Family name origins & meanings
- Finnish : ornamental name from koski ‘waterfall’, ‘rapids’. This was one of the many words denoting natural features that were used in the formation of Finnish surnames during the name conversion movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the U.S. this is sometimes a shortened form of other Finnish surnames formed with this element, e.g. Kalliokoski, Ylikoski.
- Polish : habitational name from any of several places called Koski, named with kos ‘blackbird’.