Croatian surnames in the United States of America

How family names changed

Many if not most of Croatians that had emmigrated to the US during the latter part of the 19th century came to that country without any knowledge of English language.

As they arrived, they would often give their surnames to the authorities verbally, transcription of which were immediatelly Americanized.

If not at the spot, bearers of difficult-to-pronounce Croatian surnames would soon thereafter change their names either by abbreviating them to accomodate English pronounciation or by literally translating them from Croatian to English. So, in order to unveil the origin of the family name, a genealogist sometimes needs to trace all the changes that had happened to a particular surname.

It is important to understand that most of the changes in surnames had happened within first couple of years upon the arrival of the first generation of immigrants to the USA, as they strived to adapt to their new circumstances, living in mostly Anglo-Saxon language environment.

One of the most frequent adaptation of Croatian surnames in the US was the change of suffix "ić" that has a specific Croatian diacritical mark, with Americanized suffix "ich". Thus, instead of Bilić, Cindrić, Luketić we have Bilich, Cindrich, Luketich.

Another way of adaptation was changing transcription so that surname reads in English as if read by a Croatian. Thus, instead of Čabrajec and Jurić we have Chabries & Yurick.

Abbreviation of surname was sometimes desirable because of practical reasons - an English speaking person would have difficulties to pronounce it: so Trbojević was changed to Terbo, Popijevalo to Pilo, Rebrović to Reb.

And finally, a change that is rather difficult to trace is litteral translation of a Croatian surname into English. So, for example, Kuhar becomes Cook, Kovač becomes Smith, Bilić becomes White, Mlinar becomes Miler.

There are some Croatian immigrants to the US, however, who were aware of the importance of keeping their surnames intact. One of them are people from Konavle, region near Dubrovnik.

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By their noses shall they be recognized
Lidija Sambunjak
professional genealogist
People who want their family trees to be researched come from all around the world and it’s no wonder every one of them is different. But as special as family Sadar was, none were before them. (11 Oct 2011)