This very rare name is a 19th Century variant, the result perhaps of clerical error, of an Anglicized form of an originally Polish surname, found as Grogowna, or Grogonow, and attested in London in 1849 as Grogona: the birth certificate of Walter Atkins Grogono, dated October 9th 1849, gives his father's name as Mandovile Grogona. Polish surnames have been subject to such transformations when adopted into other languages that t is often very difficult to determine the original form of the name, and mis-pronunciation alone has led to many later unrecognisable forms.In the case of Grogono or Grogona, the most likely derivations are from a now obscure personal name, perhaps a form of Gregory, "the watchful one", or "shepherd", with the female suffix "-owna", or from a locational surname for someone from a place named with that personal name, with the habitational suffix "-ow". The most reliable recordings of Polish surnames are to be found in Germany, and the following are examples of the name from that country: Ewe Grogowna, who married Kazymir Brzozowski at Marggrabowa, East Prussia, on July 14th 1815, and Christiane Grogow, married to Gottfried Mueller in April 1820 at Steinkirchen, Brandenburg. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Anne Grogon', which was dated September 6th 1716, marriage to Robert Ewers at St. Martin in the Fields, London, during the reign of George 1, known as "The First Hanoverian", 1714 - 1727. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

© Copyright: Name Origin Research 1980 - 2024