Table of contents
Family name origins & meanings
- Polish (also Łaska) and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : from Polish łaska, ‘grace’, ‘favor’, or from a homonym meaning ‘weasel’. As a Polish name, this is a nickname; as a Jewish name it is generally ornamental.
- Polish : from laska ‘stick’, ‘walking stick’, metaphorically a nickname for a tall, thin man.
- Czech (Moravian; Laška) : from a pet form of Lád, a short form of the personal name (V)ladislav (see Laszlo).
- Czech and Slovak (Láska) : nickname from láska ‘love’.
- Hungarian : from the Slavic loanword laska ‘pastry’ (probably a metathesized form of Slovak lokša or Ukrainian lóksa), hence a metonymic occupational name for a pastry cook. In Hungarian laska also denotes a type of mushroom, and in some cases the surname may have arisen as a nickname from this sense.