Two most common obstacles in researching Croatian genealogy among Americans of Croatian origin can be easily avoided if we know how surnames have changed as Croatian descentants reached USA, the English speaking country with different way of transcribing surnames, says Adam S. Eterovich, a well known writer and researcher of Croatians in America who recently contacted our web site.

Mr. Eterovich points out that first wave of Croatians reaching America had started in 1850s, when Croatian alphabet hasn’t yet been standardized, so Croatians would have written their names without letters containing diacritic marks that are common in today’s Croatian alphabet (č, ć, ž, š, đ). Instead, they would write their name with combination of letters “ch, zh, sh, dj”. Genealogy researcher should know that, for example, a family name Bilich towards the end of 19th century changes into Bilić, and it is the same surname.

Another obstacle in writing Croatian names appear in records kept in Croatian areas under Italian jurisdiction. Many names begining with the letter K would have been changed into a letter C. So, instead of for example Karlović one’s surname would write Carolo or something similar.

It should be added that there are some Croatian surnames that look as if they have diacritic mark whereas they actually don’t and are completely different surnames. Examples of these are surnames Petric and Petrić as well as Jelisić and Jelišić.