Family name origins & meanings
- Polish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian : topographic name for someone who lived ‘on the other side of the wood’, from Polish za ‘beyond’ + las ‘forest’, with the addition of -ski, suffix of local surnames, or a habitational name for someone from a place called Zalesie, named with these elements. As a habitational name, it is also found as an Ashkenazic Jewish name.
- Polish (Załęski) : topographic name for someone who lived ‘on the other side of the water meadow’, from Polish za ‘beyond’ + łęg ‘water meadow’.
- Polish : variant of Zalewski.