ŠEBALJ /shebal/
This web page contains information about Croatian surname or family name ŠEBALJ. Anyone who knows anything about the origin of this surname or about the history of ŠEBALJ family may leave the message in the comment section of this page. Thank you!
Frequency in population of Croatia: 975 (598th Most Frequent)
My name is Jeremy Shaball, my great great great great great grandfather was Joseph Sebalj, and my uncle told me of over sixty tombstones in a Prague cemetery that hold our name. Just wondering if anyone can provide details of surviving relatives, or a historical context of the name and origin.
There is few variations on this family name, Šebalj, Schebai, Shebaly, Sebalj, Shebalj and so on. No body knows the origin of the family name, but it is most common in Croatia and some other parts of south slavic countries. In region Lika in Croatia, there is one whole village named Šebalji (sebalji), which is plural from sebalj, every citizen there for last 50 years have surname sebalj, some of them are not even related. there is few theories about origin of the family name. Will tell them little later, about thombstones in Prague, during WW1 croatia was under rule of austrian-hungarian empire and croatian soldiers fought in their army and was sent all over the europe, some died and were buried, some stayed in some other countries and made families. during ww2 a lot of people were taken to various camps all over the europe, some returned home after the war, others did not. so that can be the thing with thombstones in prague.
some people say this family name comes from french word Chevalier, that some people who worked in stables during Napoleon got that name, with time it got twisted and turned into sebalj. Others say origin is in middle east coz there is whole region called sebaly, and it is possible that with migration of turks in 15 century people with that name came. Also there is scandinavian-nordic version of that family name, but no body is sure is it before people from balcan area start going there, or when scandinavian people start to come to balcan coz of various reasons during history.
i know i am not from any help, but in my country there is like 1000+ people with this family name and we have no clue where is it origin. it is croatian family/surname but its origin no one knows yet.