Cowboydave,
No offense, but I think you are missing the whole point of Serhii's post. Technically there is no such surname as Samochuk in Ukrainian. I couldn't find it anywhere. The CHUK surname suffix is distinctly Ukrainian, but the root in combination w/the suffix, seems not to exist. Therefore his conclusion, that root may possibly be incorrect and more likely SAVA, is a reasonable assumption. I on the other hand think that your assumption re suffix is incorrect and the surname is very probably SAMOCIUK/SAMOSIUK.
Have you been able to trace the surname back to the 17th/18th century? It is quite a leap from the 20th to the the 7th century. Through National Geographic, you could have DNA testing, which should provide you w/a 25,000 yr old window (Little Ice Age) into your heritage???
Samo was a 7th century Frank merchant, which should show up in your bloodline, if your leap of faith assumption is correct.
https://genographic.nationalgeograph...hic/index.html
PS> Since Samo was Frank and spoke Frankish, you might want to further investigate the meaning of root SAMO in Latin and Old Germanic???