[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Kaminski ethnicity

Mon Feb 19 08:49:38 PST 2007

Nelson,

I knew if I waited long enough to reply that 
someone else would provide the answer.  Günther 
seems to have done that by noting that there is an Itter river.

So, unless Itter is also an object or a 
profession of some kind, which I could not 
discover, then probably there was no Polish 
equivalent of the Ittermann name.   That is not 
to say that there definitely was no name change, 
because my family surname morphed from Jaeger to 
Geiger and then back to Jaeger and then finally 
to Warner, and it had nothing to do with equivalency of names.

I think the answer to the question of surnames is 
to keep an open mind when you are doing 
research.    In addition to making changes in 
surnames to make then equivalent in another 
language, or to make the name possible to 
pronounce in a different language, sometimes 
names are just written down incorrectly by the 
pastor in the original records.    Oddly enough, 
I believe some families adopted the incorrect 
spellings of their names, probably simply to 
conform to the rest of their society.

Gary Warner

At 08:49 PM 2/18/2007, Nelson Itterman wrote:
>I would assume it may be as surprise, if your name is Kaminski, to be told
>that it could be Koberstein  or Stein or Steinke or vice versa. Would I also
>have relatives that have a different name than Ittermann?
>Nelson
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org
>[mailto:ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org] On Behalf Of Gary
>Warner
>Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 12:47 AM
>To: Hal and Jan Kamm; ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
>Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Kaminski ethnicity
>
>Hal,
>
>Welcome to our mail list.   I hope you get as much from it as the rest of
>us.
>
>I am by no means an expert on the subject(s) you raise, but perhaps my two
>cents will start the ball rolling and elicit some more discussion from the
>experts on this list.
>
>You would appear to be on the correct mail list, because the rest of us are
>equally confused by our ancestry, at least the part about
>knowing what to call our ancestors.   I trust I am not stating
>something incorrectly when I say that the rest of the people on this list
>are all related to Germans who lived in Poland or Volhynia
>(essentially the western part of the Ukraine).   Your Kaminski name
>would seem to indicate that you also are German, since according to Oskar
>Kossmann's "Die Deutschen in Polen", printed in 1978, Kaminski
>is the Polish version of the name Koberstein.   This may not be the
>absolutely correct German version of the name, however, since some people
>also think that Steinke is an alternate to
>Kaminski.   Evidently the root of the word Kaminski has some
>equivalence to the German word Stein or Steinke.  Only some detailed
>research by you will enlighten you further about who your ancestors
>really were.   To answer your question about name changes, the answer
>is yes, they did change, but not necessarily for everyone.   It seems
>that they changed when there was an equivalent name in the language used
>where they lived (like Schwarz becoming Czarnecki, since one name means
>black in German ,and the other means black in
>Polish).   Names also changed when the name was difficult to say in
>the language where our ancestors lived, much like they did when our
>ancestors came to North America.
>
>My grandparents were born in Poland and later moved to Volhynia where
>they were married and where their first child was born.    Both of my
>grandparents were definitely descended from Germans, but they were born in
>an area that is today Poland but was owned by Russia at the
>time.    So, in the 1900s, when Poland again resumed its own national
>identity, my grandparents were Germans who could claim that they were also
>Poles and Russians.
>
>May I suggest that you give SGGEE a one year trial membership to see what
>you can discover in our databases, and especially you should submit at least
>your pedigree, if not additionally data on your cousins who are also likely
>German to see if we can link your data to any of the names in our databases.
>
>Guessing at a correct place name is not possible without more data than you
>have supplied, but yes, there is a Rypin that is often mentioned in the
>databases that we have.
>
>Gary Warner
>SGGEE
>
>At 02:25 PM 2/17/2007, Hal and Jan Kamm wrote:
> >This is my first post on this list.
> >
> >I am a grandson of Arthur Kaminski, who arrived in US in 1907 listed as
> >Russian nationality, but German ethnicity. The ship manifest noted
> >Ripen as the town of origin. I cannot find a town named Ripen, but
> >there is one called Rypin in Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland.
> >
> >I am confused about the German ethnicity versus Russian/Polish
> >nationality. I had heard stories years ago about the family working as
> >millers of grain across northern Europe. Would names be changed
> >temporarily, during one generation or less, depending on where they
> >were living?
> >
> >Any help would be appreciated.
> >Thanks
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Ger-Poland-Volhynia Mailing List hosted by Society for German Genealogy
> >in Eastern Europe http://www.sggee.org Mailing list info at
> >http://www.sggee.org/listserv
>
>
>
>
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