AboutMaciej St. Zięba Expertise I am native Polish and I used to teach Polish to foreigners. I know (passively of actively) more than 15 other languages - so I can answer many questions concerning Polish grammar, pronounciation, spelling, ethymology and usage - as compared to English, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto or Norwegian. Also questions concerning other Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, or general linguistics, especially scripts (writing systems and transcriptions) - are welcome.
Experience Teaching English and French to Poles, Polish to foreigners, teaching Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan to philosophy students.
Expert: Maciej St. Ziêba Date: 1/16/2008 Subject: Grandmother's name
Question QUESTION: My g-g-grandmother's name was Sophia Rhyhay, apparently a phonetic spelling. Do you know of a Polish surname that sounds anything like that? She came to America from Poland with her father but got seperated quickly so she is the only family member with that name. She may have been German.
ANSWER: Dear Suzanne
I have no idea how you pronounce this name. Could you please descrite it to me dividing it into the sounds and using very common examples (eg. -y- like y in physics; -ay like -ay in May). Tell me also, which town or area did she come from and approximately the year she came ("Poland" is too diversified an area, and in the 19th century until 1914/1918, as you probably know, it was divided into three parts, each under different rule (Russian, German and Austrian-Hungarian), and in fact the Russian part was also divided into two, with different home law.
Regards
Maciej
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QUESTION: The pronunciation for Rhyhay is -rye- as in rye bread with the long "i" sound and -hay- like cows eat with the long "a" sound. This could be a somewhat Americanized pronunciation. The long running family story is that she came to America at age 16 from Price(phonetic spelling), Poland on a sloop with her father around 1856, landed in Galveston, got seperated, never seeing him again. I think her first language was German, but I know she said they sailed from Poland. She walked with a group to central Texas where my family has lived since then. I know there were a lot of Polish immigrants to Texas around that time period. I would love to know more about her origin, possibly find out who her father was, and if other family members came, but find it difficult to research not knowing the original spelling of her surname. I'm just wondering if this sounds like any Polish or German surname you have heard. Thank you for your response.
Answer Dear Suzanne,
Thanks for the wider explanation.
While waiting for your answer I have made some searching on the Internet. Not much found (but see below). I think nevertheless that I have some hints for you which might euther help or at least show you which way of seearching is wrong, once falsified.
Out of language question it has become a genealogical research, but as I like those (I also have some family mysteries that I am searching for explanation, for many years already - and finally maybe not in vain; If you are interested I might write to you about that separately).
I have some remarks to that message too, even if it was not yours, you might profit from them. First those that are the most obvious and give you less indication for further research, next those that give more hints or more possiblilities of interpretation.
1) You (?, someone) wrote there: "She claimed Alsace-Lorraine as her country and was said to live near Lake Constance" - in fact Alsace is NOT near Lake Constance - Lake Constance / Bodensee is on the border of Switzerland and Bayern region of Germany (although from the American perspective of vast land and empty prairies 100 miles may seem "near", it's not so from the European perspective; but let's also take into consideration the perspective of the memories of a 16-year's old young lady, who came to America and travelled from Galveston to central Texas (I suppose it lasted a while), still being in the same country - for whom a previous 2 or 3-day's ride from Lake Constance to Alsace, or the other way round, must have seemed "a buttered breadroll", as we say in Polish, "bułka z masłem", i.e. something very easy.)
2) Pommern is not entirely in Poland now, its westernmost part (called in German
Vorpommern) still belongs to Germany to the Province (Land) of Mecklemburg-Vorpommern.
3) Saying (in about 1856) that they have sailed from Poland, makes me wonder where could she have come from. At that time the only unite tha bore the name of Poland (in official use) was the so called Congress Kingdom of Poland in fact being a part of the Russian Empire. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Poland
But still many people used to call their land "Poland", if it was within the 1772 boundaries of Rzeczpospolita, before the partition of Poland - whether that be next in Lithuania or Eastern Pomerania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rzeczpospolita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth
Especially it might have been in areas near Gdansk (Danzig) - "near" meaning not farther than 100 km / 60 miles south-west of Gdansk, in Kashubia region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubia
(note that
4) The Polish city referred to as birthplace of Sophia should be spelled Pyrzyce (if it is German: Pyritz) - the middle -y- is missing; Although I doubt if this could be pronounced as "Price" as you are writing me now (if the word is pronounced as the price in shop for an item). In fact, I am sure it can't be in both Polish and German. Polish pronounciation is "pih-zhih-tzeh" and the German one is "pih-ritz" (wher -ih corresponds to short -i- in Pit, Sin, etc. and zh corresponds to the voiced -s- in leisure or -zh- in Brezhnev, and ts is pronounced like in Ritz, Biarritz or Lao-tzu).
NB. That area did not belong to Poland before 1772 (it was lost by Poland ca. 1135, and regained only 1945, after 810 years! by 1856 nobody - apart from scholars - remembered it being a part of Poland in the Middle Ages).
5) If this is a phonetical rendering then the original place's name could be Preis (German spelling, very probable, as a family name very frequent, but as a location???), Preiss (ditto), Prais, Praiss (who knows?), Prajs (modern Polish spelling for this pronounciation ...), Preys, Prays, maybe even Prejs?,
If originally pronounced "prytz" (y as in rye vodka) Preiz?, Preitz?, Preits?, Praiz?, Praitz?, Praits?, Prajz?, Prajc?
(in Dutch spelling it might even be written Prijs, Prys, Pryss).
I have no time to look for all of those.
Now, while writing those different spellings tt came to me that she might be of origin of "Preussen" (pronounce proy-sen), which is the name of the land (country and province) not of a town. Price would be an abbreviation of Pricen for Preussen.
Ending -en in German is often a plural ending so Pressen might be felt by someone as plural of Preus (which in fact seems the correct ethymology of the name - from the Old Prussians):
NB. In Polish many names of the countries are formed by plural of the name for the nation: Prusy (Prussia), Niemcy (Germany), Węgry (Hungary), Czechy (Czechia, Bohemia), Włochy (Italy), Chiny (China) ... (and some other are collective nouns: Litwa, Łotwa, Ru). In German the contries' names in -en like Preussen, Polen, might be felt as plural, too.
So making a name shorter might have corresponded to making it singular - after many years of stay in America, when the mastery of the original German has weakened, that might have seem natural?
Consider: What was the level of education of your g-g-g-mother?
Was the name of her place of origin registered immediately upon her arrival, or only may years later on - from her memory?
6) The name as prononced by you - when changing the final American -ay into flat -e (as in English words "met", "pet") to be met among Poles and Jews as well - although
it seems to me certainly of German origin (Yiddish is however a Germanic langauge too) and
the spelling might vary like:
Reihe, Reiche (German spelling)
Raihe, Raiche (German and Yiddish spelling)
Rajhe (Scandinavian Spelling),
Rajche (Polish and "Jidysz" (=Yiddish under Russian empire) spellings)
All of them could be found as family names with Google; in Poland (eg. Rajche),
Germany, Denmark (eg. Rajhe) or USA
A hint might be also what religion was you g-g-g-mother confessing (originally, of course): Roman Catholic? Lutheran (Evangelical-Augsburg)? Calvinist (Evangelical-Reformed)? another?. This might tell you something about her origin.
