In consequence, the original last name disappeared into oblivion - only to be discovered by us, the modern genealogists. On the other hand, before 1700's a lot of peasants either did not have the last names or were not recorded by their last names anyway. To differentiate between people with the same first names of which there were multitudes in every village, they went about known by either: 1) their occupation (don't forget that there was ONLY one miller and ONE Cartwright and ONE cobbler in most villages, so there was no confusion), or 2) their physical characteristic (like being tall/short/fat/skinny/lame/stuttering, etc.) which also in most cases described just ONE person or 3) the first name of their father or 4) the name of the village they came from if they were migrants Quite often - which is so infuriating to us today - the entry in the church register would read for example "Maria a miller's daughter married Johannes son of a cartwright". That's it! They (the priests, the church) did not bother with the last names since everybody knew everybody anyway, and there were no standards to follow. The standardization of the record keeping procedures was introduced in Galicia around 1783. ella > >> >> Hello, >> I have been researching the "Grzymalowski" family from the villages of >> Byczkowce and Skorodynce near Chortkiv for sometime. >> I recently found the marriage record of my GG Grandfather, Martinius >> Grzynalowski, son of Casimirus and Anna Banachow on Nov 22, 1840. I was >> surprised to see that the record stated his name as "Martinius Bednarzow >> vel Grzymalowski". >> I also found the birth record of his brother, Josephus, with the father >> shown as "son of Casimirus Bednarzow" and Anna Banachow on March 17, >> 1816. I appears that in the early 1800's my family name may have been >> "Bednarzow" and over time changed to Grzymalowski. The children of >> Matinius and Josephus used only the Grzymalowski name. >> Is there anyone researching the Bednarzow family in Byczkowce/Skorodynce >> area? Would I be correct to assume that there was a name change of my >> family around 1800. >> Best regards, >> Ralph Harris >>