Kolodziej? Kolodzey? Kolodziey? Kolodzej? Kolodzie?

The following is from a personal communication between Michael Korgie (a Kołodziej descendant) and William F. "Fred" Hoffman, editor of Rodziny, the quarterly of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, and author of Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings.  https://langline.com/.  

UPDATE: The below article was published in the SUMMER 2023 Edition of PGSA's Rodziny, Volume XLVI Number 3!!!

First Two Questions from Mike Korgie: 

My family name is Kołodziej.  In the church records I’m familiar with, the Austrian/Galician partition 1786 to the early 1900s it’s consistently spelled Kołodziej (except when it’s misspelled!).  In the records from the same area in the 1660s I see it somewhat consistently spelled as Kołodziey.  Any thoughts on why “j” versus “y?”  What is the ÿ character found in Latin/Polish records?   

Response from Fred Hoffman:  

There are a couple of different things going on there. First let me quote a translation from Polish Wikipedia's article on the letter ÿ:

"The letter ÿ occurred in manuscripts from the 12th century to the 15th century, and was sometimes written in the y form with two diagonal y̋ dashes. Consequently, it is sometimes used in print to this day to edit ancient Polish texts." 

"Also relevant is this quotation from the English Wikipedia article on the letter j: The modern letter j originated as a variation of i, and both were used interchangeably for both the vowel and the consonant, coming to be differentiated only in the 16th century." 

From what I've read and what I've seen, it is true that i, j, and y have been used in Polish and other languages to represent the sound of the letter i as it was used in Latin -- like our i in "machine." Historically speaking, i came first. In Classical Latin, it was used as both a consonant (to represent the sound of yin "yacht") and also as a vowel (the sound of i in "machine"). So Jupiter, for instance, was spelled IUPITER. Anyone knowing Latin recognized that the first I is used as a consonant and the second as a vowel, and the word is pronounced roughly "yoo-pee-tare." 

Latin was the language of the Roman church and of European intellectuals for many centuries, and most European languages were originally spelled using Latin letters to approximate the sounds in each vernacular. This includes Polish. If you see surviving texts from the 1500s, i was used both ways. Gradually, Europeans began to feel it was a good idea to use a slightly different version of i to represent the consonant. That's how j came to be used, while i remained the way to write the vowel. The Polish Wikipedia entry for j says "Originally it was only a graphic variant of the letter I. In Polish spelling, J is mainly used to write the front semivowel /j/ (non-syllabic i). In the Latin alphabet, J has been present since the 12th century, and in Polish it has been present since the 17th century." 

But over time, some languages also used y to stand for the sound of the Latin vowel i. Exactly why I can't say. As societies began to use vernacular languages instead of Latin, people came to recognize the Latin letters didn't always match up well with the sounds in their native tongues. So those who could write would experiment, looking for better ways to fit what they wrote to what they heard. 

From the 1600s on, you start to see confusion in how Poles use these three letters. Maria might be written Maria, Marja, or Marya (or even Maryja). You see Poles spell Galicia (the Latin spelling) sometimes as Galicya (the preference during the times of the partitions) and sometimes as Galicja (the standard spelling in modern Polish). 

To add to the confusion, clerks or priests who recorded documents often came to use ÿ as a way to spell the combination -ii and later -ij that appears in many Latin words. When you write down -ij, it looks a lot like ÿ, and I guess some found the dotted y easier to write. Thus Antonii, "of Antonius," came to be spelled Antonij sometimes, and that developed into Antonÿ. When you see Antonÿ and in Laurentÿ, read those forms as Antonii and Laurentii, "of Antonius" and "of Laurentius." 

Now Bachorczkÿk is a different matter. There, ÿ is being used for the short, tense vowel sound that Poles generally spell y today. I suppose they added the two dots (diaeresis) to clarify that they were not talking about the consonant sound of j or the combination -ij, but rather that Slavic vowel. So Bachorczyk would be pronounced roughly "bah-hore-chick." Eventually, as Polish became accepted as a written language, they quit putting the diaeresis over the y and just wrote the simple vowel.

Complicated, isn't it? But we're kind of looking back through centuries of representing sounds with symbols. As times change and linguistic trends play out, the way of representing sounds changed. Now we're stuck with trying to figure out whether ÿ represents a Latin consonant, a Latin vowel, a way of writing -ij, or a modern Polish vowel. 

Third Question from Mike Korgie: 

I have a very distant autosomal DNA match with a Slovak individual, who’s surname is spelled Kolodzey (from an area perhaps 100 miles south of my family location).  His earliest baptism records (1650s) spell the name as Kolodziey … by the 1840s the “I” is consistently dropped and the name is spelled Kolodzey.  He has come across a few baptism entries spelling it as Kolodzeÿ.   Would you know if dropping the “i” is a Slovak variant or some other explanation.

Response from Fred Hoffman:  

You're right that the Polish and Slovak versions both refer to the occupation of wheelwright. Again, we're looking back through centuries and trying to make sense of changes. I think what happened here is that Slovak once used the combination -dziey the same way as Poles did, to represent the sound of our word "jay." The -dzi- tells us the consonant combination dz does not sound like the end of our word "adds," but like our consonant j. The addition of the letter -i-represents the palatalization of dz, so that dzi sounds like our j but dz sounds like our "dz."

I believe the Slovaks came to feel it was not necessary to insert that -i-, and so the name came to be spelled Kolodzey. I can't tell you for sure whether it was just a spelling change or if the spelling change indicates a change in pronunciation. It may be Slovaks went from pronouncing it "ko-lo-jay" to "ko-lodz-ay." Or maybe they only changed the spelling. I don't know enough about Slovak to say. 

I know Czech uses the letter ě to represent palatalization of a preceding consonant. In other words, Czechs might have spelled the name Kolodzěy at some point. Maybe not. In any case, Slovak doesn't use that letter. My best guess is that Slovaks felt Kolodzey worked just fine, whereas Poles felt Kołodziey/Kołodziej worked better for them.

It's interesting how words developed in different Slavic languages. I looked at the Polish Wiktionary page for kołodziej: https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/ko%C5%82odziej 

Modern Czech uses kolář to mean wheelwright, while Slovak uses kolár. Russian uses kolesnik, and Ukrainian uses kolisnyk. Lower Lusatian uses kołoźej, and Upper Lusatian uses kołodźej. So they all retain the root kol-, "wheel," but use different ways to express the person who makes wheels. The Lusatian words are very similar to the Polish one, whereas Czech and Slovak both decided a simple -ář or -ár did the job.

I hope I've made things clearer instead of more confusing. Basically, it all comes down to how representing sounds in writing can change over time. There is a kind of conservatism in writing; archaic versions sometimes hang on long after they cease to make sense. The Brits still use encyclopaedia, whereas we simplified it to encyclopedia. Why? Tradition, I guess. Sometimes people hang onto old forms, sometimes they dump them to modernize. When we look at old records, we are seeing traces of tradition and modernization fighting it out. No wonder it's confusing. ~~~