To a russian speaker: My family name is Soreff, is the original name Tsarev?

Question

My family immigrated to the states from Russia, our name is Soreff. Although there are many people who also have this last name, I know that it was "westernized" when they moved here. I do not have my mothers maiden name and I am looking to change my name to Soreff, but I would like to use the original version to bring back the russian heritage in the name. The closest sounding name in russia i have found is Tsarev, is this it?? Thanks!

Answer 1

Could it be Seroff? I've seen various cases of vowel swapping here..

Answer 2

Not likely. In Russian, o switches to a when not under stress, not the other way around. So say your last name was Korolev, someone who didn't know anything about proper spelling and was just writing it down from the pronounciation he would write Karalyov.

Your last name dosn't seem immediately similar to anything but as a wild guess maybe Zorev?

Answer 3

If you are hoping to go as far as changing your name, it would be CRITICAL to be sure that your information is accurate. That means, using documentation that is both reliable, and applies to your own ancestor.  The "closest sounding" is not reliable.

I have found records in ancestry for a number of families with the Soreff name, in 1930 census. It is correct that at least one gives Russia as the place of origin.. another says Poland. That is NOT necessarily contradictory.  During the late 1800s, Poland itself was partitioned out of existence, and ruled by other countries. My grandfather spoke Polish, but at the time of his birth, he technically lived "in" Germany. It later reverted to being in Poland.

One thing about 1930 records, is that it includes the year of immigration AND if the person was naturalized or not. Meaning.. you can determine which is your ancestor, WHEN he/she immigrated, and obtain the files for naturalization. That WILL give you solid information as to the actual place of birth, and very possible that it reflects what the original spelling would have been.

I am not clear on why you don't have your mother's maiden name.. that is something you also should be able to define from documents.

In usual research, if you make an error on a fact, it is always possible to correct it.   If you go through legal action to change your name based on an assumption.. it would be worse if you find the assumption to be incorrect.  I encourage you to take the time to find the actual records that concern your ancestry, before doing anything.

Answer 4

It could also be of Polish origin, 'Sorew' : pronounced 'Soreff '.

.... Slavic linguists have written articles on when and why -ew-/-ow- is added in some cases, and -in-/-yn- in others, but that gets into complicated issues that are best left only to those who want to study Slavic linguistics in a serious way. The bottom line is that once either set of suffixes -ow/-ew and -in/-yn has been added to a stem to form a place name X, the suffix -ski can be further added to them to mean, in effect, "one from X."

http://www.polishroots.org/surnames/surn...

Soraw,Sorau in Nieder Lausitz, Poland.    ?????

http://www.fallingrain.com/world/PL/71/Z...

Wendy C. below, gives some excellent advice, on this matter.

Your grandparents came from Russia OK  but they, or their parents, or grandparents could quite easily have originated in Poland.