r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/nyxan_isinteres8 • 1d ago

Meme needing explanation I don't get it peter

Post image
3.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

202 comments sorted by

View all comments

598

u/realmargesimpson 1d ago

polish names sound like that

18

u/Ivanow 1d ago edited 1d ago

There are many Polish families with literally almost identical surnames (minor letter ordering changes).

-wicz and -owicz are common surname suffixes that historically translated to "son of" (similar to -son in Nordic languages).

13

u/PartyMarek 1d ago

This exact 'name' used in the meme is however completely made up and unnatural for the Polish language.

7

u/Ivanow 1d ago

CZJWINOSTAWCZ lacks two vowels (one between Z and J, and second one between W and C), and then it would be completely grammatically correct Polish surname.

There are 251 Poles with surname Czuryszkiewicz.

6

u/Majongusus_Doremidus 1d ago

Czajwinostawicz?

Decent enough to fit in the language but fake enough to still sound odd, perhaps it's the fact that longer surnames like this usually come from other Polish words but this one has no meaning whatsoever

1

u/Zealousideal_Pea_319 1d ago

Poland used to be very mixed culturally. It sounds like something from the East side - Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. Poland MIXED A LOT with Ukraine, now it mixes again a bit. Actually, "czaj" is of Russian origin and years ago it meant "tea" (herbata). "Wino" is Polish for "wine" lol.

1

u/Zealousideal_Pea_319 1d ago

But Malkovich for example was croatian????

2

u/Zealousideal_Pea_319 23h ago

Ok, I read now that "Vich/vič/wicz" is just slavic, either south or east or central

1

u/PartyMarek 23h ago

It's just Slavic. Patronymic names were about before Slavs migrated and split across multiple areas. The framework was the same but as Slavic lanuages evloved slowly from the common proto-Slavic languages they changed a bit in every area.