[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Name translations

[Dave Obee]

Germans didn't use the patrynomic system, but the Russians filling out the
forms did use it. My mother has no middle name, but her birth registration
shows her father's name with the suffix for a female.

These names can be terribly confusing when you find women in the records.
You need to always remember that it's her father's name, and that can be a
hard thing to remember. For example, one of my relatives was Julius Weiss.
When I saw a woman's given name followed by "Julius Weiss" in the records, I
got excited for a second, thinking I had found another daughter of Julius.
But no, she was married, so the Julius did not refer to someone named Weiss.

Now, sometimes people married people with the same surname, but that's a
different issue.

Dave Obee