Where would I find out where a surname is from?

[Creasegirl]

In the same line you see the name Slobodan which is probably the Yugoslavia connection

[TreeSpirit]

The passenger list name states Mldenovac as his birth place. This is a municipality of the city of Belgrade, currently in Serbia, but formerly in Yugoslavia. Of course being born in a certain country does not always automatically mean that you have that country's nationality.

As previously mentioned in reply#5, the index to his "Alien Registration" Doco confirms that he is Yugoslavian, but it is also very possible that his (grand) parents had been Russian.

[cindym19721]

I'm not sure whether it is the right person (because he would have been rather young when he immigrated), but there is a possible candidate on the NAA site that mentions that he's Yugoslavian. The file ("Alien registration documents") hasn't been digitised yet, so you'd have to pay to have that done or visit the Melbourne archives.

WOW!!! Thanks for this, was out all day and unable to reply. I had never seen this before. I no longer live in Melbourne (where I was born), I'm now in England so this info is amazing.

In the same line you see the name Slobodan which is probably the Yugoslavia connection

His middle name was Slobodan, so this is him. I was actually removed from my biological parents (Bob and, his wife then, Jenny) and by the age of 3 I was adopted. I have been in touch with family members on my biological mothers side (who I connected to through the DNA test I did), but due to a lack of info I had been unable to find anything about my biological father. I really do appreciate all the info/comments and possible routes of enquiry I can now look into.

[cindym19721]

The surname is just an indication of where his family could have originated of course, as people moved around a lot.

You could enter it in to one of theses surname profilers:
https://isogg.org/wiki/Surname_mapping
but they obviously just gives the distribution of the surname not your biological father’s place of birth.

Something which may be useful for you would be a DNA test. If you also test your mother, if she is still living, or one of your mother’s siblings, then in theory any matches that you and your mother do not have in common, should come from your father’s side of the family. You may find a close enough match which will enable you to work out who your father was or find some of his relatives, but at the least you might get an idea of his origins.*

Do you know his first name? Do you have his death certificate or marriage certificate which may give further details about him?

Good luck.

* Added: I see from other threads that Cindy has already taken a DNA test.

I don't have any actual documents pertaining to his birth/death as he left Victoria for the Northern Territory quite a few years ago as far as I've been told, and nobody in my bio mother's side stayed in touch. I only found out he was dead when doing a newspaper search on Australian sites!

[cindym19721]

I'm not sure whether it is the right person (because he would have been rather young when he immigrated), but there is a possible candidate on the NAA site that mentions that he's Yugoslavian. The file ("Alien registration documents") hasn't been digitised yet, so you'd have to pay to have that done or visit the Melbourne archives.

I may have to contact a friend in Melbourne to go to the archives for me! Thank you

[brigidmac]

9 years old seems very young to be travelling alone on such a long journey
I wonder if the  yugoslavin couple   PETROV aristade and Jerina aged 58+ 59 on previous page on ship record could' be related .
They seem to have come from a different destination several days
earlier. ...

[barryd]

"Does anyone know where I might be able to search for a possible origin" ?

To answer you question in another way I normally go onto Google. Google may not have your ancestry but should have people of the same name and their country of origin.

If you are very lucky your ancestor might be on Google.

[brigidmac]

If you have Ancestry DNA
Put it in the surname search option and see if any trees have that name and where they come from

You may find some very distant relatives even if you can't work out exactly how you match .

Does your DNA indicate any particular areas ?

[cindym19721]

Does your DNA indicate any particular areas ?

See the attached pictures for my "ethnicity estimate". This is literally all I know.