ZIEBA (ZIĘBA) surname is a very popular one in Poland but on the
interent genealogy lists I can only find the 19th century spelling of
this surname i.e. ZIEMBA, now becoming obsolete in Poland (but which
seems to be prevalent in the USA until recently). On the contrary in the
present day telephone directories of the USA you can frequently find the
surname ZIEBA. So, please remember, that these two are in fact one
surname (on the condition that the surname ZIEBA is of Polish origin, of
course).
The reason for this double spelling is that in Polish we use a special
letter "Ę / ę". It looks like letter "E / e" but with a c-like hook
(called "ogonek") under the right part of the letter "E / e", it is
similar to an inversed "cedille" of the French or Portuguese special "C
/ c".
NB.
1) You need to set your browser to display characters according to
Central European ISO-8859-2 character set to see these and other
Polish letters to be
displayed correctly (or alternatively - in the case of "ę" "ą" - set
your browser
to Windows-1250, but it will not work correctly for all Polish special
letters).
If you cannot do that imagine "Zięba" as being written similar to:
"Zie,ba".
2) In Polish there is also a second nasalised letter with "ogonek" - "Ą
ą" ("A a"
with a hook, but pronounced like "ong" / "om" / "on" ) -
therefrom you
have the
alternate spellings "DĄBROWSKI" (DABROWSKI) / "DOMBROWSKI".
Whichever way you write it especially in your handwriting, it gives to
the letter a sound of nasal "e" (similar in pronounciation to French
"in"), prononoced more-or-less like "eng" [in "Bengal"],
before "b" or
"p" pronounced more like "em" [in "empty"], before
"t" or "d" more like
"en" [in "end"], in the end of the word pronounced almost like simple
"e" [in "let"].
The nasalised letters were introduced into the Polish alphabet as early
as 17th century, but the process of giving surnames in some rural areas
continued until the second half of the 19th century, during the period
of partition of Poland, when the Southern part of Poland (Galicia) was
under Austrian rule. The local officials often did not know Polish
language well so they registered surnames with an incorrect spelling
(the correct one being "Zięba" as this was the name of the bird which
was the source of the surname.
Therefore there were two spellings in use in the 19th century, "ZIEMBA"
and "ZIĘBA", the pronounciation being closer to the first one, so that
one was mostly used by the uneducated (undereducated) people, which made
the biggest part of those who emigrated.
Also probably, at least sometimes, people who emigrated wanted their
surnames to be pronounced correctly in the other country (America) so
they changed their spelling to the alternative spelling, what gave it
sound more alike to the origin if read by their English-speaking
neighbours and officials.
NB.
"Zi" in the beginning is pronounced a little bit like "zh" (or
"s" in
"leisure").
These two letters for a digraph which is a positional variant [written
before a
vowel] of the letter "Ź ź" or "Z z" with an accute accent above.
This
is the
"soft" one of the two "zh-like" sounds in Polish, the other one
being
written "Ż
ż" or "Z z" with a dot above, or alternatively "Rz rz" in other
words
of different ethymological origin. Joining "ie" in pronounciation as
one vowel ["Zeem-ba"] is therefore incorrect from the point of view of
the language of origin, but maybe
less incorrect than separating them and pronouncing lat two vowels
["Zee-em-ba"].
The spelling reform undertaken in the 1920-ies and lead until 1938 did
not convert all the spellings of ZIEMBA found in Poland into the CORRECT
form of ZIĘBA. Sometimes even a third form appeared "overcorrect" -
keeping both "ę" and "m" - "ZIĘMBA" - but its quite rare and
is
invisible if you drop the hook and keep only 26 Latin letters. Now about
85% of those having the surname in Poland have the spelling "ZIĘBA" and
the other 15% use the spelling "ZIEMBA".
"Zieba" / "Ziemba" is a very popular name throughout Poland (and it
seems to show different origins in parts of Poland: A. region of
central-west Galicia, between Rzeszow and Krakow/Cracow. B. region of
southern Podlasie, east and south-east of Warsaw till the present-day
eastern Polish border. C. region of Piotrkow Trybunalski and Kielce,
between south of Lodz to south of Warsaw. ).
The meaning of the name "zięba" is "chaffinch" (a small bird, singing
very nicely, living mostly in the mountains and in bigger park-areas,
met also), Latin: fringilla coelebs coelebs Lin., French: le pinson,
German: der Vinke, Dutch: de vink, Russian: zyablik, Esperanto:
fringelo, finko ...
Therefore - for all those who would like to discuss here the name
"ZIEBA", please remember you can find much information at the
ZIEMBA-L(a)rootsweb.com list.
Sincerely yours,
dr Maciej St. Zieba
Lublin, Poland
--
owner of the ZIEBA-L(a)rootsweb.com & Filozofie_Wschodu(a)yahoogroups.com
lists
mszieba(a)uw.lublin.pl / noychoh(a)yahoo.ca
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