Preface: I am American, so please excuse my sweeping ignorance.

As far as I can tell, my grandfather was a first-generation Lithuanian whose parents emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s during the Russian Empire. I am trying to determine his parents’ or grandparents’ Lithuanian surnames. It might be a frivolous reason, but I’d like to know what my surname would have been if not for my adopted English one.

I’ve found it to be pretty difficult. In the US census records, spellings are not standardized at all, and often they are spelled the Polish way.

Here are a sampling of records I have found for great-great grandparents’ names: [https://imgur.com/GUnyHK0](https://imgur.com/GUnyHK0)

Do these make sense as guesses? Note that feminine forms are rarely present in US records.

1. Patelcius Patelczus Patelczis Patelczyc = Petelčicas?
2. Narkiewicz Narkiewiczute Narkewicz Narkevicz = Narkevičius?

Are these even real names? Do they signify anything (literally, connotatively, etc.)?

Thank you, and again, I apologize for my ignorance of Lithuania.

3 comments

  1. So:
    1. This one is easy. Patelčius (male) is the most likely form.
    2. In this case most likely Rose (Rožė) was unmarried young lady. Consequently, her father’s surname in the present day would be Narkevičius, while Rose would take the surname form signalling her unmarried status: Narkevičiūtė

    If Rose’s mother was married to her father, mother’s surname would be Narkevičienė

    Good luck!

    Edit: Patelčius

    Edit 2: need to note, Narkevičius in itself may be a polonised surname form. Few generations before it could have been Narkus.

  2. Narkewicz/Narkiewicz here in Lithuania can also be Norkus. On that matter my wife’s mothers father(wife’s grandfather) was Norkus.

  3. As another Lithuanian-American, wishing you good luck! Ours were not Polonized (as far as I can tell), but heavily Americanized. My ancestors fortunately moved to a majority Lithuanian and Polish mining community, so in the local community records (church/school) their Lithuanian names can be found (if you can deciper the handwriting). We figured out Sedar should probably have been Sidaris. Now I just need to figure out what the heck Graff and Dugan should have actually been. The immigration records are useless; a single name was spelled multiple ways on the same document. The country of origin is alternately listed as Russia, Lithuania, or Poland. A death certificate has one ancestor’s place of birth recorded only as “Europe.”

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