- Wysłałeś mail Asi? (Have you emailed Asia)?
- Nie, wysłałem mail Joannie. (I’ve emailed Joanna)
- No, właśnie: Asi. (Exactly: Asia)
- Nie, Joannie. (No, Joanna)
A dialogue like that is quite common in companies where foreigners work with the Polish. Even the foreigners who can speak Polish quite well already, especially thanks to the Polish courses they’ve attended, still stumble over issues that seem trivial, such as names of their Polish colleagues. While it’s fairly easy to figure out that Tomasz is Tomek, Magdalena – Magda, Jakub – Kuba, and Anna is Ania, it gets more complicated with names like Jan, Jerzy, Agnieszka etc.
VARIATIONS OF THE SAME NAME IN POLISH
What is obvious for the Poles, may surprise foreigners. How can a diminutive form of Aleksandra possibly be Ola, or Kasia a diminutive of Katarzyna? And how to remember that Antonina may be called Tosia or Tośka? Is Czarek really Cezary, and is my nice colleague from the open-plan office, Gosia, in fact Małgorzata? Why does Anna‘s business card say Anna, while the colleagues call her Ania and she introduces herself as Anka?! And since when is Jerzy called Jurek? Why do colleagues call Andrzej from the IT department Jędrek? And why does my mother-in-law call her daughter Agusia, if, I remember that very clearly, I married Agnieszka, whose friends call her Aga? And my son has two friends in the kindergarden: Antek and Antoś. They both share the same name, which is Antoni. We cooperate with an accountant, her name is Maria (a beautiful name!), but our colleagues call her Marysia, and once I heard her husband calling her Marynia. And how come my son’s name is Maciuś?! It was my wife, Aga, who insisted on naming him Maciej, after his Polish grandfather. Our hipothetical foreigner never ceases to be surprised, despite the fact that such processes occur in other languages, too (William – Bill, Robert – Bob, Margaret – Peggy, Michael – Mike, Elisabeth – Lizzie etc.)
HOW TO MASTER THE DIMINUTIVES OF POLISH NAMES
When you speak Polish the choice of the name variation very often depends on our relation to the bearer of the name. The Joanna we’ve mentioned above will introduce herself so in formal situations, but her friends, if they want to emphasize the informality of their relations, will call her Joaśka, her beloved or her parents will call her Asia, and when Joanna was a little girl some people might have called her Asiunia. She may have played in the yard with a Tomek, whose mother called him Tomaszek, or even (horror of horrors!) Tomuś, while his documents said his name was Tomasz.
For a foreigner who has just started to learn Polish each of the forms seems to be a different word. How to learn and use them so as to avoid misunderstandings? That’s easy. Speak Polish as much as possible, practise grammar in the meantime, e.g. here
