I'll ask my girlfriend. She comes from one of the aristocratic families with a hyphenated last name. They are into this family history thing.

It was probably more like Balcerczak, which translates to "son of Balcer." It's certainly not uncommon to have your name chopped off a bit by the Ellis Island folks. My last name lost four letters!

Start with www.ellisislandrecords.com/ . I've found a wealth of history there. The records will tell you where the passengers came from, where they are heading to in the USA, how much money they had on them, and other tidbits of information. I've printed out the ships' registries and gave them to my father. He was thrilled to see such information.

The next place to head is your local library! (No, the internet has not smited them all.) Growing up, my local library had a book of surnames and their meanings in their reference section. See if you can find something similar, or talk to a reference librarian.

Definitely go to Poland. Krakow is stunning. Poor Warsaw, it's architecture is still stuck in Communist-era in many places around the city.