The Paneks | panek

The Paneks

The Panek's are an ancestrally Polish clan whose currently researched "recorded" roots date back to the early 1700's in a small sub-Carpathian village in Southern Poland named Ropczyce. Historical church registers from Transfiguration RC Church in Ropczyce provide us with recorded documentation of the Paneks living in Ropczyce from as early as 1720.

It is possible that record keeping of births, deaths, marriages at around the early 1700's in Southern was sporadic at best. It wasn't until 1795 upon the final partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia & Austria that the Austrian Monarchy which had taken control of Southern Poland declared that all vital record keeping would be done and kept by the local Catholic churches.

As most of Southern Poland was very Rural and agricultural, it is likely that the Panek's of Ropczyce were in agriculture in some aspect.

The Panek Surname

“Pan” is the Polish word for lord, sire, sir and simply mister. It is used in prayer when addressing Our Lord, once meant a nobleman and today is the accepted title of all adult males. “Panek” is the diminutive meaning “lordling”, (young lord/squire).

There are 11,138 people in Poland signing themselves Panek. According to a widely held rule of thumb suggesting that about one-fourth of all Polish people live abroad, theoretically there may be another 2,500 or so more in North America and world-wide. Perhaps over the years you have occasionally run into unrelated Panek or at least seen the name on store-fronts or name rosters or in news stories.

Southern Poland would appear to be the Panek ancestral stronghold with prominent clusters found in and around Katowice (1,096), Tarnów (646), Rzeszów (590), Kraków (582), Tarnobrzeg (508), Bielsko-Biała (330), Kielce (281), Częstochowa (298) and Przemyśl (178). More live a bit to the north in the Lublin area (268) and the neighboring Zamość area (189).

Other Paneks make their home in the Mazowsze region, notably in Greater Warsaw and environs (422) and surrounding areas such as Radom (392), Skierniewice (341), Płock (199) and Ciechanów (143). Moving west we encounter more Paneks in the Kujawy region around Bydgoszcz (142) and Toruń (156). In western Poland’s adjacent Wielkopolska region others are found living in the Kalisz (631), Poznań (199) Piła (186) and Leszno (111) areas. Others are found in and around the central city of Łódź (176) and neighboring Sieradz area (286).

Hundreds more now make their home in the ancient northern and western Polish lands that were part of Germany before the war but were assigned to Poland by the Big Three Allies to partially compensate for the one-half of pre-war Poland seized by Stalin’s USSR. After the war, those regained territories were largely resettled by Polish repatriates from the Soviet-annexed east. The largest clusters in those lands are found in SW Poland’s Wrocław (482), Opole (376), Wałbrzych (206), Legnica (147) and Jelenia Góra (140) areas. Others live along the Baltic around Szczecin (228) and Gdańsk (177) as well as in and around the west-central cities of Zielona Góra (147) and Gorzów (134) along the German border. The remainder are scattered across the land.

Despite the “lordly” ring to this name, no coat of arms goes with it. Two different heraldic devices (Ostoja and Pobóg) accompany the Pankiewicz surname, which could mean “son of Panek”. Nobles of the Pankowicz clan, which also means “son of Panek”, used the Trąby coat of arms.