ADVERTISEMENT

Now What?: Polish Town Name Changes

By Diane Haddad Premium

Sign up for the Family Tree Newsletter Plus, you’ll receive our 10 Essential Genealogy Research Forms PDF as a special thank you!

Get Your Free Genealogy Forms

"*" indicates required fields

Hidden
Hidden
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Q. I’ve been trying to research a town in Poland that had a name change. (I seem to remember a Family Tree Magazine article on this topic.) I have two different spellings for this town and just can’t seem to find the new name.

A. The June 2004 Family Tree Magazine had a Now What? Q&A about Prussian place-name changes—including once-German towns that are now in Poland due to fluctuating national boundaries.

If that’s true of your mystery town, you’ll need to “translate” the old German name into the modern Polish name. Use the 1912 Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs- Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs (also called Meyers Gazetteer) to confirm the old name. Look for it at large genealogy libraries and on microfilm at the Family History Library (FHL).
Then, says Jim Beidler in the aforementioned Family Tree Magazine article, “For towns that became Polish after World War I, consult Deutsch-Fremdsprachiges Ortsnamenverzeichnis. For territories ceded after World War II, use Amtliches Gemeinde- und Ortsnamenverzeichnis der Deutschen Ostgebiete unter Fremder Verwaltung.” Both of these gazetteers also are available on FHL microfilm.

Also see the online index at www.atsnotes.com/other/gerpol.html, which contains names of places in Poland and Russia, along with their previous German names, and search JewishGen’s Shtetlseeker, an online gazetteer of towns in Central and Eastern Europe.

Then you can use historical maps and gazetteers to trace the town’s name changes. Do a Google search for gazetteer or map plus poland, and check map sites such as www.maphistory.info/family.html, www.pgsa.org/geomaps.htm and www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/poland.html.

ADVERTISEMENT

Polish Genealogy

Author

relatedarticles

13 Overlooked Eastern European Genealogy Records

Belarusian Genealogy, Bulgarian Genealogy, Carpatho-Rusyn, Czech Genealogy, Heritage, Hungarian Genealogy, Moldovan Genealogy, Polish Genealogy, Romanian Genealogy, Russian Genealogy, Slovak Genealogy, Ukrainian Genealogy

Find your Eastern European roots—Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and more—in these key documents, some of which you can find online.

How to Overcome 5 Brick Walls in Eastern European Genealogy

Prague

Belarusian Genealogy, Czech Genealogy, Hungarian Genealogy, Moldovan Genealogy, Polish Genealogy, Romanian Genealogy, Russian Genealogy

Researching your Eastern European ancestors? Our expert shares six common obstacles for Eastern European genealogy—and how to overcome them.

10 Websites for Polish Genealogy Research

Polish Genealogy

Take your family history back to Poland with these 10 free Polish genealogy websites, perfect for learning Polish history and…

Partitions of Poland Map

Polish Genealogy

Discover your ancestor's hidden homeland with this partitions of Poland map.