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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Polish : ethnic name from eastern Slavic Lach ‘Pole’. This term is used in Czech to denote the inhabitants of the northeastern part of Moravia, near the Polish border.
  • Slovak, Czech (Moravian), and German (of Slavic origin) : from the personal name Lach, a short form of Czech and Slovak (V)ladislav (see Laszlo).
  • Germanized spelling of Slovenian Lah, derivative of Vlah ‘Wallachian’, ‘Vlach’, ‘Romanian’, or more generally denoting any person of foreign origin.

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