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The main feature of the site is to list the various
hypotheses that surround the “meaning’ of Dubiel. If you are
like me, you have had the experience of people not
believing that your name is Polish (or even German). If you
Anglicize (Americanize) your pronunciation, then your name
is Doo-Beel, and that sounds French. If you place an accent
on the second syllable, it sounds French even more so. But,
to tell the truth, that’s the easy way to handle the name,
even at the cost of having to explain countless times that
we are not French.
The Polish
(European) pronunciation is either Dub-Yell or Du-bee-el,
with no one syllable receiving an accent. I’ve heard it
both ways in Poland. Perhaps pronouncing it this way would
lend some credibility as to our name being Polish, but I
doubt it. The name just doesn’t sound Polish to people
outside of a Polish community. My experience has been that
the community must be fairly large in terms of Polish people
before I run into someone who recognizes Dubiel as Polish.
This brings
us to the issue of how did the name Dubiel get to be Polish?
What did it mean? Where did it come from? I asked these
questions at a young age and, of course, went to the living
source at that time: my grandfather. To suggest that the
name wasn’t really Polish was to invite a cuff on the ear.
As to what it meant, that was another story. Dziadzio
was a great story-teller and saw this question as a great
opportunity to talk about our family as it was in the old
country, and maybe even answer my question.
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