Jankowski ( ; feminine: Jankowska; plural: Jankowscy) is the 13th most common surname in Poland (69,280 people in 2009). Many village estates were named Jankowa or Jankowice in 13th and 14th century Poland, producing at least twelve unrelated families with this surname. Over thirty place names with 'Jankow' (derived from Jan (John)) as a prefix remain in modern Poland. In most cases, the originator of the surname was a landowner of a reasonably sized estate (tens of hectares as a minimum but could be over one thousand hectares). Landowners often formed their surnames by adding the suffix '-ski', meaning 'of', to the estate name. They generally had considerable prestige and legal rights as the use of '-ski' indicated their adoption into the Polish nobility termed szlachta. To distinguish the different Jankowski szlachta families, they each used an additional identifier signifying their armorial crest or clan, termed 'herb' in Polish (see Boniecki, "Herbarsz Polski"). Related surnames Diversity of families named Jankowski The most common coats of arms to contain Jankowscy are as follows: Amadej, Cielatkowa, Jastrzebiec (multiple synonyms see below), Junosza and Nowina. Less common coats of arms that may contain Jankowscy are Bialynia, Korab, Kuszaba, Ogonczyk, Poraj, Rawicz, and Strzemie. Each denotes an unrelated family originating in different locations throughout Poland. Each family has its own history and line of descent. Some like Jankowski h. Jastrzebiec are from the North-East of ancient Poland, while others are from the North-West with German/Prussian influences or from the South with Bohemian influences. With the partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the subsequent Polish diaspora and the many ethnic and religious pogroms resulting in comprehensive name changes, these secondary identifiers were largely forgotten and descendants may no longer know which family to whom they are connected. Furthermore, the surname Jankowski can be phoneticized in a number of different ways, with even the same family varying its spelling. The complexity of the evolution of these families can be illustrated well by the Jankowski h. Jastrzebiec family which is initially of Polish origin but has subsequently major Belarusian-Lithuanian influences. Jankowski h. Jastrzebiec Origins The Jastrzebiec clan is the oldest in Poland and has the largest number of derivative 'branch family' names associated with it. The subsequent families adopt the same crest of the Jastrzebiec clan which is the blue shield with a gold horse shoe encircling a 'Maltese cross' and a goshawk above. The name Jastrzebiec has