Another website that we've found helpful for finding locations and all the names they have been called in the past is the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here's the URL. http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/ You can type in a name and have it search worldwide or else type in the country, e.g. Lithuania, and look for places that start the way you think it is. It includes "inhabited places", valleys, rivers, mountain ranges, etc. If you find what you are looking for, it gives all the earlier names it was called, the geographical jurisdictions, GPS coordinates, where they got the information, etc. We've found it very helpful. Don Snow On 6/23/2012 8:31 AM, Jerry Cowley wrote: > I don't have much experience in Lithuania, but in Poland and parts of the > Czech Republic, names have not just changed languages but been renamed by > various invading cultures. So a village in Poland might have an original > Polish name, a German name, a Russian name, and, if it still exists, it's > Polish name again. The former Czechoslovakia was an amalgam of several > cultures: Bohemian, Austrian, German, and Russian. Same process. Here's > another place to try. > > geonames.usgs.gov (no www) > > On the left, select foreign names, then GEOnet Names Server (GNS), then GNS > search. > Now, on the GeoNames Search page, select Lithuania from the box, top center. > You'll have to try the ADM1 Names that pop up below it for each of your > names. http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmagaz/ Note that you can search by the > starting letters of the name and search without diacritics. Take a good look > at this page and try the several varieties of searches shown below. > > By the way, for places in the USA that might be old towns, try > geonames.usgs.gov and select domestic names on the left. That old town > might now be a cemetery, a church, a school, or still a populated place. You > can input name and state, and it gives you county, coordinates, and even > maps. > > The US Geodetic Survey and the National Geospatial-Intelligence agency > people do a fine job. If you're a Google person, enter the two words gnis > search for the domestic search site. > > Finally, if your Family History Center still has gazetteers on microfiche, > try finding one for Lithuania. > > Good luck to you. Jerry > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Have a look at the Shtetlseeker at > > http://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/LocTown.asp > > Search in Eastern Europe using the Daitch Motokoff soundex search method and > you will see that there are several towns similar to Trotzki in both > Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. Now to figure out which one is the right > one...Good Luck, Carrie in VA > > > > __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature > database 7242 (20120622) __________ > > The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > > http://www.eset.com > > > > Please send the one word message SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to [email protected] > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message -- Dr. Donald R. Snow, Retired Professor of Mathematics, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah - [email protected]