I’m Brazilian and so is my girlfriend. Her family came to Brazil from Lithuania in the 1930s.

We know that her great-grandmother, Sara Rapeingiene, and her grandmother, Hena Rapeingiene, arrived here on February 7, 1930. We also know that Hena was born in the city of Kaunas and that her father, Meier Rapeingiene, remained in Lithuania.

Beyond that we don’t know anything else.

My question is whether you know this surname RAPEINGIENE, because searching online you can’t find anything about it. My thesis is that when they arrived here, they said their real name, however, the recording officer misunderstood and wrote down the name this way.

Any information would be welcome.

Thanks.

by Ok-Discussion-2384

3 comments

  1. Names are most likely jewish and last name sounds like butchered lithuanian…

    EDIT: … or german with lithuanian ending.

  2. I can tell you that Meier is not a Lithuanian name, and we dont have anything close to it… Maybe Marius, but even that is not very close. Sara is also not Lithuanian. I wonder if its “Sarunas” (male) and “Meja/Marta/??” (female). (Hana is also not Lithuanian…)

    Rapeingiene is interesting. The ending “iene” is for married women, but the root “rapein” is not Lithuanian either. I wonder if it was adapted. Google says its argentinian? Any chance that your great grandpa has family relations from there?

    Anyways, in Lithuania, women dont take the exact surname of their spouse, but adapt it by adding “iene” or “e”. So your great grandpas last name would be “Rapeingis”. If its foreign like i suspect, it would be “Rapeing” or “Rapein” or something similar

  3. The family is 99% Lithuanian Jews. The names are totally Jewish, and the family name is some Lithuanised Jewish/German/Russian family name, most likely also butcherd by migration officers in Brazil.

    Also, father’s name definitely was not what you wrote, as “iene” is added only to the married woomen family names.

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