Tombstone Tuesday - Anna (Jaros) Brycha

ZDE ODPOČIVA

ANNA JAROŠOVA

BRYCHOVA

NAR.18.PROSINCE

1882

ZEM.29.CERVENCE

1908

SPI SLADCE DRAHA

DCERO NAŠE

Here lies

Anna Jaros 

Brycha

Born 18 December 

1882

Died 29 July 

1908

Sleep well our dear daughter

This Czech inscription is found on a larger monument dedicate to her parents Matthias and Mary Jaros (here).  Anna (Jaros) Brycha is my wife's second great aunt, who died in Chicago as the result of a premature birth. Most of the features of the inscription have been explained in earlier posts (here and here).

One new feature is the forms of the surnames.  The maiden name Jaroš is rendered as Jarošova, and the married name Brycha is rendered as Brychova.  In some languages like Czech, surnames can have both a masculine form used with men and a feminine form used with women.  In this case, the feminine form is created by dropping the final vowel of the surname and adding the suffix -ova.  It is important to keep this in mind when searching for Czech ancestors.  If you are searching for a woman, search under both the masculine, "Anna Brycha", and the feminine forms, "Anna Brychova".  Both variants of the name may occur in records, so it is important to consider both.  Also, if you have, the feminine form, you will need to remove the feminine ending when searching for a male relative.    

 

Anna Jaros and John Brycha

Tombstone Tuesday - Matěj Jaroš

ZDE ODPOČIVA

MATĚJ JAROŠ
ZEM. 18 SRPNA 1914
ODPOČIVEJ V POKOJI DRAHY MANŽELY
A OTČE DNÉS LOUČIME SE V BOLU V NEBE
SE SEJDEM SPOLU

Translation:

Here rests
Matthias Jaros
Died August 18, 1914
Rest in peace dear husband and father
Now we part in sorrow, in heaven
we will meet together

Czech Dates
If you have only worked with Western European languages, be ready for new challenges when working with a language like Czech. The Czech language is a Slavic language, distantly related to English, German and French, but more closely related to Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian. It has sounds, structures and vocabulary that may be unfamiliar and difficult at first. One important difference that a genealogist is likely to encounter is the names of the month. In most of the languages of Western Europe the names of the months are derived from their Latin names. As a result, it is usually fairly easy to guess the names of the months in languages like French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch or German. However, in Czech, you will have to learn or look up the names for the months.

To make things even more difficult, the forms you will find in a dictionary are not the ones you will most likely encounter. Czech is a language like Latin (here) where the relationships between words are signaled by special endings. In dates, you will find the genitive form, which indicates possession, just as in English we use the preposition of in dates, "the third of December". Thus, we find the form srpna "of August" on the tombstone instead of the form srpen, which we would find in a dictionary. It is also common to find abbreviations for the months. The Czech months are listed below, first in the nominative (the dictionary form), next in the genitive as it will appear in dates, and finally in the abbreviated forms.

English	Czech	Genitive form	Abbreviations
January	leden	ledna	led.
February	únor	února	ún.
March	březen	března	břez.
April	duben	dubna	dub.
May	květen	května	květ.
June	červen	června	červ.
July	červenec	července	červen.
August	srpen	srpna	srp.
September	září	září	září
October	říjen	října	říj.
November	listopad	listopadu	list.
December	prosinec	prosince	pros.

Translating names with Wikipedia

Deb at Adventures in Genealogy has a useful post on resources for tracking the changes in our immigrant ancestors' given names. When going back, it is helpful to have some sense of what our ancestors' names might be translated to in their native languages or what the name might have become in the US. Because of common histories and religious traditions, many originally Hebrew, Greek or Latin names have been adapted to various local languages. Peter, Per, Pierre, Boutros, Pietro and Pedro can all trace back their name to the Greek pétros (Πέτρος) 'rock' from the Apostle Simon Peter. In many cases, our ancestors simply changed their name to the appropriate English version. However, in other cases, they might have kept the old name (like my great grandmother Suzanne), adopted a similar sounding name with a different origin (M*A*S*H's Jamie Farr's given name was Arabic Jameel "beautiful"), or chosen a name with little obvious similarity.

Wikipedia as a tool for discovering different versions of a name
One useful tool for discovering different versions of a given name is Wikipedia. Take the name Matthew. In English, find the Wikipedia page for St. Matthew. It is best to find the earliest bearers of the name. Now find the sidebar on the left and look for a list of languages. You will find a list of more than fifty languages. The language names are in their own language, so you might have to figure out what the native name for a language is. In some cases, it is easy to make an educated guess. In other cases, the names will be unrecognizable, such as Cymraeg for Welsh, Magyar for Hungarian or Suomi for Finnish. Now try a few. You can find that the French (Français) version is Matthieu, the Geman (Deutsch) version is Matthäus, the Czech (Česky) is Mattouš, the Lithuanian (Lietuvių) version is Matas, and the Breton (Brezhoneg) version is Mazhev.

Figuring out Matěj Jaros
You can also search the different language versions of Wikipedia if you have the name in another language and want to find out what the English version might be. For example, take the Czech name Matĕj. This is the first name of one of my wife's ancestors from Písek in what is now the Czech Republic. Matěj has always been somewhat of a challenge to track because he would often come up with different names in different records. He is listed as Michael in the 1900 Census and his wife's death certificate, Matt in the 1910 Census, Matthias on one of his son's birth certificates, Matej on his death certificate and tombstone. Once you have found the Czech Wikipedia for Matěj, find the sidebar and click on English. Here you will find that the English version of Matěj is Matthias, explaining at least one of the records.