Sokoloski
A Polish surname meaning “from Sokołów” or “belonging to Sokołów,” ultimately linked to the word for “falcon.”
The #7,988 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 74,594 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Sokołowski is a Polish habitational surname formed from the place-name Sokołów or a similar Sokoł- place, plus the adjectival ending -ski, which originally meant “of” or “from” a place. The place-name itself goes back to Polish sokół, meaning “falcon.” In that sense, the surname can be understood as “man from Sokołów” or more broadly “one associated with the falcon place.”
History
This is a classic Polish -ski surname type, once especially associated with the gentry and later adopted more widely across the population. It is found in Poland and in Polish diaspora communities, especially in the United States. Anglicized spellings often drop the diacritic in the Polish letter ó, giving Sokolowski, and sometimes further simplify to Sokoloski.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because Polish -ski surnames were originally linked to places, Sokołowski and Sokołowska are the masculine and feminine forms of the same family-name pattern.