A JRI-Poland Surname List is a compilation of each family surname that appear one or more times in the records of a town. All variations in the spelling, as they were written by the town registrar, are included in each Surname List.
Each Surname List is automatically generated from the current contents of the JRI-Poland database each time you request it. The Surname List includes not only records that are currently searchable in the JRI-Poland database, but also records that may be “hidden” for various reasons – including that they have been extracted or indexed, but have not yet been fully funded. The Surname List shows today’s date at the top as a date stamp of when your search was run.
The names in the Surname List come from Polish-language record entries and/or transliterations of Russian-language record entries. The spelling of a name may vary depending on its source. For example, the letters “i,” “y,” and “j” are interchangeable, as are the letters “h” and “ch,” and the letter “h” may sometimes appear as the letter “g” (there is no letter “h” in Russian, so the letter “g” is used in Russian instead of the letter “h”).
This feature of JRI-Poland is provided as an aid to researchers who may not initially recall the surnames in their various family branches, but whose memories may be sparked by scanning the Surname List. In addition, browsing through the Surname List list may help the user to identify misspellings and spelling variations that can be used as additional search values to explore potential records of interest.
If you are interested in finding records for any surname on the Surname List, search the JRI-Poland database for this exact spelling. Note the source reference and obtain the actual record. Information as to how to obtain records and what JRI-Poland provides is explained elsewhere in the JRI-Poland Knowledge Base.
If the town project has been funded, the Surname List indicates surnames that you can expect to find in a search of the JRI-Poland online database.
For town projects that have not yet been fully funded, the Surname Lists indicate the surnames that you can expect to find when the data is online as well as the surnames that appear in the records, if any, that are already searchable for that town in the JRI-Poland online database.
For information on how to access your family’s record entries before the town data is available online, you may contact the Town Leader by using the “Contact Volunteer” button on the Town Explorer page.