Kozłowski, Zając, Wróbel – najpopularniejsze nazwiska odzwierzęce w Polsce. Analiza ilościowa i jakościowa
Kozłowski, Zając, Wróbel – the Most Popular Animal Surnames in Poland: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

Summary/Abstract: Animal surnames are based on assigning certain features of appearance and character to animals and then transferring these features to specific people. In this study, 122 surnames deriving from animal names were taken from the thousand most popular Polish surnames. The analysis aims to check which animal names these surnames come from, whether these are domestic or wild animals, to which groups they belong, and to verify whether the popularity of a given species in human life and culture translates into a high frequency of surnames motivated by their name. It turns out that there is no simple relationship in this regard, and most of the surnames come from the names of bird species. In addition, the principle of Zipf’s law, according to which there are a small number of very popular surnames and a large number of unpopular surnames, was confirmed.

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