Help diciphering what a name means and ideas for finding a birth record of an orphan in Hungary
In my great Grandfather's George Miskho (L7GB-K56) marriage record to Lena Ambros, in the U.S., he lists his Father as Lyr (John) and his mother as Ellen in the following marriage document from Niagara County, NY. Does anyone have a clue what the Lyr could stand for or be from the Temeswar area of Hungary? a fellow researcher mentioned it might mean godparent?
My great grandfather lists his birth place in Giarmata, Temes, Hungary, 29 Dec 1885 in his declaration of Intention and his Petition for Nauralization in the U.S. I cannot locate his birth record in Giarmata. I have had several fellow reasearchers look in the new Jahrmarkt family book and I have looked at the birth lists for Jahrmarkt that are availabe in Ancestry.com. So, I am looking for more clues to find him. His social security application in the U.S. says his father is John Miskho and his mother in Magdalena.
In the last few months I have tied him to Giarmata, Temes, Hungary to a friend listed on his ship record 3 Jan 1906 (Philip Kribel) through some family notes. Therefore, I know he at least had a friend from that town. His name on the ship record is listed as Gyorgy Miksa.
Also, what step should I take next? How else can I search? I have been searching in surrounding villages to Jahrmarkt and have not found him yet. The family story says he said he was an orphan. Any ideas on how to find an orphan in Giarmata?
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(My parents were born in Balassagyarmat, Nógrád county, which is also sometimes called Jahrmarkt...)
While 'ly' is a digraph (two letters treated as one) in the Hungarian alphabet, it occurs at the beginning of exactly one word (lyuk "hole"), so I don't know what was meant to be written in this record. (The letter 'y' only occurs in digraphs and in fossilized spellings of surnames.)
Hmm, one vague thought: in the Hungarian civil registers, clerks were forbidden to cross out anything hand-written, so they sometimes indicated corrections by putting parentheses around the text they wanted to delete. Could this marriage register be using the reverse of that, with parentheses indicating the corrected text?
For the mother's name, I will note that this is not at all the first time I have encountered some form of Magdalena alternating with some form of Helena. Unlike the Theresia/Rosina alternation that I also encounter, Magdalena/Helena is easy to explain: they have a nickname of Lena in common.
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Julia,
Thank you for your insights.
What is a fossilized spelling?
Your thought about the civil registers and parentheses is a very interesting one. It makes sense.
Do you agree with me that the mother of Geroge Miskho says "Ellen"? I assume Lena could also be a nickname for Ellen as well.
Becky
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By "fossilized spellings", I meant the old-style spellings that have been preserved because the spelling rules are not applied to people's surnames. For example, if you're talking about a goldsmith, you write ötvös, but if you're talking about Lóránd Eötvös or the university named after him, then you write Eötvös, because that extraneous 'E' has become fossilized in the spelling of his name. Similarly, if you were inquiring whether the subway goes as far as Dunaharaszti, you'd use the modernly-correct spelling of Haraszti, but if you were talking about the father of California wine-making, you'd use Haraszthy, with its decorative 'h' and -y instead of -i, because that's the spelling most often associated with him.
Yes, I agree that that line sure as heck looks like Ellen, and yes, Ellen could be Lena. (Ellen = Helen = Elena = Helena -- and that's just the variants in use in English. In Hungarian, add Ilona, Ilonka, Ilus(ka)...)
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