The Latvian Surname Project has been updated!
The total name count is now 800, I added 200 new names including TRĪSTILTIŅŠ and PODNIEKS.
Today I am also launching a new project, the Latvian Farm Project. The goal of this project is to match old farm names to their pre-WW2 parishes, as well as begin a study on farm naming practices. Eventually, I hope to tie this in with the Surname Project and the Record Project to create parish profiles and also come up with statistics of how often people may have chosen farm names as surnames. So far farms are listed for the parish of Ainaži.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow for a very special announcement!
So I’ve had this blog for about seven months now. I completely missed my six-month blogiversary!
In honour of that overdue milestone, I’d like to open the floor to reader suggestions. What would you like me to write about? Are there periods of Latvian history you’d like me to explore in more depth? A record type you’d like me to detail? Would you like to see parish profiles, discussions about historical buildings, or something else along those lines?
Leave me a comment and let me know what you’d like to see! I’ll also be making some announcements at the beginning of June to complement the new site additions for the month. I’ve been busy, but they’re not quite ready to launch yet!
So after puzzling through the various alphabets and orthographies, you have been able to establish what your ancestors’ names would have looked like back in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is a great first step towards tracking them back through the years.
Now you get to do the same for the places they lived! Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is not. It will involve juggling not just alphabets and orthographies, but languages as well.
In the various records, the rural places where people lived are most commonly identified with two parts – the estate name, followed by the farm name. Many estate names became modern civil parish names, but smaller estates came under different civil parish jurisdictions in the early twentieth century. Therefore, it is important to identify not only the modern-day civil parish your ancestor is from, but what all of the estates in the area were, since they may not have been from the one that gave the name to the modern civil parish.
Estate names are usually German. In Russian-language records, they may have been given Russian names, but in my experience, the Russian records continue to utilize the German names. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule.
German estate names, compared to the modern Latvian ones, can take various forms. They could be nearly identical – compare Autz and Auce, Rujen and Rūjiena. A further step along, they could be almost identical, as long as there is an understanding of German and Latvian pronunciations, such as Wolmar and Valmiera, Zarnikau and Carnikava.
Then there are translated names, which require some familiarity with both languages – this can be seen most often with names prefaced by “New/Young”, “Old”, “Small”, “Big” – “Jaun” (“Neu”), “Vec” (“Alt”), “Maz” (“Klein”), “Liel” (“Groß”). It may only be this initial suffix which is translated, the rest of the name might be one language or the other. Other place names in this category would be ones such as Lemburg and Mālpils – both mean “clay castle”, but without knowing the translation, it would be difficult to connect them as one and the same.
While names fitting the above three categories are the majority that I have come across, there are some that have no resemblance to one another, either in meaning or in appearance. Without prior knowledge, how would one know that Friedrichstadt and Jaunjelgava are the same place? Or Wenden and Cēsis?
Thankfully, when it comes to finding out what places are now known by what names, resources exist. I find them excellent tools, and I hope that you will as well.
- Wikipedia’s “List of German Exonyms for Places in Latvia” is a great place to start. Most larger places are mentioned here.
- If the Wikipedia article does not have the place you’re looking for, check here next. While many entries are the same, there is some variation.
- If you keep seeing an estate name, but haven’t been able to match it to anything, it could have been a smaller estate. Consult this map. An index is provided, but only references the grid number, which can cover quite a wide area, so it will take some hunting on the map to locate it. The advantage, of course, is that you can compare this map to a modern-day one to get a clearer picture of where precisely the estate was located.
Once you have established the name and location of the estate, the rest should be relatively straightforward. Even though estates typically had German names, individual farms on the estate typically had Latvian ones – and these names most often remained the same upon independence in the early twentieth century, and, in cases where the farms continue to exist, retain the same names today. The main exception to this is again the prefix situation described above – while the main portion of the name might be written in Latvian, the prefixes could be in German or Russian.
Now that you have your estate name and farm name worked out, it is time to place it on a map created after independence. I have an atlas issued in 1940 that belonged to my paternal grandfather that he brought with him to Canada. I also have a CD that I acquired while I was in Latvia at this store that contains detailed topographical maps of Latvia, including farm names. These maps were made between 1920 and 1930, and I have them at the 1:75 000 size. Using these resources, I have been able to precisely identify the farms of all of my known ancestors.
Being able to accurately identify not only what estate someone lived on, but where on the estate they lived, can be vital to determining what church they would have most likely attended, and, consequently, what church records you should be looking at. If their farm was equidistant between two churches, they could have even alternated which one they went to, so records could be found in both. It is worth checking all of the churches in the area if there are numerous possibilities.
Are there any exonym resources you’ve found useful? Share in comments!
Welcome back to Surname Saturday on Discovering Latvian Roots!
This week I’m going to talk about compound surnames – that is, a surname formed from two words, rather than one. These are a relative rarity in Latvian surnames when it comes to names of Latvian language origin (German language origin compound surnames are more common when it comes to surnames held by Latvians). Some compound forms that are more common than others. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some that I have seen that make me think “Boy, do I want to know the story behind this one!”
The most common first elements in compound surnames that I’ve encountered are “jauns” and “vecs” – “young/new” and “old”, respectively. As name elements, they typically drop the terminal “s”. Names in this category include Jaunkalns (new hill – Liepupe, Limbaži), Jaunozoliņš (young oak [diminutive] – Suntaži), Veckalns (old hill – Limbaži, Stiene) and Vecvanags (old hawk – Vidriži). Based on the number of farm names that have similar elements, it is likely than many of these surnames originate from farm names. Additionally, as I mentioned in my post Importance of Farm Names, if two farms that are “Jaun-something” and “Vec-something” are close together, they could have common familial origins.
The most common second element I’ve seen is “kalns”, meaning “hill” or “mountain”. Being as Latvia’s tallest “mountain”, Gaiziņkalns, is only 312m above sea level, it does not qualify as a mountain according to most definitions I’ve found. As such, for Latvian names, I translate “kalns” as “hill”. Examples of this name element can be found in Baltaiskalns (white hill – Skrunda), Briežkalns (stag hill – Rūjiena), Rožukalns (rose hill – Bīriņi, Limbaži, Sēļi, Turaida) and Smilškalns (sand hill – Ķoņi, Valmiera).
Sometimes given names appear as part of compound names – the most common ones I have seen are Pēteris and Brencis. Examples: Jūspēteris (your Peter – Trikāta), Vecpēteris (old Peter – Jaunjelgava) and Tiltabrencis (Brencis from the bridge – Bilska).
Now to some of the more unusual ones, that really leave me wondering! Here we have Aizvakars (yesterday – Skaņkalne), Pelēkzirnis (grey pea – Mazsalaca) and Trīstiltiņš (three bridges [diminutive] – Katvari). But the one that I really want to know the story behind is Bezbiksis (Rīga). Unless I’m interpreting it incorrectly (though I’m not sure how else it could be interpreted!), this name would mean “one without pants”. My guess as to the story would be that he must have been late getting to the surname-assigning meeting in his parish and in his haste forgotten his trousers, and the estate lord would not let him forget this incident!
Do you have any unusual compound surnames to share, in any language? Or maybe a long Latvian name that you suspect might be a compound name that you would like to have looked at? Let me know in comments!
The Latvian Record Project has been updated!
I have added 1506 new entries to the indexes, covering Lēdurga births 1895-1899, marriages 1895-1899 and deaths 1895-1900. Note however that unfortunately records for 1897 are not available, and are probably lost.
Compared to the previous updates, you’ll note that I’ve pared down the information available in the indexes. This is to make the indexing process faster – they are only intended as a guide, so they will only provide the basic information one would need to find the relevant record in the church books – meaning parish, record type, year, name and record number. That means that I can index more records in a shorter period of time, so look for more soon!
Welcome, everyone, to the 28th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy! This month’s topic was War Stories.
J.M. of Tracing My Roots, in the post The Effects of War, describes the lingering effects of war after the battles are over, and how in this particular case they influenced the life of a German ancestor living in the Netherlands.
In her post Ray, Karen of Ancestor Soup writes about the peacetime and wartime activities of Flight Officer Raymond Christensen, a WW2 pilot, as told to his friends back home in the USA.
Next, Brenda Dougall Merriman talks about the experiences of her ancestor Otto during the 1905 Revolution in the Latvian provinces of the Russian Empire.
Al of Al’s Polish-American Genealogy Research discusses how the Franco-Prussian War Impacts the Wierzba’s from Lipusz, and how this may have influenced their decision to emigrate to the United States.
Finally, in the post War Stories, Antra of Discovering Latvian Roots recounts her great-aunt’s memories of a childhood spent in rural Russia to avoid the battles of World War I being fought in Latvian territory.
That concludes this month’s carnival! May’s edition will be hosted by J.M. of Tracing My Roots, and the topic will be “Religion, religion as part of the life of an ancestor, sources about an ancestor that are connected to their religion, basically anything to do with religion would be accepted.” The deadline for submissions is May 14th, and the edition will be posted on May 17th. Submissions can be made on the Carnival’s BlogCarnival submissions page.
[This post is for the 28th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy, which will be hosted right here. The Carnival post will be up on Friday!]
Since I’m hosting this edition of the Carnival, I got to choose the topic. I chose War Stories. When I thought of this topic, I initially had ideas to talk about the various experience of my family members in World War II, since this was a defining moment of my family’s history, since over the course of the war, all four of my grandparents left Latvia, spent several years in displaced persons camps, and then came to Canada.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should tell a different story – the narrative of my family’s history focuses on World War II so often, it would be interesting to tell a different story for a change.
So instead I will talk about one branch of my family’s experience during World War I and the Russian Revolution. These stories have been told to me by my great-aunt, who is now 98 years old.
When World War I started, Latvia was still a part of the Russian Empire. My great-aunt was three years old, living in Krustpils, which was then part of the Vitebsk guberniya, with her parents Jūle (nee Štelmahers) and Brencis Līcītis. Because of the war front raging through Latvia, the family moved further east, and settled near Rzhev, a city approximately 200km west of Moscow.
The three lived with a Russian family by the surname Kislev in a manor house. The family had two daughters, Vera and Zoya. It is living here that my great-aunt learned to speak Russian, and took great pleasure in going to the local market as well as to the Orthodox church, even though the family was Lutheran. They were not the only Balts living in the area – other Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians had also moved to the Rzhev area to avoid the war.
But World War I was not the only war going on at the time. This was a time of political upheaval in Russia, which eventually led to the 1917 Revolution and the beginning of the Communist era. The family was opposed to Bolshevism early – my great-aunt remembers going with her father to listen to a speech that was given by a political party leader that was opposed to Lenin and his party. After the Bolshevik victory, she also remembers her mother arguing with a Communist about “workers” and what the party would do with people who were unable to work due to age or infirmity, and his response being less than satisfactory. When the Communists came asking how much they were paying in rent to the Kislevs, they lied and said a lower price than they were actually paying. They knew that otherwise the Kislevs would have had even more of their property expropriated for being “kulaks” (affluent farmers), even though they really didn’t have very much.
But the defining moment that showed the family precisely where the Bolsheviks went wrong and why their family would always remain opposed to Communism was when the Communist soldiers came to the village, took the grain stores and burned them in the town square, calling them “rich peoples’ food”. Instead of this grain that they had stored up, the people were given animal feed to eat.
World War I officially ended in 1918, but the following years were still filled with conflict in Eastern Europe, with the civil war in Russia between the various factions, as well as the wars of independence in the Baltics. While Latvia in declared independence on November 18, 1918, this wasn’t officially recognized until the early 1920s.
I’m not certain when exactly the family returned to Krustpils, but it would have been before the autumn of 1919, when my grandmother was born. The wars ended, and Latvia gained an independence that had been lost eight hundred years earlier.
In recounting this story, I’ve realized just how many of the details of this time period are a mystery to me, historically speaking – in Latvian Saturday school, we didn’t really study it. We learned about early Latvian history and the beginnings of German rule. We learned about the following periods of Swedish and Russian rule, and then about some of the Latvian writers of the late 19th century who started to inspire political movements of independence and nationalism. But we didn’t study the independence wars. We celebrated the 18th of November every year, acknowledging independence as being gained in 1918, and that from that day on people lived happily ever after until World War II broke out. The first I recall hearing about the independence wars was looking at some maps in my Latvian historical atlas that I acquired in my first year of Latvian Friday night high school, but I don’t recall ever discussing them in class.
So my mission for the next couple of months is to educate myself more on this time period. It was an important period of Latvian history, and it might hold the key to answering some questions about different types of access to various Latvian genealogical records. I will be sure to share my findings here!
The 28th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy will be hosted right here on Discovering Latvian Roots!
The deadline to submit was officially yesterday, but I realized today that I had totally forgotten to mention the Carnival here on my blog this month. Oops! I thought I had, but it turns out that I hadn’t.
The Carnival was going to be posted on Wednesday, but if you still want to get a submission in, I’ll delay posting the Carnival until Friday. Just let me know! You can send your submission URLs on the subject of War Stories to admin at celmina dot com.
Thanks!
The Latvian Surname Project has been updated!
I have added 80 new names, including MUITNIEKS and SALNA. I went to records in several different corners of Latvia for this one, so there are names from parishes such as Rucava in the west and Saliena in the east.
I’ve got a big push of indexed records to add, but Raduraksti has been down all day so unfortunately I was not able to finish that one tonight for the Record Project. Hopefully it’ll be up tomorrow so I can complete the indexing that I wanted to finish before releasing it.
Two side projects in the works – stay tuned!
The “Ancestor Approved” Award is an award in the genealogy blogger community. It was awarded to me by Joanne of Keeper of the Records. Thank you so much! It means a lot that my blog is getting noticed by other genealogy bloggers.
Accepting this award also means that one is asked to “list ten things you have learned about any of your ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened you”, as well as “pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud.”
So here we go!
- After I really got into my research, I was surprised to learn just how many resources on Latvian genealogy there really are out there. When I was younger I used to think church records were the extent of it – I was happy to learn there is much much more!
- I am humbled by the wartime experiences of my grandparents, and frequently remind myself that if they were able to flee across a continent filled with war and chaos to find safety and security in a new land where they built successful new lives from scratch, that I can do anything I put my mind to.
- It has been enlightening to see the historical progression of society in Latvia from rural roots to an urbanized existence – but I am still seeking to find what specifically it was that brought two of my ancestors to the “big city” (Rīga) from their homes in the rural north of the country.
- I was surprised to discover that three of my great-grandparents were influential in their occupational fields in the inter-war period in Latvia – one as an assistant director of a division of the postal savings bank, one as a leader in the counter-intelligence agency and one as a justice of the peace and member of Parliament. The former even had an entry in the Latvian “Who’s Who”. All three were also from rural farming families.
- It has been very enlightening to be able to read the Saeima (Latvian parliament) minutes, to learn more about my great-grandfather Augusts Lūkins’ specific work and speeches that he made. Through those minutes and both his judicial and police employment files, I’ve been able to get a very complete picture of his life and career.
- I was surprised to find out that my great-grandfather Pēteris Celmiņš, his wife Anna (nee Liepa) and their children Juris and Skaidrīte moved half a dozen times beween 1924 and 1927. All bar one of these homes were within 5km of one another. I still do not know why, since they both had steady, well-paid employment during this time.
- I’ve learned so much from the wide variety of documents I’ve had to deal with. It has been enlightening to be able to read records not only in modern-style Latvian, but in German, Russian and old-style Latvian writing. Modern Latvian writing only came about in the 1920s, and some people continued to use the old style into the 1940s.
- I was surprised to discover that it is possible to find distant relatives through the Internet, even for such a small ethnic group as Latvians. In the past couple of months, I’ve made contact with two distant relatives, one from each side of my family, both descendants of my great-grandparents’ siblings.
- I am constantly surprised by the wide breadth of surnames that I discover while perusing church records. Latvians may have been a primarily agrarian people, but boy, did they ever have some creativity when it came to coming up with names!
- I am humbled by the responses that I get to my blog and my various projects, and am pleased that there are others out there who are researching their Latvian roots that have been helped by the information that I’ve provided. I never expected to get as much of a response to my blog as I have!
I only have five nominations, since many of the genealogy blogs I read have already been nominated:
Thank you, everyone, for reading! While work has ended up taking up a lot of my time, over the past weekends I have been able to churn out some record and surname work for the Surname Project and the Record Project. Stay tuned for project updates coming in the next few days!
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