Bodziony was the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, Veronica Bodziony Kowalski. She was a child of two Polish immigrants, Michael Bodziony and Sophia Krupa, who settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1883, Michael Bodziony was born in the village of Świniarsko, a few kilometers away from the larger city of Nowy Sącz (see map below). At the time of his birth, this area, which has been ethnically-Polish for centuries, was part of the Austria-Hungary Empire.
When you first read the name 'Bodziony,' I don't think you immediately think of it as a Polish or even a Slavic surname. Even today, it's not a terribly common name in Poland, and the highest concentration of the name is still found in and around Nowy Sącz County, Małopolska Voivodeship, which is on Poland's southern border with Slovakia. The map below was generated by the website Moikrewni.pl, which literally means "my kin" in Polish. It shows the relative distribution of the surname Bodziony throughout modern-day Poland. According to Worldnames Public Profiler, which compiles surname data from modern telephone directories and voting registers, the surname Bodziony has a frequency in Poland of 42.8 per million. For comparison, the surname Kowalski, which is a very common surname, has a frequency of 1847 per million. Not surprisingly the frequency per million in America is only 0.47.
Distribution of the surname 'Bodziony' in Poland (Image Source: Moikewni.pl)
So, what does the surname Bodziony mean? According to good old Google Translate, the Polish word bodziec is a noun which means 'stimulus' or 'incentive.' I asked the native Polish-speakers in a Facebook group, and one person told me that the name has the same root as the word bóść, which is a verb meaning 'to gore.' I think its relative infrequency tells me that it probably doesn't describe a profession, as a lot of surnames all over the world tend to do.
The surname could possibly be a reference to a place name. There is a town by the name of Bodzanów about 70 kilometers to the northwest of Świniarsko. (There are actually several villages with this name around Poland, but this one is the closest.) There is a also a town farther away in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, (north of Małopolska Voivodeship) known as Bodzentyn, which has been around since the 1300s. So, it's possible that the family name originated as a way to tell other people "this family is from Bodz... village."
I do have evidence that the name was NOT changed when Michael came to America - the name shows up fairly frequently in the 19th century Roman Catholic Church records of the Diocese of Tarnow.
©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
The surname could possibly be a reference to a place name. There is a town by the name of Bodzanów about 70 kilometers to the northwest of Świniarsko. (There are actually several villages with this name around Poland, but this one is the closest.) There is a also a town farther away in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, (north of Małopolska Voivodeship) known as Bodzentyn, which has been around since the 1300s. So, it's possible that the family name originated as a way to tell other people "this family is from Bodz... village."
I do have evidence that the name was NOT changed when Michael came to America - the name shows up fairly frequently in the 19th century Roman Catholic Church records of the Diocese of Tarnow.
©2014, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
