Nowak

The origin of the surname Nowak

Nowak, Poland’s most common surname, comes from nowy, “new” — a newcomer to a place.

What kind of surname is Nowak?

As a descriptive surname (or nickname name), the surname Nowak arose from a personal characteristic — a physical trait, a quality of temperament, or a distinguishing feature of its first bearer. Communities have always coined nicknames, and in the age before fixed surnames these vivid, affectionate or teasing labels — referring to hair colour, stature, complexion or character — frequently became hereditary. Descriptive surnames give an unusually human glimpse of an ancestor, hinting at how they looked or how they were regarded by the people around them.

How Polish surnames work

Polish surnames are famous for the ending “-ski” (feminine “-ska”), which originally marked a connection to a place or an aristocratic estate (“of [place]”) before spreading more widely; Kowalski, for instance, links to kowal, “smith.” Other Polish surnames are patronymic, ending in “-owicz” or “-ewicz” (“son of”), or come from occupations, nature and nicknames. A distinctive feature is grammatical gender, so a family name changes ending for men and women.