Jim: Hoffman gives a good description of why spelling changes might have occurred in names especially 'a' to 'o' in Russian. Leo In a message dated 10/7/2007 9:40:14 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, wmfhoffman@sbcglobal.net writes: Hi, John Windle <johnwindle@btinternet.com> asked: > Has anyone heard of a Russian or maybe Polish > surname, > VAUCHGLANUS or VOUCHYLANUS. I am searching > for info on this family who moved from Russia to > Liverpool > around 1880. In some records the name was > shortened to Vouch. Neither of those names looks or sounds remotely Polish or Russian. My best guess would be Lithuanian, because Lithuanian surnames often end in -ANIS, -ONYS, -ANUS, etc. And as others have remarked, Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire from roughly 1772 to the end of World War I. So a Lithuanian would be categorized as a Russian, officially speaking. (Historically Lithuania and Poland were long joined as a single nation; and between World Wars I and II much of Lithuania was ruled by Poland. That could explain how Polish became part of the mix.) If you put a gun to my head and made me guess at the original name, I'd guess something along the lines of VAICELIUNAS (with a little v mark over the C), which would sound kind of like "vi-chell-OO-nass." That's a very rough indication of what it would sound like -- talk to a Lithuanian to hear what it really sounds like. My point is that VAICELIUNAS is a moderately common name among Lithuanians, and it could easily be misspelled by someone who wasn't familiar with the name. Also, Lithuanian A often equates to O in Russian, and all official documents had to be in Russian, with names usually written phonetically in the Cyrillic alphabet. It wouldn't be odd for VAICELIUNAS to be transliterated into Cyrillic characters that equate to VOICHILUNAS. Then when someone unfamiliar with Lithuanian tried to render that in our alphabet, VOUCHYLANUS could easily be the result. I can't guarantee that this is right, but I've run into plenty of similar cases. You have to realize, you're talking about 1) Lithuanian names 2) being Russified and rendered in Cyrillic, and then 3) being spelled out in Roman letters, and then 4) being massacred further by people who were totally unfamiliar with Russian and Lithuanian. So the Y of handwritten VOUCHYLANUS could be misread as a G, and the O's misread as A. It's that kind of process that could account for where VAUCHGLANUS came from. I know that's a lot of if's and maybe's -- but surnames were mutilated all the time, and often there's no way to reconstruct the original from the mangled version with any certainty. All I'm saying is, the name forms you mention sound like mutilated Lithuanian to me, and that's plausible because Lithuania was officially part of Russia at the time. The original name might have been something like VAICELIUNAS. Or it might not. Proving it, one way or the other, is the tough part. But at least these remarks might give you a little more to work with. Fred Hoffman Author, _Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings_ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to POLANDBORDERSURNAMES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com