Explore the Family Name Poleski

The meaning of Poleski

1. Polish and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): habitational name for someone from Polesie, a region covering parts of present-day Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. 2. Polish: habitational name for someone from any of various places called Polesie, named with a Slavic word meaning ‘forest glade’ or ‘cleared forest land’. 3. In some cases this may also be a variant transliteration of Ukrainian and Belorussian Polessky, a cognate of 1 above.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

How common is the last name Poleski in the United States?

Based on the Decennial U.S. Census data, the popularity of the surname Poleski has slightly dipped between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, it ranked 61,376 but fell to 69,793 in 2010, a decrease of 13.71%. The count of individuals bearing the surname also dropped from 306 in 2000 to 281 in 2010, representing an 8.17% decrease. The proportion per 100k people also declined by 9.09%, moving from 0.11 to 0.1.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#61,376	#69,793	-13.71%
Count	306	281	-8.17%
Proportion per 100k	0.11	0.1	-9.09%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Poleski

In terms of ethnic identity, the data from the Decennial U.S. Census reveals some shifts among those bearing the Poleski surname between 2000 and 2010. While no change was recorded for Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, or Two or more races categories, there was a noticeable increase in individuals identifying as Hispanic - from 2.61% in 2000 to 5.34% in 2010, a rise of 104.60%. Interestingly, the American Indian and Alaskan Native category also appeared in 2010 with a percentage of 3.20, having not been represented in 2000. However, individuals identifying as White decreased from 94.44% in 2000 to 88.97% in 2010, a drop of 5.79%.

	2000	2010	Change
White	94.44%	88.97%	-5.79%
Hispanic	2.61%	5.34%	104.6%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	0%	3.2%	0%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	0%	0%
Two or More Races	1.96%	0%	0%
Black	0%	0%	0%