I need help identifying the origin of my family name.

Hello Reddit!

I’ve been on a quest for quite a few months now to find out where my last name comes from.

It’s been extremely hard since my grandpa and grandma have been dead for quite a few years now. On top of that, my grandpa never enjoyed talking about this family since his father simply disappeared, and the rest of the extended family didn’t like him very much for marrying a mixed-race woman.

My last name, as spelled on my birth certificate, is Laskosky. My grandfather’s death certificate (I don’t know how you all call this in English exactly) says Laskoski. Through extensive research, the only information I could find came from the Oxford Dictionary of American Family Names, which states that Laskoski is an Americanized version of Laskowski. Going down the path of the origins of Laskowski, I was able to find out it’s from Poland, more specifically from a town called Laskowo.

As you can see, I was able to find the location, but I’m still missing a lot about the family itself. I suspect Laskowski is a Jewish name since the town of Laskowo has a fairly high number of Jews, and I also found records of a rabbi and his son, both named Laskowski, being hanged by the Nazis in front of a synagogue (not exactly in Laskowo from what I gathered).

Currently, the highest number of people named Laskosky and Laskowski outside of Poland is in the U.S. Although the vast majority of people whose burial info I could find are situated in Catholic cemeteries (my grandfather was Catholic), some sources, including the Oxford dictionary I mentioned earlier, state that Laskowski is a Polish and/or Jewish name.

I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably never be able to trace a direct line from myself in Brazil to Poland since immigration records back in the late 1800s and early 1900s are very foggy because Brazilian port authorities didn’t keep precise records, and the records I was able to find are very extensive, like thousands and thousands of people arriving on the same date through dozens of different ports.

Anyways, any help or info on sources would be really appreciated.