Socjolog wobec odmiany nazwisk we współczesnej polszczyźnie prasowej

Abstract

The interest in surnames is not unusual among scientists. Surnames and their socio-cultural dimensions are the topic of ethnographic, historical, and sociological works, but most of all – concerning the number of studies – of linguistic investigation. The surname, as Jarosław Maciej Zawadzki says, is “a historical document of a kind, which certifies the continuity of family […] then, for each of us, it is a precious heirloom, an immaterial value inherited from our ancestors, and frequently – a source of vast knowledge about the roots of our family”. The author of this paper found it interesting how often Polish surnames are incorrectly inflected in modern Polish; the linguistic material for these considerations are press announcements in the Cracow daily “Dziennik Polski” (obituaries) and the nation-wide daily “Rzeczpospolita” (court announcements). In connection with the title of the article by Irena Bajerowa “Wstyd nie odmieniać nazwisk…” (It’s a shame not to inflect surnames), the author encourages the readers to inflect surnames correctly, which he perceives as an important issue, not only from the point of view of linguistic correctness, but also of social life and respect for the value which surnames represent.