ZAWADZKI

Definition: One who came from a place called Zawada or Zawady (from the root zawada, meaning "obstruction, fortress, difficulty, obstacle"), most likely named as such because at one time there was an obstruction or fortress there.
Surname Origin: Polish
Alternate Surname Spellings: ZAWACKI

Zawaski is almost certainly a variant of the name more often spelled Zawadzki or Zawacki. Both those names are pronounced roughly "zah-VOTT-skee." They come from the noun zawada that means "obstacle, impediment," and in archaic usage "fortress," because soldiers often set up fortified positions in places where some natural feature of the land would block the way for enemy armies and make them vulnerable to attack. The surname Zawadzki or Zawacki means "of the zawada," and thus could refer to a person somehow connected with such an obstacle or fortress. More likely, however, the name refers to a family's coming from any of a number of places named Zawada or Zawady because of a connection with such an obstacle or fortress. There are literally dozens of places by those names, and the surname could refer to any of them. Only genealogical research into the history of a specific family might enable one to determine which of those places the name refers to in their particular case. As of 1990, according to the best data available (the Slownik nazwisk wspolczesnie w Polsce uzywanych, "Directory of Surnames in Current Use in Poland," which covers about 94% of the population of Poland), there were no Polish citizens named Zawaski, but there were 35,225 named Zawadzki and another 751 named Zawacki. They lived all over Poland, with no real concentration in any one area. So a family by these names could come from almost anywhere in Poland.

-SKI
* I'm A -SKI, I Must Be Noble! *

Again and again I hear "Someone told me names ending in -ski are noble. Is that true?" I've responded so often I'm sick of the whole subject. Still, it's a legitimate question, so let's start with it. If you're talking about names found in records from, say, the 14th century, then yes, names ending in -ski were borne by nobles. So were names ending in -owicz, or -ik, or whatever suffix you care to mention. Back then, all surnames were noble! In other words, only nobles used surnames.
It wasn't until much later that non-nobles began using surnames regularly -- generally not until the 16th or 17th centuries. It's hard to be absolutely certain of the dates because there are very few records before the 1600s that mentioned non-nobles at all; so we have don't have much evidence as to when the practice of bearing unchanging, hereditary names spread to the middle class and the peasants. But by and large, most scholars agree that peasants seldom used surnames before the 1600s; there are exceptions to every rule, but this one is pretty reliable.
So at one time -ski indicated nobility. But that ceased to be true, oh, a good 300-400 years ago. When the use of surnames of any sort stopped being exclusive to nobles, so did the forms of the names themselves. What does -ski mean? In Polish it's an adjectival suffix, meaning simply "of, from, connected with, pertaining to." The form X-ski is an all-purpose way of saying "somehow associated with X." Thus Warszawa means "Warsaw," and Warszawski means "of Warsaw." The noun _piekarz_ means "baker," and the adjective _piekarski_ means "of the baker, the baker's."
In surnames, X-ski usually began as a short way of indicating some close connection with X. Thus Piekarski would generally mean either "kin of the baker," or "one from the place of the baker." There are subsets of the -ski names that are especially likely to refer to place of origin -- we'll look a them in a minute -- but clearly a name such as Warszawski would mean "one from Warsaw," or in a broader sense, "one connected with Warsaw in some way clear enough that calling this guy Warszawski makes sense." Similarly Bydgoski, literally "of Bydgoszcz," would mean "one from Bydgoszcz, one connected with Bydgoszcz." Please notice: when -ski is added to a noun, a letter or two at the end of the noun may disappear: Piekarz -> Piekarski, Warszawa -> Warszawski. Sometimes the change is even greater, as in Bydgoszcz -> Bydgoski, Zamos~c~ -> Zamojski. Poles tended to add -ski to what they regarded as the base form of the noun in question, and clear away final suffixes or consonant combinations that weren't essential parts of the name. The practical consequence of this is that a lot of -ski names referring to places are ambiguous; they may refer to a number of different places with names derived from the same base form. Thus you can't be positive Warszawski must refer to the capital of Poland. There may be another place, or two, or five, with names beginning Warszaw-; the surname, by itself, gives no clue which one it's referring to in a given instance. There's a Warszawa in former Zamosc province; there's a Warszawice in Siedlce province; there's a Warszawiaki in former Lublin province; and a Warszawskie Przedmies~cie in Elbla~g province. It is POSSIBLE the surname Warszawski could refer to any of them.
Obviously most of the time Warszawski would refer to the nation's capital. My point is that you can't take that for granted! The moment you assume that, it will surely turn out YOUR Warszawski was the one in 100 who came from Warszawa in Zamos~c~ province. That's why even surnames that refer to place names MUST be interpreted in light of a specific family's history -- it's the only way to make sure you're focusing on the right place.
Of course, a lot of -ski names don't refer to places at all. Piekarski might refer to a place named Piekary or something similar; but most of the time it probably started out meaning "the baker's kin." Kowalski would usually mean "the smith's kin" (from _kowal_, "smith"). Szczepan~ski would usally mean "kin of Szczepan (Stephen)." Nosalski can mean simply "kin of the big-nose" (_nosal_). This suffix can be added to all kinds of roots, whether they refer to a ancestor's place of residence or origin, his occupation, his first name, his most obvious physical feature, and so on.

-CKI and -ZKI

>What about names ending in -cki/-cka and -zki/-zka? Essentially, these are just variants of -ski/-ska. Certain words end with consonants that, when combined with the basic ending -ski, produced a pronunciation change. Thus Zawadzki comes from _zawada_, "obstruction, fortress" + -ski. The final -a in _zawada_ drops off, ggiving Zawadski. But it's hard to say -d- followed by an -s- (notice, in "gods" or "wads" or "lads" we always pronounce that final -s as a -z). Zawadzki seemed the more accurate way to spell this name.
But, just to complicate things, the combination -dz- in that instance is actually pronounced like -ts-, which Poles write with the letter -c-. So Zawacki is another way of spelling that same name. Either way, Zawadzki or Zawacki, it's pronounced roughly "zah-VAHT-skee," and just means "of the obstruction or fortress," or "from the place called Zawada or Zawady because at one time there was an obstruction or fortress there."
My advice is, treat -cki and -zki as variations of -ski. You don't really need to know why they're spelled differently. It's enough to recognize the difference, note the spelling variation, and move on.