Thursday, November 15, 2012

Surnames "after the roof"

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30 comments:

  1. Fascinating insight into surname histories! Very interesting post.

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  2. I thought this was completely confusing when I first learned about it! But recently, a number of people in my small neighborhood sold their houses. Every single new family has introduced themselves or been identified by the name of the former owners of the houses. In real life, it makes it much easier to remember who all these people are! So somewhere in America, there is a place that thinks it's 18th century Czech. :)

    The confusing thing in genealogy, though, is when you have Strzjbrny alias Ziak and Ziak alias Zaubek in the same parish, and you are never quite sure which Ziaks are legitimately yours. :/

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  3. Rose, yes, this is a common problem - one family has Ziak as family name, another as household name. I have similar cases in my husband's family tree.

    And one more about changing surnames. The surnames weren't stable in 17th century. The oldest known ancestor of my husband was married in 1688 as Matiasovsky, he had children as Uherec, Slovak, Gombar, Ungar (in three different villages because he moved a lot), he deceased as Pasar - and his grandchildren had surname Lednicky, because he came from Lednice. Finding all of his children was very hard - fortunately his name was Lukas and his wife's name Katerina and there was only one family with this combination of given names.

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  4. Wow. Okay, maybe mine are easy compared to that!!

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  5. Really clear explanation. I think I get it. Inhabitants "on down the line" are named after the surname of the person who built the original roof. This must be so confusing to track down in genealogical searches. Don't you love the variations in human customs and behavior?

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    1. I love them but honestly, after researching couple of these "after the roof families", I love to research those families who lived in one house under one surname for three centuries :)

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  6. My goodness. It's hard enough as it is. What a fascinating story. And more so that you are still experiencing the results. Thanks for the information.

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  8. I have come across several examples of names-from-roof in the course of my own research. Most of these have been in the region of Pilsen, but I also have some in Moravia.

    In the case of one family in the 18th century, the person was referred to in the entry as "Růžek secundum prædium Hynek Inferiorus". In another case, concerning one of the children many years later, the man was referred to as "Růžek seu Hynek".

    "Secundum prædium" is also a frequent way of describing name-from-roof in Latin language entries, as is the term "seu", which is a synonym for "vel" in Latin.

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    1. Thanks for the additional words, Rick. There are lots of them so it's hard to record all.

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  9. Thank you for this explanation. I have one case in my line where the first names are very distinctive, but the surname changes. So does my friend. A paid researcher found the birth records, but the grandfather's name changes from Vavra to Sedlacek and back again. Again, more unique names -- Matej and Rosalie and the same house number, so you have to assume it's the same couple, but now there's an explanation.

    The French Canadians had something similar -- dit. When too many had the same name, they added on dit -- "also called" -- and after a generation or two the name before the dit would drop off.

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  10. interesting. this may confuse those of us who are doing DNA searches of our ancestors.

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  11. ...Im Czech living in Slovakia so my knowledges about these 2 countries plus Moravia, of course, there are my roots, are quite different from yours but doesnt matter....I like this story and explanation ...everything about us is something new for you....well, if I come to USA will be lost....thank you very much...

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  12. Thank you, Blanka, I had no idea about naming people after the household. That complicates my research a bit.

    How do you say this concept in Czech? "Jméno podle střechy"?

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  13. My husband is Czech hence my interest here, I have to tell you i LOVED reading this and can't wait to share the story as you told it with the whole family. Thank you SO, SO much

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  28. This certainly seems to apply to more than one branch of my Czech family tree. I also came across a reference to a custom in Austria where men would use a farm's name as a first name (but I didn't suspect that farms had names). The next question: what made this practice more common in southern Bohemia than other Czech regions?

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