Koperniki (; formerly German ''Köppernig'', ''Köppernick'', ''Koppirnik'' (obsolete; used 1845); Latin ''Copirnik'', ''Copernik'') is a
village in the administrative district of
Gmina Nysa, within
Nysa County,
Opole Voivodeship, in southwestern Poland.
It lies approximately southwest of
Nysa
Nysa may refer to:
Greek Mythology
* Nysa (mythology) or Nyseion, the mountainous region or mount (various traditional locations), where nymphs raised the young god Dionysus
* Nysiads, nymphs of Mount Nysa who cared for and taught the infant ...
and southwest of the regional capital
Opole
Opole (; german: Oppeln ; szl, Ôpole) ;
* Silesian:
** Silesian PLS alphabet: ''Ôpole''
** Steuer's Silesian alphabet: ''Uopole''
* Silesian German: ''Uppeln''
* Czech: ''Opolí''
* Latin: ''Oppelia'', ''Oppolia'', ''Opulia'' is a city loc ...
. It was the ancestral village of
Nicolaus Copernicus (born Niclas Koppernigk), whose great-grandfather had moved to then Polish capital
Cracow (Polish
Kraków, German Krakau) in c. 1380.
The etymology of the name has been debated especially in the context of the biography of Copernicus, since at least the 1870s, surrounding two competing proposals, one suggesting the name
root origin from the German word for ''copper'' (Kupfer), the other from the Polish word for
dill (''koper'').
The
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
-nik
The English suffix -nik is of Slavic origin. It approximately corresponds to the suffix "-er" and nearly always denotes an agent noun (that is, it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the ...
(or
plural -niki) denotes a
Slavic and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
agent noun
In linguistics, an agent noun (in Latin, ) is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive".
Usually, ''derive ...
.
It is first mentioned in 1272, as ''Coprnih''.
and in 1284 was listed as one of 65 major German settlements in the
Duchy of Nysa
The Duchy of Nysa ( pl, Księstwo Nyskie, cs, Niské knížectví) or Duchy of Neisse (german: Herzogtum Neisse) was one of the duchies of Silesia with its capital at Nysa in Lower Silesia. Alongside the Duchy of Siewierz, it was the only eccle ...
.
As part of the Duchy of Nysa, it passed from the rule of Silesian branch of the Polish
Piast dynasty
The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I (c. 930–992). The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of king Casimir III the Great.
Branch ...
to the
Crown of Bohemia in 1342, and with Bohemia to the
House of Habsburg in 1542. In 1742, it fell to
Prussia as part of the settlement following the
First Silesian War. In 1945, it
became part of Poland, as ''Koperniki''. The German population was displaced, and the village was re-populated with Polish settlers from
Wiktorówka (
Tarnopol Voivodeship
Tarnopol Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo tarnopolskie) was an administrative region of interwar Poland (1918–1939), created on 23 December 1920, with an area of 16,500 km² and provincial capital in Tarnopol (now ''Ternopil'', Ukraine). The voi ...
) and
Jeleśnia.
[Vgl. ]
Notable residents
*
Franz Josef Niedenzu
Franz Josef Niedenzu (29 November 1857 – 30 September 1937) was a German botanist born in Köppernig. He is remembered for his work with the botanical family Malpighiaceae.
For most of his career he was a professor and subsequently rector a ...
(1857–1937), German botanist
References
*Felix Triest, ''Topographisches Handbuch von Oberschlesien'', Volume 1 (1865)
p. 1014
{{Gmina Nysa
Koperniki
Koperniki (; formerly German ''Köppernig'', ''Köppernick'', ''Koppirnik'' (obsolete; used 1845); Latin ''Copirnik'', ''Copernik'') is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nysa, within Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, in southwestern P ...