Family name origins & meanings
- Slovenian (western and central Slovenia) : nickname for someone from the western and southwestern edges of the former Slovenian-speaking regions, in particular Monfalcone (Slovenian name Tržič) and Gorizia (Slovenian name Gorica), two cities in the present-day Italian province of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (annexed to Italy after World War I), or from Istria (now divided between Slovenia and Croatia).
- (also Croatian) : variant spelling of the nickname Bezjak, literally ‘man without eggs’ (Croatian bez jaja ‘without eggs’), also found as a nickname for a silly or rude person. In Slovenia this term was used as a nickname for someone from the region between the Sava and Drava rivers; in Croatia it was used for a speaker of the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian, which is close to Slovenian.