Researching a Slovak Surname
Many people have read the post on Slovak Surnames and have left comments about their own Slovak surnames. Sometimes people leave questions asking for suggestions on how to find more information about their names. Because I’ve gotten so many comments and there seems to be an genuine interest by people who are interested in their Slovak roots, I’d like to demonstrate a few ways that I have done basic searches for Slovak surnames.
Note: Research I have done in the past has been for informational purposes only. I have no professional experience in doing genealogy research. I have never made contact with any people I have found through my results and I would not recommend doing so to anyone.
Reading through the comments to the “Slovak Surnames” blog post, interest seem to fall into these basic categories:
- Looking for an original spelling of a surname because yours has become anglicized through the adding or omitting of letters, or removing accent marks
- Looking to confirm that your surname still exists in Slovakia and/or are trying to narrow the search to a region of origin.
- Wanting to discover if there is a meaning to your surname with an etymological definition or if your surname can simply translate to a word in English
The following basic search is to show you how I would go about finding answers to these kinds of questions.
The first thing I do is go the Slovak Google web page and do a search for the name only on Slovak web pages. To do that, do the following:
1. Go to www.google.sk.
2. Type the name into the search box.
3. Select the “stránky zo Slovenska” radio button, which will limit searches to only within Slovak websites.
4. Click “Hľadať v Google” to list your results.
Now, what should you look for when you get a list of results? The first thing I look for is the surname in question with an obvious first name preceding it. For example, if I’m looking up the name “Slanina”, I may have several results that are not related to a surname. The word “slanina” literally means “bacon” and so it makes sense that there will be results that are not connected to a surname. In this example, the first in the list is a result for a recipe involving bacon. It’s only the eighth and ninth listing where I see the names “Peter Slanina” and “Július Slanina”. This gives me confirmation that the surname does indeed exist.
Important: Also look for the surname in repeated results to verify that there is a common spelling, mainly with accent marks. In the case of the name “Slanina” there are no accent marks, but if you were looking for “Kovac”, take note of where the accent marks are. I usually select the name and copy and paste it somewhere so I have it easily on hand for other searches.
If you click on a result and are curious about what it says, don’t forget that through Google translate you can read translated pages from Slovak to English. See my post on Google translate for more information on how to use this wonderful tool.
The second website I go to to confirm a Slovak surname is Zoznam. Zoznam is something like a Slovak version of Yahoo! From the main page you can read the headlines in Slovakia, check the weather, or look through classifieds. I use the Zoznam whitepages to check surnames in different cities and towns. If I can get a result, then this confirms to me that the name exists and the spelling that is used. Here’s how to use it.
1. Go to www.zoznam.sk.
2. Click on the “tel. čísla” tab at the top, which means “telephone numbers”. New text boxes appear.
3. In the “meno/názov” box, type in the surname, using the correct accent marks if you know them. In the “mesto/obec” box, type in the city, town, or village of your search. I always start with typing in Bratislava because the capital has the greatest mix of Slovaks who have relocated there from other parts of the country.
In this example I’ve typed in “Slanina” for the name and “Bratislava” for the city. I get a listing for four different people, thus confirming once again that the name exists.
If you get no results, go back to the Slovak Google page and try to find your surname that has accent marks on letters that you had not been familiar with. Try the Zoznam search again with pasting the copied name from the Google search. Try this will several different spellings and see what kinds of results you get.
The Zoznam web page also has a dictionary. To use it, do the following:
1. Click on the “slovník” tab at the top of the home page.
2. Paste in the name, making sure you have the correct accent marks. In this example I’m once again using the name “slanina”.
3. From the drop-down menu, select “SLO >> ANG”, which sets the translating from Slovak to English.
Here’s an example of what you may see:
This is the extent of my knowledge on how to do searches on Slovak surname. I don’t have any other techniques. I hope that will at least help some start their own basic searches.
—
I’ve recently been in contact with Vladimir Bohinc, someone who has professional experience with locating relatives in Slovakia. He has reminded me of a few points to keep in mind if you are thinking about finding relatives:
1. Don’t assume that everything can be found through the Internet. For a country like Slovakia, this is definitely not the case.
2. More often than not, the spelling of surnames have changed over the years. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes a name was misspelled or completely changed by clerks through the immigration process, through Ellis Island, for example. Thinking about my own family brings this point home for me. Three of my four grandparents have had the spelling changed in their surnames after immigrating to the US.
3. People move. If you have an ancestor who was originally from Spišská Nová Ves for example, it’s possible that descendants no longer live in that region. After 100 years and two world wars, people relocate.
4. Your surname may not lead you to the path of finding relatives. Often times there were more women who survived in a family, and since when women marry they traditionally take their husband’s name, your living relatives may not share your surname at all.
5. Finding relatives is not an easy task. It’s not a matter of finding a person in a phone book, calling him or her and asking, Are you my relative? If you want it done correctly by someone who will research the family tree, make contacts, and ask questions to confirm that indeed you are related to a family, this costs money. Professional relative locators provide a service, which means – reasonably so – that compensation is required for their time and efforts on your behalf.
To read more about the process of finding relatives and some words from Mr. Bohinc about his experiences, see the genealogy page on his site.
For anyone who is looking, I hope that you find what you are looking for.
Good luck!
