BARWICKI: Here the basic root-word is “barwa” (color, coloration, hue, dye). It gave rise to such words as “barwnik” (colorizing substance or dye) whose  substandard variant form was “barwik”. Someone involved in the production of dyes or the dying process could have acquired the Barwik nickname. When he sired a son, local villagers might have referred to the offspring with the adjectival tag Barwicki.

 

But, once again, there is a strong likelihood that the name actually originated from a toponymic source. It could have been some such locality as Barwik or Barwiki, and Barwicki was the toponymic tag applied to someone hailing from there.

 

Whatever the case, the Barwicki surname is shared by some 990 people across Poland. At present, the biggest Barwicki concentration is found in southern Poland’s Górny Śląsk region, specifically its Katowice (128) and Częstochowa (94) areas as well as the Świętokrzyskie region (139) due east of Częstochowa.

 

Other clusters include Mazowsze’s Radom (144), Greater Warsaw (71) and Siedlce (58) areas, the Suwałki area (92) and Poznań and vicinity (21). In the recovered territories the only clusters to speak of are found around Opole (57), Jelenia Góra (28) and Gdańsk (22).

 

No Barwicki has ever attained the “szlachta” status entitling him to stamp his documents and possessions with an ancestral coat of arms.