Heritage Album

How do you find genealogy of rare/uncommon names?

My last name is very uncommon in the US and most heritage websites don't have it listed. I've always been pretty interested in learning where my family came from and what my name means, but I have yet to find anything about it, anywhere. If it helps, it's a German or Polish name, we're not even really sure which. We're almost positive the spelling of it was changed when my ancestors immigrated to America.

Public Comments

1. Names themselves do not have genealogies. People do. Recently there has been an ad running on TV for a company selling framed surname histories. The surname product business is a scam. When surnames were taken or assigned in Europe during the last millennium it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his surname with others with no known relationship. The purpose generally was to identify a man for taxation purposes not as a member of a familly. Too many Freds, Joes, Sams and Henrys in the same town or village and they had to have a way of telling them apart. Too many people fall prey to surname product peddlers selling things like coats of arms. The peddlers selling them usually use the misnomer "family crest." A crest is merely part of a coat of arms.
2. If you'd like to post your surname here, perhaps someone will be able to find some information for you, or at least point you in the right direction. But Shirley is right. Although the meaning and origin of your NAME is very interesting, it's not the same thing as your genealogy or family history. For instance, your name may have originated in Poland in the 1200s, but your ancestors could've been living in Russia since the 1300s, intermarrying with Russian families and adopting Russian customs, traditions and language. If you only relied on the origin of your name to define your ancestry, you'd be ignoring a major aspect of your heritage. And don't forget: your surname comes from only one of your 16 great-great grandparents. If you go back just four generations, there are 15 other surnames to be found, each an equal part of your ancestry. If you really want to know for certain where your ancestors came from, you'll need to trace your family tree, one generation at a time (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc) until you find your immigrant ancestors and learn where they all came from. In the process, you'll learn a lot about each one of them -- the real, actual people whose lives and experiences contributed to who you are and the life you live today. It's a lot of fun, and much more interesting than just knowing the meaning of your name.
3. On one hand, the rarer the name, the easier it is to know you're on the right track when you're researching. However, you said it was most likely changed here in the USA. You must try to figure out what it might have been. First, go as far back in the US Censuses as you can and look at changes to the name. Then, you should research German and Polish surnames in general. Part of that will be learning about Poland's occupation and what languages were spoken in what part of present-day Poland. I'll give you one from my genealogy: On a census it says Losenski. That's not a Polish name, though it sounds like one. The real name is probably Laszczynski (for a man) and Laszczynska for a woman. Granted, that is not an uncommon name. Go phonetically and see what it would be spelled like in Polish or German. Without you spilling the beans on what the surname is, I'm not sure what else to say.
4. put your surname in on this site and see what you get http://www.familysearch.org and this one http://www.surnamedb.com/