How to Przemek. On Polish names.

I remember once watching a stand up comedian who said that when he was a child he was desperate to read but they were so poor that the only book in the house was a phone book. He was not impressed: there were too many characters, the plot was difficult to follow and at the end lots of Polish people turned up.
I think it took me about 5 minutes to get the joke.


I am blessed with the name Agnieszka. I always believed that I got this name, along with umpteen thousand other girls born in Poland in the late 70s and early 80s, because my parents were taken with the film based on one of popular Polish novels "Noce i dnie" (it's a very good novel BTW, I mean, I enjoyed it). As it turned out not long ago I was wrong. The name was chosen by my then 6 year old brother. He was taken with a film of which I have never heard before the last December. The main character's sister was Agnieszka. "I was ill - my brother explained - spent lots of time in the hospital and they wanted to make me happy". Oh well.

The thing with my name is that it's either a perfect conversation starter ("Oh, what an original name. How do you pronounce that? Say again?") or a conversation killer ("Right."). When I came to live in the UK I was in a slightly apologetic mood so I used to introduce myself as Agnes. I dropped Agnes after 6 months when I met an Irish woman who spent 7 years in my hometown teaching English. "You're not Agnes. Agnes is 80 years old. You're Agnieszka. Believe me, every English speaking person is capable of saying that" she said to me and I will forever be grateful for giving me a push to be more confident.

Still, I worked at a reception at the time and felt that teaching patients how to pronounce my name would not exactly add to my efficiency. And then one day a very friendly patient who was a truck driver* said "No, I'm never going to pronounce that. You're Aggie." To this day I introduce myself "My name is Agnieszka, but for the sake of simplicity you can call me Aggie" although it's been repeatedly pointed out to me that "Aggie" makes a lot of people cringe and maybe I should stop that.

But enough about me. More about the dreaded letter Z. It looks sharp, doesn't it. You look at it and you think about Zorro! (Ha ha, see what I did? Now every time you meet a Polish person you will think about Zorro. You're welcome.)
Only you don't pronounce it if you have C, D, R or S in front of it. CZ, DZ, RZ and SZ are those weird combinations of letters which really mark just one sound. They are called digraphs, should you wish to know.

So if you ever see a SZ, think about a SH like in "shell", because that's how you say it. And if you ever see a CZ, think about it as a CH in "cherry" because that's how you pronounce it. And if you ever see a DZ or a RZ let me know and I'll send you the contact details for my friend who runs Polish courses for foreigners.

Also it is handy to know that you can abbreviate almost every Polish female name to some sort of a word containing "-sia". "SI" here is pronounced softly like in Roisin. (If you don't know how to pronounce Roisin, you should listen to Moloko or Roisin Murphy more)
Katarzyna becomes Kasia.
Joanna becomes Asia.
Malgorzata becomes Gosia.
Agnieszka becomes Agnisia or just Isia (just don't call me that).
Zofia becomes Zosia (cute, and very Zorro!)
And so on.

Only Anna becomes Ania.
Agata becomes Agatka.
And Wladyslawa become Wladzia.
But hey ho, every language has some exceptions and irregularities, so why should ours be worse? You should definitely give "-sia" a go.

Now, Przemek... I'm so tempted to tell you just to call him Shermak.
Listen, if your neighbour's name is Przemek (short for Przemyslaw) or Krzysiek (short for Krzysztof) or Grzesiek (short for Grzegorz) just invite him in. He'll buy a bottle of something entertaining, you'll make new friends and you'll both have hours of fun. Believe me, it's better than Cluedo.

*Yes, yes, I know, he was a lorry driver, thank you. Now go back and finish reading