Etymology of Pankow

By Andrew Pankow, MFA, DRA

“Pankow”, the German-American sir name can trace its etymology back to Proto-Indo-European roots.

Etymologically, “Pankow” means “family of the swamp” or “family of the marsh”.

Pankow Family Name's Etymology

Proto-Indo-European

In the early days of the areas now considered Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains, the Proto-Indo-European language group arose.

Their utterance (sound/word) for “swamp” or “bog” was a voiceless bilabial plosive followed into with a close-mid front unrounded vowel and ending in a form of voiced alveolar nasal… something like the modern English word “pain” (IPA: /pen/)

Over time, the vowel relaxed in the mouth to become an open front unrounded vowel and some extra flair began being added as a suffix. It began sounding like “panyo” or “panio” (IPA: /paŋ.iɔ/, /paŋ.yɔ/).

Known Language Groups

The flair-like suffix seemed to occur everywhere and drifted from a vowel in the west to a gutteral sound in the east. In central Europe, the sound of the vowel in “pan” (IPA: /pan/) became more like the “a” in “sand” (IPA: /pæn/) and the suffix became a voiceless velar plosive “k”; “pank” (IPA: /pænk/). They wrote it like this “пѣнк”.

The word even made its way into India’s Sanskrit, “paangka” (IPA: /paːŋ.ka/); written “पङ्क” and would become Hindi’s “पानी” (IPA: /päːniː/), meaning “water”.

Becoming Modern

As individual languages evolved from their greater groups, complexities were added to word structure and grammar creating concatenated (combination) words. The things “of the swamp”, “in the swamp”, “from the swamp” in central and eastern Europe were described by adding, as a suffix, a shortened version of the word that described “house”, “home”, and “family”. They wrote this suffix as “овъ”.

In central Europe, they spoke this suffix of familial relationship similar to the modern English word “ow” (IPA: /aʊ/) short for “ouch” (or the end of “cow”).
In eastern Europe, they spoke the suffix with the same place in the mouth but closed the lips and teeth together for a voiced labiodental flap similar to “ov” in the modern English word “over” (IPA: /oːv/).

This concatenated word “пѣнк” and “овъ” = “панков” in the Slavic which it has been so far attested; written in German letters, this is “pankow”.

“pankow” was simply a description but since a lot of northern Europe is covered in marsh lands, it became a common word. When enough people were from these marsh lands they became known as “people of the marsh” or more accurately, “marshies” or “boggers”; the “pankows”.

A Name We Know

Arriving in America, this was who they were and what was written at Ellis Island, “Pankow”.
Arriving later, from Soviet controlled areas, came the Pankovs and Pankovas (Панков | Панкова).