Family name origins & meanings
- Polish and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : habitational name for someone from any of the places called Tarnów, Tarnowa, Tarnowiec, and Tarnowo (named with Polish tarn ‘blackthorn’ + -ów suffix). In the case of the Jewish surname, the source is usually, if not exclusively, Tarnów in southern Poland.
- This name, borne by a very illustrious Polish aristocratic line, has been recorded since the 14th century. From this line have sprung many famous individuals, including Jan Tarnowski (1488–1561), commander in chief of the Polish royal army; Jan Feliks Tarnowski (1777–1842), senator and castellan; and Stanisław Tarnowski (1837–1917), critic and professor of literary history at the Jagellonian University in Kraków.