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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: amy50 on Friday 02 February 18 23:12 GMT (UK)
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My fathers birth certificate is in Russian/Ukrainian. I need help reading his last name as well as his father's name. My father changed his name when he came to canada so it is hard to find any ancestry information without his birth name. Hopefully someone can read this handwriting for answers.
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Hi, and welcome :)
Sorry I can't help, but it's written in Russian not German.
If you change the title of the thread, it might attract someone who can?
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Ukrainian
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Thanks I made the change. Here's hoping :) .
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Amy,
Cross referencing to your uniform post, my Ukrainian contacts have provided nothing useful as yet. I will repost if they do.
My reading of this document (as a non-Ukrainian speaker who likes to struggle with bad writing) is:
Given name Iogan
Patronymic Gotfridovich
Family Name Zeir’ke
Birth Date 21 May 1926
County Kievsky Oblast
Region Gostomel’ (Hostomel)
Village Irpin
The first name of Iogan was a new one for me but I did find one other on the web in a Jewish family, which may have some importance.
I cannot read the first line from your pic.
Good luck, I hope it helps and I will update this post if anything useful comes to me.
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You've got much further with this than I did.
However, I did wonder if the family name was Ziel'kie, with an 'l' in the middle - or Zel'ke, depending on how you choose to transcribe the 'e'. (That's assuming the vowel has more or less the same value in Ukrainian as in Russian.)
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Thank you so much Ian999.My father went by johan all this life so i am wandering if the "logan" be a sloppy written Johan? My apologies for not including his first name in my original post.
This is very helpful. I do have the whole certificate that i perhaps should try to condense so to post.
Arthurk - Thank you for your help as well. I will be searching with your suggestions as well!
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I think you have an ethnic German. Gotfridovich was Gottfried. There were many German communities in central and eastern Europe. Backs up the uniform.
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Athurk, you may well be right! This is not the easiest script to decipher and the clerk was barely literate. His letters show some variation from word to word.
Anyway I struggled with Zeir’ke for some time and the r (or l) could have been a chah given some of the Ukrainian script I looked at.
I also looked at the “l” before the soft sign in Gostomel and it has the normal sharp point to the top of the letter whereas the r/l in the family name is clearly rounded.
You can find both Zeirke and Zeilke families on the web. Many have the e and i transposed.
Amy needs to consider both and maybe other variations!
I think Amy is correct with “Johan”. There is no J in Ukrainian/Russian and different letters are used instead. “Iosef” is used for Joseph (obviously in Cyrillic letters).
Bottom line, I think Regorian is correct – he is an ethnic German
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I think Amy is correct with “Johan”. There is no J in Ukrainian/Russian and different letters are used instead. “Iosef” is used for Joseph (obviously in Cyrillic letters).
There's no 'h' in Russian either, and it is sometimes replaced with 'g'.
When preparing for the Russian O Level oral many moons ago, our class was somewhat amused to be told that when saying "I support (a football team etc)" the literal translation of the Russian was "I am sick behind". For one member of the class that might have been quite appropriate, as he finished the sentence with "Galifax Town".
It's one of those things you tend to remember.
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That uniform was probably his first and lacks the eagle and swastika badge. The litzen on the collar looks non standard too. He probably ended up in the Waffen SS. Himmler persuaded Hitler to place all foreign troops under his command.
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Thank you everyone, i have a lot of name variations now to check out. Very helpful!
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My reading of this document
Given name Iogan
Patronymic Gotfridovich
Family Name Zeir’ke
Birth Date 21 May 1926
County Kievsky Oblast
Region Gostomel’ (Hostomel)
Village Irpin
I cannot read the first line from your pic.
Well done, Ian999.
The 1st line: "народження хлопця" - the birth of a boy
Iogan Иоган=Johann. Ukrainian Г corresponds to German H.
"Готфридович (Gotfridovich)" means that father's name was Gottfried.
The 3rd letter of the Зельке surname is clearly Л (L). (Selke? Zielke?)
Irpin (Russ. Irpien') is a town now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irpin