[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Kaminski ethnicity

[Otto]

Mike,
I sent an E-letter to Hal and Jan directly yesterday evening at 7 PM.
I welcomed them home to SGGEE and announced they'd stumbled onto the  
mother-lode.
I will include an excerpt from it here.

I support the comments of Gary. He has parsed of a vast amount of names.
An E-letter just came in.... I agree with Richard Stein also. Carved  
in stone.

A brief excerpt from my letter to Hal:
  "One uses the surname core, "Kamin". (greek 'kaminos/furnace latin  
roman 'kamin', German 'kamin'/furnace.  Probably a builder of  
fireplaces, or hearths"

I'll here add a comment to clarify why there well could be a  
variation in creating  different language examples of the name.   
'Kamin' is more in reference to the firebrick lining of a furnace or  
fireplace... or hearth stone = 'herd stein' in German.  Kamin-ski  
could well have morphed (and probably did) from the older Pomeranian  
'Kaminske', which migration up the Weichsel/Wisla indicates. Here  
again it is a matter regarding how one chooses to parse or  
deconstruct the surname Kaminske.  Do I view it as singular, 'Kamin- 
ske' or plural 'Kamins-ke'.  The 'ke' a diminutive suffix indicting  
'little', 'offspring'.

On Feb 18, 2007, at 11:48 AM, Mike McHenry wrote:

> My German dictionary says the stem Kamin means fireplace. I don't see
> anything like it in the polish one.
>
>                                         Mike
Gary Warner's comment:
>  Koberstein.   This may not be the
> absolutely correct German version of the name, however, since some
> people also think that Steinke is an alternate to
> Kaminski.   Evidently the root of the word Kaminski has some
> equivalence to the German word Stein or Steinke.

> To answer your question about name changes, the answer
> is yes, they did change, but not necessarily for everyone.   It seems
> that they changed when there was an equivalent name in the language
> used where they lived (like Schwarz becoming Czarnecki, since one
> name means black in German ,and the other means black in
> Polish).   Names also changed when the name was difficult to say in
> the language where our ancestors lived, much like they did when our
> ancestors came to North America.

. . .   Otto

             " The Zen moment..." wk. of January 28, 2007
                 ________________________________
                           "Speak... without saying."