Thank you, Fred Hoffman, for your reply, now I see how to find it on the website. I was using a map titled "Current Provinces of Poland" and it only had 16 seperate areas, not 49, so no wonder things did not compute for me. I will also read and print off your article you sent the link for, in Gen Dobry, thanks for that as well. I saw the reply just above, from Jim Presenkowski, thanks for trying Jim, but I cannot read most of the words with ? marks in them, I do not know what those mean in English. I have recently found where my ancestors came from! (Hamburg Passenger List - 1857) and that was a town called Exin in the Prussian province of Posen, ( about 22 miles SW of Bydgoszcz)[Bromberg] which I was told is now called Kcynia, in the county of Naklo n. Notecia, and in the province of Kujawsko Pomorskie. I'm still confused (sorry) about one map having 16 provinces and another having 49 provinces. Are they from different time periods? Would Exin/Kcynia be in WR - Wroclaw ? Thanks for any explanation, help. Judy Alberta, Canada > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:14:37 -0400 > From: "Fred Hoffman" <wmfhoffman@sbcglobal.net> > Subject: Re: [PBS] abbreviated districts > To: <polandbordersurnames@rootsweb.com> > Message-ID: <9407EBAA85D74945A0C3E2B16CE3AAAA@FREDPC> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; > reply-type=original > > Hi, > > Judy wrote: > >>I did not see any replies sent to this message, >>and I was wondering the same >> thing myself. Does anyone know if there is a >> list of what districts the >> abbreviated letters stand for? > > I believe someone did post an answer, explaining > that there's a window on that site > (http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/indexslo.html) that > shows you the abbreviations. On the main page, a > few lines below the box where you input the > surname, there's a line in blue that says "Tutaj > znajduja sie objasnienia skrotow" [The > abbreviations are explained here]. If you click on > it, a window opens that lists the abbreviations > and the provinces they stand for. The province > names are given in adjectival form, but they're > not hard to figure out. Also in that window, right > below the top line "Wykaz skrotow nazw > wojewodztw," is a link "Zobacz mape" -- click on > it and you get a map of Poland showing the > provinces by abbreviation. To close the map, click > on "Zamknij mape"; to close the abbreviations > window, click on "Zamknij wykaz." > > Or you can read my article "The Slownik nazwisk Is > Still Online" in _Gen Dobry!_: > > http://www.polishroots.org/gendobry/PDF/GenDobry_VII_11.pdf > > In that article I tried to answer this and many > other questions people have about how to use that > site. Personally I think it's the best way to get > these answers -- but then, I am somewhat biased! > > Fred Hoffman >