Forename Friday – Zinta

Welcome back to Forename Friday! This will be a biweekly series looking at Latvian first names, chosen based on one of the names found in the Latvian calendar of names for that day.

Today’s name is Zinta. This is a feminine name, though there is a male form, Zintis, but that name is celebrated on January 5 rather than April 6, so I will only be talking about the female form of the name here.

According to Klāvs Siliņš’ LatvieÅ¡u personvārdu vārdnica (Dictionary of Latvian Personal Names), the name Zinta means “the art of wizardry” and was first recorded in RÄ«ga in 1922. Since that time, it was most popular in the time period between 1945 and 1970, when it represented 0.18% of the female names given. According to the PMLP name database, there are 749 people living in Latvia with the first name of Zinta (691 if you don’t count where Zinta is paired with a middle name).

Zinta is also the name of a student corporation (the Latvian equivalent of a sorority or fraternity) founded by Latvian women in exile in 1947. It “returned” to Latvia in 1992 and has operated ever since, both in Latvia and in diaspora communities abroad.

Limbaži News – August 9, 1908

I occasionally browse the variety of newspapers available through the Latvian National Library’s website here and here. Newspapers can be a very valuable source of information, but many pre-World War 2 Latvian newspapers were written in blackletter font and old Latvian orthography, even in the 1930s. This typefont is not easy to read, but with practice, it does get easier.

However, to read and understand the full depth of the articles, you need to be able to read Latvian (or Russian, or German, depending on the article in question). Since the purpose of this blog is to make Latvian resources and research more accessible to people who do not speak Latvian (or German or Russian), I thought, why not share some of them with you?

I’m hoping this will become a regular feature on my blog, as I find interesting articles relating to emigration, interesting goings-on and so forth. I’ll try and feature them in a “this day in history” type format, but making an exception for today’s, since it was what inspired this feature.

Today’s excerpt (it’s a short one, but related to emigration!) comes from “Limbažu Ziņas” (Limbaži News), a newspaper from the town of Limbaži in northern Latvia. It was published on August 9, 1908.

The Valmiera Regional Police would like to remind people who may wish to emigrate to Canada that, as per the request of the Canadian government, railroad workers are not needed there. One can only hope to find work if one is an agile farmer, if they have the resources to rent land or if they are a female servant.
     -Valmiera Police Gazette

This is an interesting piece of information – to learn more about it would require digging into the Canadian governmental documents to see when the proclamation was made, and if it did translate across the ocean properly. This article also shows that emigration was something that must have been on people’s minds in the Limbaži area – otherwise it would not have been worth mentioning on the front page of the local paper.

March 25: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Communist Terror

March 25 is one of several days in the Latvian calendar designated as a day of remembrance for victims of Communist terror. The others are June 14 and the first Sunday in December. As of today, I have now been in the Baltic countries for all three of these days (The December one in 2009, and for the June 14 commemoration I was in Lithuania in 2005, where it is also a day of remembrance).

Why March 25? Because on this day in 1949, a several-day operation began to deport approximately 90,000 Balts to Siberia (more than had been deported in June of 1941), and the largest group of them – about 41,000 – were Latvians. The majority of the deportees were either women or children, grown men making up only 27% of the deportees.

You can read more about the March deportations here and here.

Surname Saturday – Different Kinds of Hills

As many of you probably know, the Latvian word for hill, “kalns”, is a fairly common Latvian surname, particularly in its diminutive form Kalniņš.

But there are many different kind of “kalns” as well, as evidenced by my journeys through old church records. These names are particularly common in western Latvia, especially in communities such as Tukums and Skrunda. Tukums is located on a series of hills, so many “kalns” names being associated with the town and its environs would not seem unusual. I have not been to Skrunda, so I can’t speak to the hilliness of that region.

Some of the “kalns” names that I have seen: Baltkalns (white hill; Skrunda), BÄ“rzkalns (birch hill; Skrunda, Mazsalaca), BrÄ«vkalns (free hill; RÄ«ga), Kaļķukalns (lime hill [the mineral, not the fruit]; Skundra), Kroņakalns (crown hill; Tukums, Skrunda), LeiÅ¡kalns (Lithuanian hill; RÄ«ga), Liepkalns (linden hill; Skrunda, Suntaži, Kastrāne), Mālkalns (clay hill; Vecgulbene, Anna), Mierkalns (peace hill; Nurmuiža, JÅ«rmala, Tume), Ozolkalns (oak hill; Tukums), Pilskalns (castle hill; Aizpute, Rudbārži), PuÄ·ukalns (flower hill; Tukums), Sauleskalns (sun hill; Padure), Viduskalns (middle hill; RÄ«ga), VÄ«nakalns (wine hill; Skrunda, Smārde), Zvaigznekalns (star hill; RÄ«ga, Tukums).

It is quite possible that many of the ones I’ve seen in RÄ«ga had their origins in western Latvian parishes that I have yet to explore. There are all sorts of interesting names to explore all over the country!

Do you have any “kalns” names to add? Share in comments!

Tuesday’s Tip: Look Randomly

Generally speaking, genealogy is a calm and focused pursuit. However, sometimes you need to be random – this is particularly true when trying to find something at the archives.

There is a reason for this – the Central Fond Register really only names the fonds – and usually they are named after the creator of the records. This name does not tell you all that could be contained within that particular fond, and you can find some real gems under fairly general headings.

So this is where the real sleuthing comes in – trying to find those gems! I’ve been doing a lot of sleuthing myself the past two months, but I can’t hope to cover the entire expanse of the holdings at the Latvian State Historical Archives. Sometimes the archivists are aware of what is hiding in the ambigiously-named fonds, and will recommend things to you, sometimes they are not.

Two document collections that are often mentioned are the 1935 and 1941 Censuses. Both of these are hidden in fond 1308, the innocuously-named “State Statistical Bureau”. These are contained in abstracts 12 and 15, but what is hiding in 1 through 11, 13 and 14? I haven’t explored that yet, but I will do so this week.

Are you searching for RÄ«ga ancestors at the end of the 19th century? Then you might want to look at fond 1394, which contains the tax lists for all of the different social classes – and each entry contains birth and death information, sometimes also information as to where people migrated from, and information about army service. A lot of date from a fond entitled “Riga City Tax Bureau”! Best part? Alphabetical indexes (by social class and gender) are available, which means it is a lot less strenuous than it could be – though it is still somewhat strenuous – some of those index books are massive and cannot be lifted by one person!

Perhaps my favourite is fond 3234 – called the “Ministry of Internal Affairs Administrative Department”. What do we have here? From the interwar era, such documents as external passports, records of citizenship acquisition, loss of citizenship, permissions to immigrate, a wide variety of documents relating to World War One-era refugees, changes of surnames, and so on.

As with any genealogical searches, you may come up empty. But it doesn’t hurt to look – who knows what kind of treasure trove you could stumble onto! So be brave – take a look at the abstract for an ambigiously-sounding fond and see what you can find!

Have you had any luck with ambigiously-named fonds? Share your successes in comments!

Tuesday’s Tip: House Books

A wonderful resource for researching Latvian genealogy is the house book collection at the Latvian State Historical Archives. They are available in fond 2942 for RÄ«ga and in fond 2110 for the rest of Latvia.

During the Czarist era, as well as during the interwar period, every residential building in Latvia had to keep a record of its inhabitants. Not all of these books survive, but a good number of them do. The survival rate for RÄ«ga is better than other places – they don’t exist at all for a number of cities and towns, but Liepāja, JÅ«rmala and Jelgava are some places for which they do (JÅ«rmala’s are grouped with RÄ«ga’s).

So what information can a house book provide? All kinds! The most basic information it provides is name, birthdate/place, occupation, dates of residence at that address, previous address and next address.

There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to house books over other kinds of records.

Advantages

  • Can lead you to family members that you might not have known about – aunts or uncles living with the family, other siblings of your ancestor, etc.
  • Provides a physical address to make a visit to, to bring a personal touch to your trip to Latvia (though be sure to check beforehand if street numbering has changed since the house book was compiled – this has happened in some places).
  • Depending on how much you know about the people you’re looking up, could give you new information that you hadn’t known about them.
  • If you don’t know when someone died or got divorced, the house book might tell you this information as well, if it happened during their period of residence at that address.

Disadvantages

  • You actually have to know the address, and have somewhat of an idea of the time frame, to be able to use them effectively.
  • Some surviving house books only cover a short period of time, so if your ancestors lived there outside of that timeframe, they will not be mentioned.
  • With the exception of minor children being listed with their mother, house books will not always name relationships between people, so even if you see a bunch of people with the same surname in one residence, you would need to verify their relationships to one another elsewhere.
  • Sometimes all the fields aren’t filled out – and as not-luck might have it, it might be that one field that you’re trying to find out about.

Tips to make house book searches more fruitful…

  • Use the RÄ«ga address directories to find addresses for the ancestors you’re looking for. Address books, like telephone directories of the modern era, will list families alphabetically, and typically also mention occupations. The Latvian National Library has most of the directories between 1880 and 1930 in their “Small Prints” (SÄ«kiespieddarba) Section at TÄ“rbatas iela 75.
  • Documents such as passports will often have addresses written in them, as well as any changes of address. Other documents that could contain addresses include school records, military records, employment records and so on.
  • Familiarize yourself with the names of your ancestors’ streets of residence in all three relevant languages – Latvian, Russian and German. Prior to Latvian independence, the address directories are in German, with a Russian-German index included for street names. There are also a variety of books about RÄ«ga streets, and street name changes, that you can consult. If you don’t have access to any of those, Wikimapia can sometimes be helpful.
  • In many cases, the street names were just straight translations – so Akmeņu iela in Latvian is Steinstrasse in German and улица Каменная in Russian (“Stone Street” in English). Where it gets complicated is when it comes to streets named after people, or important concepts – for example, the street now known as “BrÄ«vÄ«bas iela” (Freedom Street) was known as “Alexander Street” during the Czarist period (presumably after the czar of the time when it was given that time, Alexander I), during the Nazi occupation it was known as “Adolf-Hitler-Strasse”, and during the Soviet occupation it was “Lenin Street”. Similarly, the street known during the Czarist period as “Romanova iela” is now known as “LāčplÄ“Å¡a iela”, after the character in the Latvian national epic.

    • Have you explored house books in your research? Do you have further tips to share? Questions you want answered? Share in comments below!

Search for Anna Liepa: Update

So last month I posted a “Plan of Attack” for finding more about the origins of my great-grandmother Anna Liepa. So, how has it gone?

Not all that well, I’m afraid.

  1. The house book for Romanova iela 62/64 did not yield any results for anyone in her family, nor did any books for 62/66.
  2. The tax lists of the late 1890s have resulted in no results for her father, thus I couldn’t connect to her family since I’m not completely sure of her mother’s name. I am about 80% sure that her mother’s name is MÄ«le (maiden name BuÅ¡s), but not 100% certain.
  3. None of her employment records appear to survive, even though the cooperative association “Konzums” archival records say that they should.

So where does that leave me? Well, I may have a few leads.

  1. The St Paul’s Church records show a Fricis Liepa who died in 1897. He died at the age of 36, and was married, so it is conceivable that this could be Anna’s father. It could explain why I can’t find him in the tax lists (though while looking through them I did see a number of people mentioned who had died prior to their compilation, so who knows how accurate of a measure this could be).
  2. The 1899 address book lists an entry for “Liepa, M. Widow.” Since my best option for Anna’s birth record lists MÄ«le as a mother, this could fit, given the death record mentioned above. The address is listed as Tallinas iela 23, which is only a few blocks from St Paul’s Church.
  3. In the pre-1897 period, we have listings for 3 “F. Liepas” – at Akmeņu iela 8 (1887/1888), MÅ«kusalas iela 19 (1893/1894) and Upes iela 9 (1893/1894). None of these are in the vicinity of St Paul’s, but they merit a look anyways, since I don’t know about events that took place before Anna’s birth in 1895.

So, the current order of business: Check for house books for those four addresses. They are my best leads to linking Anna to her family. I will also order Anna’s death certificate, and hope that it lists both of her parents’ names. Even if it doesn’t, I’m hoping it would list her middle name, because that is the main obstacle that is preventing me from linking my Anna Liepa to the one birth record of an Anna Liepa that I’ve found – since this record mentions a middle name of “Natalie” and I have not seen that associated with my Anna Liepa.

Stay tuned – I’ll provide updates on this search, but I also have some posts coming on a variety of Latvian migrations, that I’ve been learning about at work as well as in the archives. So if your Latvian ancestors migrated to places like Brazil, Russia or China, you will want to keep an eye out for those posts!