Who knows anything about the last name DUDEK?

Question:

Who knows anything about the last name DUDEK?

Just wondering what it means or whats it is about?! Where it comes from?!? Anything would be fun. Thanks!!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Dudek is Polish for ??piper?? and refers specifically to one little piper, the hoopoe, a gaudily crested European bird, salmon-pink in colour, whose characteristic call has earned it the delightfully plosive ornithological name of Upupa epops, one of the great silly zoological names.

The Polish surname Dudek may have originated as a nickname for an ancestor who was a gaudy dresser or a show-off. In Polish and several other European and Slavic languages, the hoopoe has a reputation for being a noisy, whistling, intrusive bird.

Dudek could have been the bird on a sign on a shop owned by the founding ancestor of the family. Before surnames, European people were sometimes identified by motifs and signs painted on the walls of the shops they operated. Many surnames in many different languages originate in this way. One familiar example is Rothschild, in which the founding ancestor had as an identifying mark on his house or place of business, a red shield (German rot ??red?? +German Schild ??shield??). English last names of similar provenance are Fish, Lion, and Starr.

You probably already know that there was a great canaidan poet name Louis Dudek 1918-2001. Wikipedia has a little blurb on him.