I am Polish on both sides and Bućko is my surname and the surname of my father.
For a long time I have been certain that the name is "buk" "beech tree" corrupted and with a "-ko" ending (which is how I created my english pen name).
But now, I may have second thoughts. What has caused the hard consonant at the end of "buk" to transform into the soft "ć"? It has never happened in "Bukowski", what I believed to be the Polish form of the name.
That and it is actually a Russian or Russified name, because of the "-ko".
I did some research and found that in Russian, it is also "бук" with the same hard ending. I know next to nothing of Russian grammar, and giving a brief look to Russian noun declension has not told me of any kind of softening of the consonant.
I hope it does not mean something other than "beech", because that would mean I'd have to change my pen name.
What do you all think?