surname letters

[fedorowich]

I would like to know if there were other Ukrainians that immigrated to North America and changed the spelling of their surnames. My grandfather came here before WWII and carried the name. My last name is Fedorowich and for what I've heard, it was originally Fedorovich in Ukraine. Does anyone else have a situation similar to this? Are there certain letters that this happens to, while converting to english? Any input is very much appreciated.

Best Regards

[sjoyce]

I don't know of letter changes in surnames. My husbands family that moved to the u.s.a. were encouraged to anglicise their names so the Copachanski family became the Copen family

[Hannia]

There were variant transliterations (sounds like) of the surname Federovich.
According to Ellis Island Records the most common variant was Federowicz.
There are also a bunch of others.

Your surname in Ukrainian, using Cyrillic Alphabet, was Федорович.

Федорович is the only correct spelling of your surname, in its original language,
using its original alphabet, Cyrillic.

Ukrainian Transliteration Table
Ukrainian Transliteration Table

[bm-21Lemko]

yes,

my surname was changed numerous times not sure why though. Here is an example

These are two examples out of numerous changes.
yurchak-english

Jurczak - polish

юрчак - ukrainian

my ancestors were ukrainian but were not from Ukraine, but Poland.

[fedorowich]

really eh, all that stuff is very interesting. Thanks to all for the info. If anybody has more to add, please do

[Tempo]

At the turn of the 20th century when the Ukrainians were emigrating from Galicia, they had to obtain exit papers from the Polish authorities. The passports would in all likelihood be filled out in Polish even though the official printed text would have been in both Ukrainian cyrillic and Polish. In my grandfather’s case –ovych became –owicz. There were also two other opportunities for names to be changed, at the port of departure and the port of arrival. For example if a person departed from a German port such as Bremen or Hamburg the ship manifest may have had a name change, although the likelihood of change at this point was probably small. . The same document would have arrived at Ellis Island.

Where the change likely occurred would have been when the immigrant applied for a job or official U.S. papers. In my Grandfathers case –owicz became ovich or ovitch. Years later when his application for citizen ship was sent to the port entry to be verified spellings changed again. If I look at 20 documents of his, I can see 12-15 different surname spellings along with several first name variations.

There is always the case where there is an attempt by either the first or second generation children to “Americanize” the name. For example Petrovych/Petrowicz/ becomes Peters or Peterson.

I believe that the –owicz/-owich means – “son of” or “belonging to”. I will have to rely on the experts on this site to translate Could “Fedorowich mean Son of Fedor or could it be Teodor or Frank?

[bm-21Lemko]

believe that the –owicz/-owich means – “son of” or “belonging to”. I will have to rely on the experts on this site to translate Could “Fedorowich mean Son of Fedor or could it be Teodor or Frank?

Most are patronymic (from the father), with very few being matronymic (from the mother) and are derived from first names.