To determine nationality by last name, you need to recall the morphemic analysis from the school curriculum of the Russian language. A direct indication of nationality is contained in the root of the surname and its suffixes. For example, the suffix "eiko" in the Shumeiko surname is proof of the Ukrainian origin of the family.
It is necessary
A sheet of paper, a pen, the ability to do morphemic analysis of a word, an etymological dictionary of the Russian language, a dictionary of foreign words
Instructions
Step 1
Take a piece of paper and a pen. Write your last name and select all morphemes in it: root, suffix, ending. This preparatory step will help you determine which nationality your family's surname belongs to.
Step 2
Pay attention to the suffix. Since in Russian more often than other foreign surnames are found Ukrainian, these can be the following suffixes: "enko", "eiko", "ovsk / evsk", "ko", "point". That is, if your last name is Tkachenko, Shumeyko, Petrovsky or Gulevsky, Klitschko, Marochko, distant relatives should be looked for on the territory of Ukraine.
Step 3
Look at the root of the word if the suffix did not answer the question of what nationality is your surname. Often this or that profession, object, animal, bird becomes its basis. As an example, we can cite the Russian surname Gonchar, the Ukrainian surname Gorobets (translated into Russian - Sparrow), the Jewish Rabin (which means "rabbi").
Step 4
Count the number of roots in a word. Sometimes a surname consists of two words. For example, Ryabokon, Beloshtan, Krivonos. Similar surnames belong to the Slavic peoples (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc.), but they are also found in other languages.
Step 5
Rate your last name in terms of Jewishness. Common Jewish surnames have roots "levi" and "kohen", found in the surnames Levitan, Levin, Kogan, Katz. Their owners descended from ancestors who were in the dignity of clergy. There are also surnames that originated from masculine (Moses, Solomon) or feminine names (Rivkin, Beilis), or formed from the merger of a masculine name and a suffix (Abrahams, Jacobson, Mandelstam).
Step 6
Remember if Tatar blood flows in your veins? If your surname consists of a combination of Tatar words and suffixes "in", "ov" or "ev", then the answer is obvious - there were Tatars in your family. This is especially evident in the example of such surnames as Bashirov, Turgenev, Yuldashev.
Step 7
Determine which language the surname belongs to based on the following clues:
- if it contains the prefix "de" or "le", look for roots in France;
- if the surname contains the English name of the territory (for example, Welsh), the quality of the person (Sweet) or the profession (Carver), relatives should be looked for in the UK;
- the same rules apply for German surnames. They are formed from a profession (Schmidt), a nickname (Klein), a name (Peters);
- Polish surnames can be recognized based on the sound - Kowalczyk, Sienkiewicz.
Look in the dictionary of foreign words if you have difficulty assigning a surname to a particular language.
