Forum | PolishOrigins :: View topic - Przystas born in Frysztak

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Joined: 04 Sep 2016
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Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2016 4:28 pm Post subject: Przystas born in Frysztak

Looking for information on the name Przystas. My grandfather was born in Frystak in 1892. Having a hard time finding any information. Help or suggestions most appreciated.
Lisa

Sophia
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Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2016 6:05 pm Post subject:

Hi Lisa,

It is a rather rare name. The final "s" likely has an accent mark over it, like this: Przystaś. There are other spellings which have quite similar pronunciations, such as Przystasz and Przystarz - - when I say similar pronunciation, I mean to an ear that is not used to the sounds of the Polish language. A Pole could tell them apart quite easily! If you follow this link to Google translate, http://translate.google.ca/?hl=en&tab=wT#pl/en/Przystas%0APrzysta%C5%9B%0APrzystasz%0APrzystarz and then click on the icon that looks like a speaker, you can hear them pronounced. A census in Poland from not too many years ago was used to count the number of people in the country who used various spellings of names, and the results were 179 for Przystaś, 62 for Przystarz and 239 for Przystasz. Compared with a total population of Poland of about 38 million, you can see why I call it a rare name.

Have you found any documents for your grandfather? For example, do you have a ship passenger list for him?

Best of luck in your search,
Sophia

Agnieszka Pawlus
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Joined: 10 Mar 2013
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Location: Poland
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2016 12:35 am Post subject:

Lisa,

Accordingly to Hoffman's "Polish surnames" all thre variations come from the expression przestarzeć się, “to age, become older”. There is also the archaic word przystarz, which means “husband who settles on his wife’s farm”.

You can also see the location of Frysztak on the map: https://goo.gl/maps/8cCTakgTSCu and compare it with the surname distribution maps:
For Przystaś: https://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Przysta%C5%9B
For Przystasz: https://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Przystasz
For Przystarz: https://nazwiska-polskie.pl/Przystarz

Good luck in you research,
Aga

Sophia
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2016 8:21 am Post subject:

Hi Aga,

I like the surname distribution maps from www.moikrewni.pl that you posted. They provide slightly different numbers for each surname than what I found on herby.com.pl and I am guessing that yours is more recent than mine. Could you please tell me, what year is the moikrewni data from and what year is the herby.com.pl data from?

Thanks!
Sophia

Agnieszka Pawlus
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Joined: 10 Mar 2013
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 2:12 am Post subject:

Sophia,

Moi Krewni is a database form 2002 (I do not know if it has been updated later), while Herby has data from 90' (it uses the information coded in PESEL numbers - personal identification numbers in Poland).

Aga

Magroski49
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 5:18 am Post subject:

Aga Pawlus wrote:

Aga and Sophia,

I remember to have read (some years ago) that Moi Krewni was based on the number of people who have a phone number (at home, not cell phones) and Herby was based on 1990 census. Have you ever heard something about this?

Gilberto

Sophia
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 7:22 am Post subject:

Thanks, Aga! So, Moikrewni is more up-to-date and it does present its data very nicely. I still like to start, though, over on the Herby site because it allows me to do "wildcard" searches, for example in this case Przyst* and see what spellings come up.

Gilberto, yes, I too had thought that Herby was based on a census.

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