Walter is, not Wayne. People always seem to forget that Wayne's mother was English-Canadian and a descendant of Sir Isaac Brock at that!
To clear up some of the confusion that always follows discussion of Gretzky's ancestry... Walter's mother/Wayne's grandmother was born in
Pidhaitsi and her mother tongue was Ukrainian. It was also the only language Walter was able to speak after suffering his stroke. His father was from the
Grodno region in Belarus.
The confusion about Gretzky being Polish stems from his mother's identity: It was not unusual in this region to have religion conflated with ethnic identity. Roman Catholicism was literally referred to as the "Polish faith" in everyday speech. Despite Ukrainian being the language spoken at home, Walter's mother was also fluent in Polish and was Roman Catholic, so she considered herself to be Polish. Her Ukrainian neighbours, who would have been mostly Greek Catholic, were also likely to consider her family to be Polish. It is a bit hard to understand in the modern context, but remember, in those days a lot revolved around the church. I would not go so far to say the two communities lived separate lives but there most certainly was a divide between them.
So... take your pick about Walter... Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish... little bit of all the above, really.
Not really. The only part of Belarus where '-uk' is semi-common is in Polesie, bordering Ukraine.
The '-uk'/'-chuk'/'-chik' suffix is used exclusively Western Ukrainian dialects or neighbouring ones (i.e. Polesie) influenced by them.
Also, since you brought it up, '-sky'/'-ski'/'-skiy'/'-cki' (pro. '-tski') is not native to Russian. Most Russians with '-sky' in their name come from Belarus or Ukraine. The only exception are religious names (ex. Rozhdestvensky): Sometime in the 19th century Orthodox monks began using '-sky' in their surnames for some odd reason. '-sky' isn't native to the Jews either, obviously. They just adopted a surname in whatever language was dominant where they lived and in Imperial Russia, that was the Pale of Settlement, where names ending in '-sky' were common.
(Yes, I know way too much about this stuff
).
See above.
'-chuk' is not native to the Russian language.
Neither is Koval, for that matter. It is of Polish root meaning blacksmith. The Russian equivalent is Kuznets (i.e. Kuznetsov).