Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 035

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 035

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/035

This is one of the Academy's earliest reports. We are not confident that these early reports are accurate. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we've been able to find on your name "Casimir Vladyslav."

"Casimir" and "Vladyslav" were both common names in Poland, and were used by several kings as well as many other people during the Middle Ages. The most common Polish spelling of the names are "Kazimierz" and "Wladyzslaw" (this doesn't changed the way they're pronounced; they should still sound close to "Casimir" and "Vladyslav").

In 14th-century Poland, people used one given name--the first example we found of a Pole with two given names is King John Albert, who ruled from 1492 to 1502. Therefore, we treated "Wladyzslaw" as a patronymic, so that the name translates as "Kazimierz, son of Wladyzslaw." The most common way of saying this in Polish is to add "owicz" at the end of the father's name--in this case, you would be "Kazimierz Wladyzslawowicz" (pronounced "Casimir Vladyslavovich"). However, we don't know enough about Polish names to be sure that "Kazimierz Wladyslaw" wasn't also a way of saying this--many other languages use the father's last name as a patronymic (in English, we can find the names "Eric Johnson" and "Eric John," which mean the same thing).

If you're interested in keeping "Kazimierz Wladyzslaw," we can do more research into Polish patronymics. But since it will take some time for us to investigate, we wanted to let you know that we are sure "Kazimierz Wladyzslawowicz" would be a reasonable Polish name. If you're interested in pursuing your original idea, let us know and we'd be happy to keep digging.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of St. Gabriel