Where is "Serbia" and "Luke Slavia" now?

MaryCantin

Hi,

New to this, but giving it a try. I'm trying to locate more information about my great grandparents - Joseph Lubrick (Lubic?) and Stane Bokrand. On a 1940's document of their son's death (George Lubrick) it said the dead son's mother was from "Serbia" and his father was from "Luke, Slavia". However information about George in a 1921 census says that this same son was from "Austria", and that he became a naturalized citizen of Canada in 1907, and immigrated in 1904 (some relatives question the 1904). The family name of the son is Lubrick, but it is said that at some point just before or after arriving in Canada the name was something like Lubic. So the son (George) was born in 1885, but I have no dates for his parents Joseph and Stan. Just wondering if "Luke, Slavia" means anything to anyone within the time frame of say 1880's and beyond as a town/region in a current country to look for vital stats. This is just so confusing. Other grandparents seem to be from Hungary proper, but this is the one where the family name comes from. Thanks. I'll post the wedding listing of the son with the parents of bride and groom listed.

najensen

So there are several questions and theories here:

1. Serbia is still a country in Southeastern Europe, and its borders are larger now than they were in the 1880s, when the northern third (known as Vojvodina) was still part of Hungary (and therefore Austria-Hungary), so we can isolate your great-grandmother's region by looking from around Belgrade south.
2. As you've probably figured out, there is no Luke, Slavia, but we need to break out the terms: While there is no Luke, there is a Luka (populated places in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia) or the larger city of Banja Luka, though this seems unlikely. If the person writing this down thought he/she was hearing German, they would have written Luka as Luke, as German pronounces an 'e' at the end of a word as 'uh' instead of a long 'a' as other European languages. Just a theory.
3. Slavia is a common concept in Slovenia, Croatia and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia, to describe any area inhabited by Slavic peoples.
4. Now, the crazy theory and one which needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt: If you pronounce Luke like Luka, it distantly sounds like the person is trying to say Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia existed in 1940, it did not in the 1880s, though the political concept was there.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, but those are the biggest context clues I could find from your question.