[spolsky]

A common assumption, but it is actually from Шпола, a city in the Ukraine.

[fsckboy]

seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Ukranian town might have named "from Poland"

[worewood]

Disclaimer: I'm a complete noob about the history of the region and the languages involved.

I just figured out the best way to get an answer on the web is to post a wrong one first, so I went 5 minutes into the subject on Wikipedia and what I've concluded is that maybe it's actually the other way around.

Poland is like "Land of Polans" which were the original tribe of the region.

The Ш letter seems it is a prefix that comes from Hebrew, so maybe, Шпола also refers to Polans in some way.

I must emphasize again that this can be completely wrong.

[Jorengarenar]

Really? I assumed it's the same genesis as the word "spruce" ("z Prus")

[switch007]

In case you missed it, that is Spolsky himself replying to you