The surname you have been searching for may not exist in the records. Not because your ancestors were not there, but because the clerk who wrote them down spoke Polish, Russian or German and wrote what he understood. Lithuanian surname spelling in old records is the single biggest reason searches fail, and the failures follow patterns. This guide describes those patterns, explains how researchers convert names back to Lithuanian, and gives a search method that works when the exact spelling is lost.
Who wrote the name, and in which language
In general, the pre-1918 sacramental registers of Lithuanian Catholic churches were not written in Lithuanian, according to a Lithuanian-ancestry researcher. The names of people and places were converted into forms the writing priest knew. The researcher’s summary, which matches what the Lithuanian archive describes, is that names were Polonized by the priests, and that in Russian-language registers the Polonized name was also transliterated into Cyrillic. The practical consequence is that the language of the record predicts the kind of distortion.
| Language of the record | What tends to happen to the surname | Example from the sources |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | Given names are Latinized. We found no source describing how Latin entries in Lithuanian parishes treat surnames | Not covered by our sources, so check the original image |
| Polish | The name is Polonized, often with Slavic suffixes | The Lithuanian Arlauskas appears as Orlowski, according to the archive’s own examples |
| Russian | The Polonized form is transliterated into Cyrillic | Orlowski becomes Орловский, and the Lithuanian name Normantas or Narmontas appears as Нармонтовъ in a researcher’s example |
| German (Prussian Lithuania) | The name may be written as a German-speaking clerk heard it, though we found no study of how often | Our Lithuania Minor guide covers the records |
The Cyrillic example is worth a second look. A researcher expecting a family called Normantas or Narmontas found the name written as Нармонтовъ in a Russian-language register, with a Slavic ending. The researcher notes that the translation of surnames can be highly subjective and that alternative similar surnames are often possible. In other words, even experts convert a name back with a degree of guesswork, and they say so.
The endings are where the changes pile up
Most distortion happens at the end of the name. A general reference article lists a group of Slavic-origin surnames with partly Lithuanized endings: -auskas, -iauskas, -inskas, -ickas, -eckis, -avičius, -evičius and -iškis. When the Lithuanian ending meets a Polish or Russian clerk, the result is a Slavic one, as in Arlauskas becoming Orlowski. A journal article on Lithuanian names explains that when family names were forming, the language of government was a Slavic chancery language and later Polish, which is why many Lithuanian family names have the Slavic patronymic ending -avičius or -evičius.
Women’s endings add a second layer. Our guide to women’s surname forms explains why -ienė, -aitė and -ytė all point back to a single family name, and why Slavic equivalents such as -owa and -owna can appear in older records.
Variants inside one family
Do not assume that variants come only from clerks. One researcher’s grandmother considered her family name to be Antanaitis, while her brother considered it to be Antonaitis, and other relatives used Antanavičius. The researcher notes that in older records there are many more variations than in present-day Lithuania and that it is often difficult to know whether a name was simply misspelled. Families themselves changed spelling, especially after they moved.
Social ambition played a role too. A journal article on Lithuanian names says that some Lithuanians tried to hide a lower origin by adding a noble-sounding -ski to their surname. A -ski ending is therefore a clue to the language of the record and sometimes to a family’s choices, not proof that the family was noble.
A search method that survives bad spelling
- Write down the name as your family spells it and as the earliest record spells it.
- Find the stem, which is the part before the ending, and decide which endings it could take in Lithuanian.
- List the Polish, Russian and Latin forms you would expect, using the patterns above.
- Search each form in the record language it belongs to, and keep a wildcard version of the stem where the site allows it.
- Confirm any candidate with the parents’ given names, the godparents and the village, not the surname alone.
- Record every form you find as a variant of one family, and choose a working spelling, usually the modern Lithuanian one.
Where to search is a separate question. Our guide to ePaveldas and FamilySearch explains which sites support name searches, and our guide to given names handles the first-name side of the same problem.
What converting back means
Researchers who translate registers usually convert the Polonized and Latinized names into their Lithuanian forms as spelled in modern Lithuanian, and they record the original in brackets. One of them gives the example of a village written in a Polish form and followed in the translation by the Lithuanian name with the original in square brackets. You can adopt the same habit for surnames: write the Lithuanian reading first, and follow it with the form as written in the record. That way you can always return to the source, and nobody has to guess what the clerk wrote.
Our surnames guide explains the origins of the endings, which helps you decide which Lithuanian form is most plausible.
A worked example, invented for illustration
Example (invented, for illustration only): A reader is looking for a family called Kazlauskas. In a Polish-language marriage record she finds Kazlowski, and in a Russian-language baptism she finds the same name in Cyrillic with a Slavic ending. She cannot be sure they belong to one family, so she compares the fathers’ given names, the villages and the godparents, and finds that all three match. She enters Kazlauskas as the working name with the other two as variants.
Where we could not give you a rule
- We found no source that gives a complete table mapping each Lithuanian ending to its Polish, Russian and Latin forms, so the patterns above are examples, not a rule book.
- We found no study of how often German forms replaced Lithuanian ones in Prussian records.
- We could not confirm how reliably the online indexes record the variant spellings of a name, so check the images and not only the index.
Keeping a variant sheet
Make a one-page sheet for each surname with columns for the form, the language of the record, the year, the parish and the source. After a dozen entries, the pattern for your family and parish will be visible, and you will know which variants to search first next time. Sources for this guide include a researcher’s page on the Polonization of names, the same researcher’s guide to Russian-language birth registers, a page on surname forms, an article on Lithuanian names in the journal Lituanus and a reference article on Lithuanian names. The researcher’s site is a private one, so its examples are for illustration.
More guides are in Names & Surnames.
Heads-up: some links on this page are affiliate links, and Lithuanian Roots Project may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no cost to you. How we handle that is explained in our affiliate disclosure.
