BENKO /benko/
This web page contains information about Croatian surname or family name BENKO. Anyone who knows anything about the origin of this surname or about the history of BENKO family may leave the message in the comment section of this page. Thank you!
Frequency in population of Croatia: 1.233 (420th Most Frequent)
My Dad’s surname had been changed from Benko to Banko in the 1920s.
I wonder if his family originally came from Croatia, Ukraine, Slovakia, or where?
He was born in 1904; his parents had come to Pittsburgh (Fayette City) or another little town Gillespie, SE of Pittsburgh, PA., USA.
The name of Macko came from his mother’s side.
In my opinion, the highest pobability is that they came from Croatia, according to the fact the most Croatians emigrated to Pittsburgh in 19th and 20th century.There is also Croatian Fraternal Union of America established in 1894. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Fraternal_Union
Although, Macko is typical Slovakian surname. It’s hard to say, because in 19th and 20th century migrations in this part of Europe were very frequent, espetially in times of Austro-Hungarian Empire, between all nations and states included (but to be honest, it’s a pretty small teritory). Mačka (‘maatchka’) in Croatian and Slovakian means cat, Mačko is a form in vocative in Croatian, don’t know about Slovakian.
Benko is a common surname in Slovakia and in Hungary. The highest percentage of Slovakians immigrating to the US settled in the Pittsburgh region, and tended to remain in their close-knit communities for a generation or so. I would suggest that your ancestry could be Slovakian, based on the surnames, and a way to find this is to look at census records and to locate his immigration records.
Census records will list Slovakians as Slovak, Hungarian, or Austro-Hungarian, as Slovakia was at the time being controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ship records will often list the town that the individual came from in their home country, and I usually Google the name to find its modern day variant.
If your ancetsors were Slovakian, their baptismal records might even be online, as most Slovakian church records were scanned in the 1980s and are available for free on familysearch.org.
Good luck!