It is a Polish word named after a city called Bialystok.It is a type of flat bread that originated from that city

It is a Yiddish word of Polish origin. 1) "Bialy, a Yiddish word short for bialystoker, from BiaÅ‚ystok, a city in Poland, is a small roll that is a traditional dish in Polish Ashkenazi cuisine. A traditional bialy has a diameter of up to 15 cm (6 inches) and is a chewy yeast roll similar to a bagel. Unlike a bagel, which is boiled before baking, a bialy is simply baked, and instead of a hole in the middle it has a depression. Before baking, this depression is filled with diced onions and other ingredients, including (depending on the recipe) garlic, poppy seeds, or bread crumbs. The name bialy is short for bialystoker kuchen (Bialystok's Cake). The bialy were formerly little known outside of New York City, but have started to move into the larger market. They were originally brought into the United States by Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The bialy was first marketed in the United States during the early 1900s in the state of New York by Harry Cohen, a proprietor of a bagel (and later bialy) establishment. In 2002, former New York Times food writer Mimi Sheraton wrote a book dedicated to the bialy, called The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World. She examined bialy making and used Kossar's Bialys as the background, and its long-time union bakers as key references for her research that took her to Poland in search of the original bialy bakers." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bialy 2) "According to legend, BiaÅ‚ystok was given its name by the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas ca. 1320. An English translation of BiaÅ‚ystok would be "white slope" or "clean stream" (in Old Polish language). The city has been known in Belarusian as Беласток (BieÅ‚astok, IPA: [bʲeÉ«a'stok]), in Lithuanian as BalstogÄ— (White roof in Lithuanian), and in Yiddish as ביאַליסטאָק (Byalistok, Bjalistok). It has been known in Russian as Белосток or Belostok, a variant also used sometimes in English." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiaÅ‚ystok 3) "Deriving its name from the Biala River (biala is the word for "white" in Slavic languages), which runs through the city, it was founded in 1320 by Prince Gedimin of Lithuania. The first Jews came there in 1558, but, for some two hundred years, until the rule of Count Jan Branicki, whose heirs governed the Bialystok province from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Jews were denied full citizenship. In 1939, Just before the Germans invaded Poland, there were 110,000 Jews living in Bialystok, representing over 60 percent of the city’s population. It meant that Bialystok had the highest percentage of Jews among the world’s cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Bialystok also had the greatest number of synagogues per capita, with 33 rabbis in attendance." Source and further information: http://www.leomelamed.com/Speeches/00-bialystok.htm ------ ADDED ------ 4) I assumed that we were talking here about the name of the dish, which is what most people in America understand as bialy. What makes it a Yiddish word is that it would appear in a Yiddish dictionary with this meaning. And if there were a dictionary of foreign words for the Yiddish language, it would not appear here either. I doubt that such a dictionary would make much sense anyway, because the Yiddish language is very quick to accept foreign words. This word was created by the Jews inside the Yiddish language to name a speciality of the Polish Ashkenazi cuisine. It was based on the name of the city, which was known in Yiddish as ביאַליסטאָק (Byalistok, Bjalistok). Of course, the Yiddish name of the city originated in the name in Old Polish or Lithuanian language. We must differentiate between the etymology of a word and its belonging to a particular language. In the meantime, the word bialy can also be considered to be a word of the English language. But the English language imported that word from the Yiddish, not from the Polish language. Thinking that "bialy" is originally a Polish word would be like thinking that "hamburger" for the sandwich is originally a German word (In the meantime, it has also become a German word). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger As to the word "bialy" in the Polish language, it was used as a nickname for fair-haired persons: "This Polish surname of BIALY was a nickname for a fair-haired person, derived from the Polish word BIAL (white, fair, blond) and AS (masculine). The name has numerous variant spellings which include BIALEK, BIELA, BILAN, BIALASIK, BELYAK and BIELAK." Source and further information: http://www.4crests.com/bialy-coat-of-arms.html

Hi, i am polish and that word simply means 'white' to probably 99 percent of the polish population. Bialystok is a city, but no one associates bialy witht the town. It is simply 'white'

I think the word you're looking for is spelled biały. which means "White."