Hi, Bob Kowalski <rak@doc.ic.ac.uk> asked about the origin of his great-grandmother's surname LENDZION. He said, among other things: > According to my father's notes, she was born in > former Prussia in 1848 and > lived in Czerwinsk before immigrating to the US. > Apparently, her father was > French, and his name was originally Lingion, or > similar. He may have come to > Poland with Napoleon's army. If this is the > case, then all Lendzions in > Poland might have a similar ancestry, because > Lendzion is not a typical > Polish name. > ... > I would be grateful for any information, that > would seem to be relevant. In > particular, I wonder if anyone else has any > views about the origin of the > name "Lendzion". It is certainly true that some French came to resettle in Poland over the centuries, and there are surnames borne by Poles that turn out to be of French linguistic origin. The number is not terribly large, however. I answer a lot of questions about Polish name origins, and I don't often run into too one that the experts trace back to France. So while it's theoretically possible the name LENDZION might be French in a given instance, we should ask whether there is a plausible Polish origin. All things being equal, a Polish linguistic origin is more likely to apply to a Pole than a French linguistic origin -- though obviously that changes if you can establish a solid French connection. According to Polish surname Kazimierz Rymut's book _Nazwiska Polakow_ [The Surnames of Poles], this name is of Polish origin, coming from the Polish noun _ledzian_, written with a little hook or tail under the E, which indicates it's a nasal vowel, pronounced somewhat like "en" and therefore sometimes also written EN. LEDZIAN or LENDZIAN sounds like "LEN-john." That term also appears sometimes as _ledzwian_, with a tail under the E and an accent over the Z, so that it sounds more like "LENJ-v'yahn." This is a term for a kind of pea -- my dictionary says it's the "everlasting pea (Lathyrus)." Rymut says this word was also used colloquially sometimes to mean "scoundrel, rogue." In Polish A and O are similar sounds, and we often see them switch. Names with A will have variants with O, and vice versa. So there's nothing remarkable about the fact that LENDZION and LEDZION appear as variants of LENDZIAN and LEDZIAN. Also, there are times the Polish nasal E loses its nasal quality altogether, so that we may also see this name appear as LEDZIAN or LEDZION with plain E, sounding more like "LEH-john." Rymut says that spelling LEDZIAN with plain E appears in Polish records as early as 1572. He says yet another spelling, with a slash through the L and a tail under the E (sounding like "WEN-john") shows up in Polish records as early as 1616. He doesn't give dates for the other spellings. So an ancestor might have been associated with that particular kind of pea -- maybe he grew them, or loved to eat them, or sold them, or lived in an area where they grew naturally. It's also possible LENDZION started as a nickname for an ancestor who was a bit of a rogue or scoundrel. I don't quite know how a term for a pea came to be a colloquial term meaning "rogue," but apparently Polish scholars have established that this did, in fact, happen. At the risk of complicating things, I should explain a little more about the variety of spellings for this name. In older records Polish names (and most other European names, for that matter) could be spelled many different ways because most folks were illiterate, and there wasn't any widespread consensus on exactly how names were to be spelled. So people filling out records usually spelled them phonetically, the way the names sounded to them. This produced some inconsistency. Thus a name with an A in it might be spelled with an O because those vowels are not all that different in Polish. So LEDZION might show up as LEDZIAN. Also, Polish has several letters we don't use, and they can complicate spelling issues enormously. Thus in Polish there is a plain L, and also an L with a slash through it, which sounds like our W. There is plain E, which sounds like our E in "let," and also that nasal E with a hook or tail under it, which sounds much like "en." Since it sounds like EN, it is often spelled that way. There is plain N and an accented N, which sounds like the "ni" in "onion." There is plain Z, dotted Z, and accented Z -- the last two sound much like "zh" in "Zhivago." And so on. Due to small variations in the way people pronounced this word, and therefore the name that came from it, you see this name spelled a lot of different ways. Rymut lists: LEDZION (tail under the E), LENDZIAN, LENDZIEN, LENDZION, LENDZIONEK, LENDZION (accent over the first N), LEDZIAN, LEDZION, LEDZON, LEDZON (accent over the N), and LEDZIAN (slash through the L, tail under the E). These are all just slightly different versions of the same basic name. As of 1990, according to the _Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych_, "Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland," which covers about 93% of the population of Poland and is online as a searchable database at http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/indexslo.html, there were 40 Polish citizens named LEDZIAN (plain E), 56 named LENDZIAN, and 2 named LEDZIAN (nasal E). The largest numbers of LEDZIAN's with plain E, 29, lived in the central province of Lodz; the rest were scattered all over. The spelled LENDZIAN showed up most often in Olsztyn province, in northcentral to northeastern Poland. The 2 who spelled it LEDZIAN with nasal E lived somewhere in Lodz province. There were 884 who spelled it LEDZION with no accents or tails, with the largest numbers in the provinces of Lodz (204), Plock (316), and Skierniewice (117) -- all more or less in central Poland. There were 1,346 who spelled it LENDZION (no accents or tails), living all over. There were 96 who spelled it LEDZION with plain L, E with a tail, and plain N, and they weren't concentrated in any one area. There were also several other rare variations, such as LENDZION with an accent over the first N (11, of whom 10 lived in Torun province), LENDZIEN (2, in Warsaw province), and so on. This variety of spellings makes it hard to pin this name down. As is normal with Polish surnames, you can't really focus on the name; you have to trace the family. You might see the name spelled a dozen different ways, all over the country. The only way to tell which ones are your relatives is by tracing the family back in the records, a generation at a time, till you find documents that tell you exactly where in Poland your ancestors came from. At that point you may be able to pick up their trail in Poland, and be able to distinguish the ones who are related to you from the ones who aren't. Fortunately, you already have info that clarifies where your great-grandmother's family came from. To sum up, LENDZION is one of many different spellings for a Polish surname that comes from the name for a kind of pea, also used colloquially to mean "scoundrel, rogue." It probably began as a nickname for an ancestor whom people associated with that pea for some reason, or perhaps one they regarded as a rogue. These various spellings are scattered all over Poland, so there's no one specific area with which the name is associated. As I said before, this is what analysis of the name tells us. But linguistic analysis of a surname, by itself, is only part of the picture. If you do establish a French connection with the family, then everything I've written may prove irrelevant; in that case, the name may be French. That's why anyone who really knows a little about surnames knows that you ALWAYS factor the linguistic analysis in with the information provided by research into the specific family's history. With any luck your research will clarify whether the name was originally Polish or French. I just wanted to point out that there is a perfectly plausible Polish derivation for the name. It may not look or sound to us like the typical Polish surname, but that can be misleading. Incidentally, NAIMAN is a variant of the German name NEUMANN, which also is spelled and pronounced a number of different ways in German and Polish, and means the same thing as English NEWMAN -- "new guy." I hope this information is some help to you, and wish you the best of luck with your research. Fred (officially William F.) Hoffman Author, _Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings_ www.fredhoff.com

Hi Mr. Hoffman: I really enjoy reading your responses to various email. I'm a gardener who grows annual sweetpeas. I think I can explain how this term for sweetpea could become the word for a rogue or scoundral. The lathyrus you mention is the perennial sweetpea. This sweetpea is very prolific, reseeds itself and grows all over. It's difficult to eradicate. That sounds like a rogue plant to me. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to POLANDBORDERSURNAMES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message