Always good to hear from you, Fred. I was looking for the Migdals that would have remained in the Buczkowice/Lodygowice area. I assume this would be represented in the Herby site as "BB". I do notice that your search using the wildcard indicates there were 251 with the proper diacritical mark for the "el". Thank you for grabbing my head and focusing my attention to the correct location for the "missing" relatives. I haven't begun to look for Migdal immigrants that may have left Poland -- that will be the next project to see where that information intersects with the KANIA and GORNEY family immigrants I was able to successfully pull into the family tree. Kindest regards, Alan On Jul 22, 2008, at 8:39 AM, Fred Hoffman wrote: > Hi, > > Alan Kania <ajkania@comcast.net> wrote: > >> The other once prominent surname I am searching is MIGDAL. Even >> though >> the surname does have Hebrew origins to it, I've been able to trace >> that family back to the mid 1700s in the Lodygowice area and they >> were >> definitely Roman Catholic in my family through that period. My >> curiosity question stems from "Herby". Even though the MIGDAL family >> were prominent land owners in the valley, there are NO Migdals that >> show up on "Herby." Only one occurrence in the Bielsko-Biala for >> MIGDALEK, one for MIGDALEWICZ and thirteen for MIGDALSKI. >> >> In the church records, the MIGDAL name (just as the KANIA name) >> remains that way without any alteration. The same is indicated by the >> gravestones in the Buczkowice cemetery -- KANIA is KANIA and MIGDAL >> is >> MIGDAL. >> >> What happened to the MIGDALs? > > I don't understand, Alan. When I search for MIGDA? on the Herby site > (using the wild card ? so as to match plain L and slash-L), I find > 178 Polish citizens named MIGDAL, and 2,783 named MIGDAL with slash-L: > > Migdal 178 Wa:14, BP:3, Cz:1, Gd:1, Go:7, Ka:12, Lu:56, Ld:31, > Ol:4, Pt:11, Pr:7, Ra:4, Sr:14, Sz:2, Ta:1, Wl:2, Wr:3, ZG:5 > > Migdal 2783 Wa:107, BB:251, By:30, Ch:1, Ci:5, Cz:124, El:2, Gd: > 52, Go:59, JG:61, Kl:28, Ka:210, Ki:68, Kn:56, Ko:7, Kr:404, Ks:4, > Lg:45, Ls:8, Lu:12, Ld:68, NS:13, Ol:22, Op:77, Os:6, Pl:17, Pt:36, > Pl:1, Po:54, Pr:8, Ra:51, Sr:15, Sk:16, Sl:11, Su:11, Sz:72, Tb:8, > Ta:531, To:15, Wb:55, Wl:2, Wr:72, Za:8, ZG:80 > > > It appears to me the Migdals are right where they should be. Did I > misunderstand your question? > > Incidentally, you can get more accurate and more recent data (2002) > on MIGDAL with plain L here: > > http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/migdal.html > > And 2002 data on the far more common form with slash-L is here: > > http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/migda%25C5%2582.html > > I hope this clarifies things a little. Or if I misunderstood your > question, tell me so. > > Fred Hoffman

Hi, Alan J. Kania <ajkania@comcast.net> wrote: > I was looking for the Migdals that would have > remained in the > Buczkowice/Lodygowice area. I assume this would > be represented in the > Herby site as "BB". Yes, that's correct. Under the administrative setup in place 1975-1998, Buczkowice and Lodygowice were in Bielsko-Biala province. > I do notice that your search using the wildcard > indicates there were 251 with the proper > diacritical mark for the > "el". Exactly. It is reasonable to hope at least some of them might be relatives. With a moderately common name such as this, of course, you can't afford to jump to conclusions. But clearly people with the right name are in the right place, so it is not unwarranted to proceed on the assumption that missing relatives MAY be among those 251. The chances are certainly good enough to justify following up. Incidentally, you said some MIGDALs were certainly Jewish, but the ones you've traced in your family so far were Roman Catholic. Obviously, if there are more than 2,700 people by that name still in Poland, the majority of them must be Christian; no distinctively and exclusively Jewish surnames exist in Poland in large numbers, due of course to the Holocaust. There are a lot of names that can be borne by either religion. As a Hoffman of German Christian origin, I realized that long ago, when I noticed that a lot of the Hoffmans we've heard of are Jewish. There are some surnames that are associated exclusively with one religion or another; but distinctively Jewish names tend to be very rare in Poland these days. This is one of those obvious things that may be worth pointing out -- I doubt you need to be reminded, Alan, but perhaps others on the list will benefit by realizing that. If I'm not mistaken, the "Case of the Missing MIGDALs" illustrates once more how important it is to keep in mind the Polish diacriticals. On both the Herby and Moikrewni sites, a search for a surname will not be successful if you don't take the diacriticals into account. A search for MIGDAL with plain L returns misleading data (even more misleading is a search for WISNIEWSKI without an accent on the first S!). Fortunately, the Herby site allows use of wild cards ? and * to help you get past that problem; a search for MIGDA? will also bring up entries that are irrelevant, but not that many, and you can disregard them to focus on the ones relevant to your search. This is one respect in which the Herby site is more user-friendly than the Moikrewni site; the latter has more accurate data, but it's harder to obtain and use. Always remember, folks: when dealing with Polish names, an A might be the nasal A with a little tail; an E might be the nasal E with a little tail; L might be slash-L; Z might be dotted Z; and C, N, O, S, and Z might be accented. If you keep that in mind as you search, your chances of finding what you need improve. > Thank you for grabbing my head and focusing my > attention to the > correct location for the "missing" relatives. I'm glad I could help a little. Fred Hoffman