Now you get to do the same for the places they lived! [...]]]> 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!

Most Latvian religious records are not in Latvian. They are usually in [...]]]> Language can be one of the biggest obstacles to tracing Latvian genealogy. However, it is not an insurmountable one. Most records follow specific patterns, and once you know what to look for in the patterns, you can easily find what you are looking for.

Most Latvian religious records are not in Latvian. They are usually in German or Russian. I have seen some old church records in Latvian, but these are generally quite rare. Most religous records after 1891 will be in Russian, since it was at that time the czar handed down a decree that all vital records should be recorded in Russian. Not all congregations followed this, however, and some records remain in German, which was the most common language in the records prior to this time. However, some denominations already kept records in Russian before 1891, namely Orthodox and Old Believer congregations. Jewish records are often kept in two languages, one being Yiddish and the other German or Russian, depending on time period and location.

The formats for records vary widely, therefore it is important to be able to recognize the German or Russian words for the types of entries you are looking for. Below is a list of keywords, in English, Latvian, German and Russian of words commonly appearing in records (brackets show words as they appear in the records in old Russian orthography). Keep in mind that the endings may change, since Latvian, German and Russian all have a noun case system.

• Births – Dzimušie – Geborene – Рождений (Рожденныхъ)
• Baptisms – Kristītie – Getaufte – Крещений (Крещенныхъ)
• Marriages – Laulātie – Getraute – Браки (Бракъ)
• Deaths – Mirušie – Verstorbene – Умершие (Умершіе)
• Given name/Surname – Vārds/Uzvārds – Name/Familienname – Имя/Фамилия (Имя/Фамилия)
• Child – Bērns – Kind – Ребёнок (Ребёнок)
• Father/Mother – Tēvs/Māte – Vater/Mutter – Отец/Мать (Отец/Мать)
• Godparents – Krustvecāki – Taufpaten – Крёстнии (Восприёмники)
• Day – Diena – Tag – День (День)
• Month – Mēness – Monat – Месяц (Мѣсацъ)
• Year – Gads – Jahr – Год (Годъ)

If there are any other words you’d like to know, just ask!

A right mess, that’s what.

As mentioned before, up until the 1890s most church books in Latvia were written in German. German is, as its name implies, a Germanic language. The Germanic language family also includes English, Dutch and Danish, and is [...]]]> What happens when you apply the orthography of one language to a fairly unrelated language?

A right mess, that’s what.

As mentioned before, up until the 1890s most church books in Latvia were written in German. German is, as its name implies, a Germanic language. The Germanic language family also includes English, Dutch and Danish, and is a part of the larger Indo-European family.

Meanwhile, Latvian is a Baltic language, closely related only to Lithuanian. Sometimes they are added to the Slavic languages to form a larger Balto-Slavic language family, which would also include languages such as Russian and Polish. Balto-Slavic languages are also Indo-European in origin.

This means that German orthography was not particularly suited to writing Latvian words. To a Latvian speaker, the words will often be familiar, but to a beginner who does not speak Latvian, tracking a surname through the changes can be quite confusing. I speak Latvian and even I am puzzled sometimes. For further confusion, since spelling was not standardized, even spellings within one orthography can vary, depending on the scribe in question (or sometimes even the same scribe!).

I have found a good web resource that addresses spelling changes from German orthography to Latvian orthography, here at ROOTS=SAKNES. This website also provides a good comprehensive overview of Latvian history as it pertains to genealogical searches. It is the best Latvian research resource that I have found in English, however, it does not appear to have been updated in the past four years, and the mailing list appears to be defunct (upon trying to subscribe, I got an “undeliverable” response from the mail server).

Moving on now to Russian orthography. Russian orthography is more suited to writing Latvian than German orthography is, since there are numerous similar sounds. The obstacle here for English-speaking researchers is the alphabet – Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is quite different from the Latin alphabet used for writing English, German and Latvian. To make matters even more complicated, Russian handwriting differs considerably from typed Russian, which leads to many letters looking identical. Russian has also undergone numerous changes in orthography, which means that some letters appearing in old documents (such as the letter ѣ) have been eliminated in modern Russian. This website can lead you through the basics of modern Russian handwriting.

Now to provide an example of these changes, utilizing the name I provided in my last post – Wahzeet, Ваціэтъ and Vācietis. Vācietis is not a particularly common Latvian surname, but it is still in use in Latvia today. In English, it would translate to “German” (that is, a German person).

Prior to the standardization of the Latvian alphabet, it was common for names to be given in a more familiar form, rather than in the standardized nominative case of a word (Latvian, like other Balto-Slavic languages, has a grammatical case system for nouns). So in Latvian orthography, in the familiar form, it could have been “Vāciet” or “Vāciets”.

The German form Wahzeet will immediately be made more familiar to Latvian eyes by changing the “z” to “c” (in Latvian, “c” makes a “ts” sound, as in “tsar”). Take caution with such a substitution however, since sometimes a “z” is just a “z” (and sometimes, a “z” in Latvian would be written as a “s” in German!).

To know whether a “z” is “c” or “z” in Latvian, a parallel Russian text can come in very useful (this will be seen in some church books after Russian-language registration was introduced – names would be recorded in both Russian and German). Here, the “ц” in the Russian version tells you that it will be a Latvian “c”. Note also the obsolete Russian letter “і”, represented by “и” in modern Russian. The final “ъ” would also probably be eliminated in modern Russian.

Some further examples (German->Russian->Latvian):

• Behrsin->Берзин->Bērziņš

• Swaigsne->Звайгзне->Zvaigzne
• Jehkabsohn->Екабсонъ->Jēkabsons
• Pawassar->Павассаръ->Pavasars

Do you have a Latvian family name you would like to see in its German or Russian form? I may be able to help. However, I have not come across all names in records I have looked at, so I may only be able to provide an educated guess.