Polish names

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Polish names have two main elements: the given name, and the surname. The usage of personal names in Poland is generally governed by civil law, church law, personal taste and family custom.

The law requires a given name to indicate the person's gender. Almost all Polish female names end in the vowel -a, and most male names end in a consonant or a vowel other than a. There are, however, a few male names that end in a, which are very old and uncommon, such as Barnaba, Bonawentura, Boryna, Jarema, Kosma, Kuba (a diminutive of Jakub) and Saba. Maria is a female name that can be used also as a middle (second) name for males.

Since the High Middle Ages, Polish-sounding surnames ending with the masculine -ski suffix, including -cki and -dzki, and the corresponding feminine suffix -ska/-cka/-dzka were associated with the nobility (Polish szlachta), which alone, in the early years, had such suffix distinctions.^[1] They are widely popular today.

Minor regional spelling differences also exist depending on whether the surname originated in Polish, Czech or Slovak (-sky/-ský).