Polish name expert Prof. Kazimierz Rymut mentions REMBISZ in his book _Nazwiska Polakow_ [The Surnames of Poles]. It is actually an alternate spelling of the name Poles write as RE~BISZ, (where I am using E~ for the Polish nasal vowel written as an E with a tail under it and pronounced like "en" in most cases, but before B or P like "em"). So RE~BISZ is pronounced the same as REMBISZ, (like "REMM-bish"); RE~BISZ is the standard spelling, but REMBISZ is also possible because that's what the name sounds like.
It comes from the root seen in the noun _ra~b_, "blow, stroke" (A is the other Polish nasal vowel, written as an A with a tail under it and pronounced before B or P like "om") and the verb _ra~bac_ "to chop, hew". Thus the word _re~bacz_ means "wood-cutter", and REMBISZ/RE~BISZ would mean something similar -- "the hewer, the chopper". By the way, keep an eye open not only for the spelling RE~BISZ, but also for the spellings ending with an accented "s" instead of "sz"; both the accented "s" and the "sz" sound similar, much like the English "sh". As of 1990 there were 712 Poles who called themselves RE~BIS' (accent over the "s"). In other words, this is a name that can easily appear in a number of different spellings and still be the same basic name.
As of 1990, there were 2242 Polish citizens named RE~BISZ and another 879 who spelled it REMBISZ. While there is no obvious pattern to the distribution of REMBISZ, there is a definite concentration of people named RE~BISZ, 1057, in the province of Tarnobrzeg in southeastern Poland. A family named RE~BISZ or REMBISZ could come from almost anywhere in Poland, but the odds suggest it was most likely to come from the vicinity of Tarnobrzeg.
William F. Hoffman
Author, "Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings" |
