The Family Piechorowski

The Family Piechorowski - Contact Us

Our many thanks to William F. Hoffman
Author, "Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings"
PGSA Publications Editor www.pgsa.org

PIECHOROWSKI is a pretty rare name in Poland these days. As of 1990, according to the best data available (the _Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych, "Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland," which covers about 94% of the population of Poland), there were 43 Polish citizens named Piechorowski, living in the following provinces: Warsaw 1, Czestochowa 1, Gdansk 1, Koszalin 7, Opole 6, Piotrkow 5, Plock 7, Poznan 15. Unfortunately I don't have access to further details such as first names or addresses, what I've given here is all I have.

Generally surnames ending in -owski are derived from the name of a place with which the family was associated at some point; if they were noble, they owned it, and if they were peasants, they lived and worked there. I looked in a gazetteer and found at least one place this surname could easily be connected with: Piechorowice, German name "Peicherwitz," in Silesia, specifically Nowy Targ county, located about 10 km. from Nowy Targ; as of the late 19th century it had its own Catholic parish church, which means it's likely the records of that church have been photocopied by the LDS and are available through Family History Centers from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. There may have been other places with names that could yield the surname Piechorowski; for instance, there is a Pichowice northeast of Strzegom in what was Wroclaw province till this year, and the surname could come from that, also. But the most plausible connection is with Piechorowice near Nowy Targ; Piechorowski makes perfect sense as meaning "one from Piechorowice." I couldn't find Piechorowice on modern maps, so it's possible it has become too small to show up on maps, or has changed its name or been absorbed into some other community.

Places with names beginning Piech- probably derive ultimately from Piech, an old nickname formed from first names beginning Pie- or Pio-, especially "Piotr," Peter. Add a suffix and you have Piecher, Piechor; from that to Piechorowice, "place of the sons of Piechor," is not much of a leap, at least not for Poles. So one could interpret Piechorowski as "one from the place of Pete's sons." The surname might also mean "kin of Pete's sons," but the -owski indicates a link more often with a place name formed from a personal name than with the personal name itself.