Podjazd Means Driveway

About 15 years ago I asked a Polish work colleague if she knew the name "Podjazd" (pronounced in English like "pode-yast"). She looked at me like I must be wrong and asked me to spell it.  "That's not

A driveway in Poland, i.e., a podjazd

a name, that means 'driveway'," she said, still bemused at the whole thing.  How did our family get such a name?

In central Europe, Jews did not have permanent family surnames until the 18th or 19th century when they were compelled to take them to make it easier for the Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires to tax and draft Jewish citizens. Previously, the Jewish community leaders handled those tasks for the state. Jews in Poland took (or were given) Polish surnames, German surnames, patronymic, occupational, and geographic surnames.

In Polish, “pod” means “under” and “jazda” means “travel” or “run”. Podjazd means “driveway”, “drive” or “ramp”. (In Slovakian, it means “underpass”.)   Perhaps the original Podjazd family lived near well-known entrance road.

Podjazd and the interchangeable “Podiazd” show up in the Jewish/Polish records with dozens of people with that name born, married or died (or killed in the Holocaust) from the early 1800s up until WWII. Most are from Ciechanow, at least until around 1900.  All of the Podjazds killed in the Holocaust seemed to be from Mlawa, which is the county of Ciechanow and also a town about 20 miles away from it.

There are only a handful of Podjazds in U.S. records, and they all trace back to Ciechanow and have a record of changing their name to Marcus. It seems that Jacob Podjazd took the name Marcus and all other Podjazds who followed also took it.

There was a Podjazd-Morgenstern family that originated in Poland but migrated to England in the 20th Century, but they don’t seem to be related. Tadeusz Podjazd-Morgenstern was in the Polish navy and descended from a German family.

There are a number of “Pojazds” in the Jewish/Polish records, but most are not from Ciechanow, so it does not look like they are related.
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The name Podjazd seems to have disappeared, with no current listings in US (or available Polish) directories.