The orginal spelling of the Surovick name is Surovčik. The “č” is Slovak for the “ch” sound (“cz” in Polish). This was the spelling found on the marriage certificate of Rudolph Surovick and Carolina Bonk completed in Phoenixville, PA. On the naturalization application for Rudolph the surname was spelled “Surovcik”. Note that in the Ellis Island records Rudolph’s name was “Rudolf Szurovcsik”, a clear misspelling by a person without eastern European background. Surovčik is probably derived from the Slovak “surový”, meaning “raw”.

More interesting is the surname Bonk which sounds German, but likely is Polish. A common Polish name is “Bąk”. Here the “ą” [1](a with an ogornek) is a polish vowel pronounced “on”. So, Bąk is pronounced Bonk. Since there is no character in Slovak equivalent to “ą”, this is probably the Slovak spelling of an originally polish name. This is also the case of many immigrants to America whose surname was phonetically spelled by the immigration clerks.[2]

The meaning of “bąk” in polish is “horsefly”.

According to the “Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4”, the derivation of Bonk is:

1. Americanized spelling of Polish and Jewish Bak

2. North German and Dutch: variant of Bunk

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[1] There is a separate polish vowel “a”.

[2] A large number of examples of mistakes in the spelling of names and places for Poles and Slovaks are evident in the immigration records.