A friend into genealogy has come across a name of a Polish person spelled out by an American who did not know Polish. “Jashuskey.” What might the original spelling have been? Best we could find is Januszeuski, but that has an extra syllable in it. Could have been slurred out in pronunciation, but is there a closer match?
Jeżewski. though it usually sounds more like “jeh-sheh-ski.”
Jaszuski
or sounds more like Pauly Shores voice
Jesuski: “bro” name of Jesus
LOL.
some Polish names throw everyone for a loop.
e.g. “Jurkiewicz” is pronounced “jer-kev-ich.”
Jedrziewski?
I wasn’t going to quibble but it’s been repeated too many times:
The letter “j” in polish is pronounced like the letter “y” (as in “yahoo”) in English.
Fun fact: in multi-syllable words, the stress is almost always on the penultimate syllable.
hijack
Is this true for all Slavic languages?
If a person familiar with Polish pronounced it that way, but someome unfamiliar with Polish transcribed it, then it couldn’t begin with a “J”. As noted above, in Polish “J” is pronounced like a “Y”. The name would have to begin with “Dz”, which is prounced much like English “J”. In that case the name might be pronounced Dzaszuski.
I haven’t seen or heard a name like that. Google turns up nothing, but does produce a Djzsuzska, which is a feminine form, and might conceivably be the name you’re looking for
Russian doesn’t have a letter that corresponds to j. But the letter that’s equivalent to d, when followed by a soft vowel, sounds like a “j” to an English speaker. (I know that there is a Russian linguist with steam coming out of their ears or wherever right now waiting to dispute that last sentence.) It’s close enough. It’s sort of like in some parts of the US, people pronounce “would you” as “woojoo.”
The rule about stressed syllables does not apply to Russian.
And that’s all I’m qualified to speak to.
Now she’s found the following alternate spellings of what she thinks is supposed to be the same name!
Jushuskey
Jehouskey
Jarshowski
Gehouskey
These names are all found as applying to the same household at the same time.
Given the presence of the “G” in the fourth name, I think we’re definitely talking about something pronounced like the English “J”. However, maybe this isn’t the native Polish(?) pronunciation after all.
No it doesn’t, and no it’s not. Why would you comment if you clearly don’t know the first thing about Polish pronunciation?
It is for all Slavic languages that don’t use cyrillic; in the one’s that do use cyrillic, there are letters that either denote a y sound + a vowel, or a softening of the preceding consonant + a vowel. Those are often but not always transliterated as ya, yu, yo, etc.
fine, in the future I’ll be sure to run everything I want to say by you before I post it.
You just gotta know when you’re on the receiving end of ‘fighting ignorance’ 
I went to college in Stevens Point Wisconsin, which is in the heart of a very Polish area of the state. It didn’t take me long to discover that these names:
Shibilski
Zblewski
Przybylski
Przybylewski
and several other variants were all pronounced shƏ-BILL-ski, at least in that area.
Perhaps a slurred rendition of “Krzyzewski”?
Dzierzgowski?
I don’t know, I was just looking at this Polish geneology site.
Given those transliterations, I am wondering if that middle syllable is pronounced to rhyme with English “how”. Was originally thinking it might rhyme with “who” from that first transliteration given in the OP.
Also wondering if – though the name apparently ends in “-ski” and the person is identified as Polish – if it was actually not originally a Polish surname. Maybe cast a wider net over other Slavic languages like Czech or Bulgarian? Maybe originally a Hungarian, Latvian, or Lithuanian surname with the “-ski” tacked on later?
Yeah, that one would be something like “yoor-KYEH-veech” in Polish. (You can find the IPA for it here; or I’ll make it easy and post it as /jurˈkjɛvit͡ʂ/.
If it’s actually pronounced as “jah-SHOE-skee” in Polish, it’d be spelled something like “Dziaszuski” or “Dziasiuski,” but that’s not a Polish surname I’m familiar with. More likely, the “j” that’s supposed to be pronounced as a “y” retained the English pronunciation, and it’s something like “Jaszewski,” which would be pronounced “ya-SHEF-ski” in Polish. But it may be “Jasiuski” or “Jaszuski” or any of a number of things, depending on what happened in the Anglicization of the name. My bet is on “Jaszewski,” which is a somewhat known name, whereas the other two are fairly rare.
Another possibility might be “Ciechowski” (cheh-HOFF-ski). Or maybe even “Zdziechowski” (zjeh-HOFF-ski). I could see either of those becoming something like “jeh-HOW-ski” via Anglicization.A lot of the “chowski” names end up becoming something that sounds like “house key” when pronounced in English, even though the “w” normally takes a “v” or “f” sound in Polish.