Are the names Drewlak and Drewlo the same?

Question

Hello.

Amongst my ancestors I have some from the polish area around Łódź. They all have german roots an are settlers that settled there around 1814. In the documents there is a great mixture of latin, german an polish language in use at this time, so finding the right persons is not easy. 

I have now some people with the names Drewlak, Drewniak and Drewlo. They all seem to belong to the same family. My experience with polish is not good, but can it be, that the difference of that names is just a problem of grammar? And if so, which could be the "real" name?

Answer 1

Hello.

It will be very difficult to determine if those names describes same family. In my opinion name Drewniak is correct one. According to portal genezanazwisk.pl:

"surname Drewniak comes from the noun wooden, meaning: 1. wooden building, 2. tree trader"

You are right that those differences may be caused by grammar unfamiliarity. You must remember that in this time period Poland was under foreign partiton and in Łódź region the official language was Russian.
So it is possible that person wasn't able to verified if the name was correctly written on the document.

You may also check your family on this page - it is in Polish but with translator it should be easy to understand it:

https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.php?op=gt&rid=B&search_lastname=Drewniak%20&exac=&from_date=1810&to_date=1815&w=05ld&lang=pol&bdm=B&rpp1=&ordertable=

Best regards
AZ

Comments

Thank you Andrzej,

looks like I will have to go through all the documents again and finding clues between the lines.

Greetings so far

Danny