Please help me decipher the names of my ancestors on an old document

Factual Questions
1

My mother has been doing some research into her family’s history. She found a death certificate of her paternal great-grandmother. We’re trying to figure out what her maiden name was. Nobody knows anything about that side of my mother’s family because her father was raised by his stepmother and his biological mother ran out on the family when he was really young, and nobody ever talked about her or knew anything about her ancestry.

So - to be clear - this screenshot is from the death certificate of my great-great-grandmother. The portion shown here is the names of her parents, both of whom were apparently from Russia.

I cannot understand what the father’s name is. The first two letters appear to be a G and an S. I have never seen, anywhere, a human name starting with “Gs”. The next two letters are unclear. Possibly an A, an S, and an O? Which would make his name Gsasr? I looked that up on Google and the only instance of it being a name was a guy on Facebook who’s from Iraq. I guess it’s conceivable that an Iraqi wound up in Russia in the 1800s, but it seems unlikely. Occam’s Razor would suggest that I’m just misinterpreting the letters.

The last name is also confusing to me. It looks to me like “Devalniek”, but Googling that yields nothing and I mean absolutely nothing. I thought it might also be that what looked like an “e” is actually a “c” and the name is “Devalnick”, so I googled that. It does yield two results with that last name, although it’s spelled with a capital V - “DeValnick.”

I THINK the first two letters of the last name are D and E, but the two letters after that are more confusing. The letter at the end is also confusing. It could be a K, or an R. At a glance, the name almost looks like “Desalnier”, which does appear to be a legit name, albeit French and not Russian. Maybe he was a Russian of French ancestry? Maybe (I’m really stretching here) the descendant of a Napoleonic era soldier?

The name of her mother is also confusing. The first name looks like “Chana”, which is a real name that I have known real women with. The last name though, looks like “Viascel.” Googling, I do not see anyone with that name. Another interpretation of the letters is that the second letter is an L and the last letter is a C, making the name “Vlascec”. That doesn’t appear to be anyone’s name, but “Vlasec” appears to mean “fishing line” in Czech, so it could be…an occupational surname, spelled wrong (with an extra C) by whoever filled out this document?

2

Since I doubt anybody on this board created this document all you are going to get are guesses. This probably belongs in IMHO.

3

That looks like a capital I to me.

4

Father’s name is Isaac, Mother’s name is Clara.

I think the last four letters of father’s name is “nien.”

That’s all I got.

5

I’d say the man’s name is Isaac Devalnien

6

:man_facepalming: Isaac… that makes more sense, doesn’t it? I couldn’t conceive of that first letter being anything other than a “g”, and that really threw me off. But in hindsight, I should have wondered why the name started with a lower-case “g”. It does look like Isaac or Isaak. The last letter could be a K.

Devalnien isn’t a last name, as far as Google can tell. It sounds like it SHOULD be though. It has a nice ring to it.

7

I think you’re right about the “k” for Isaak. I may have to back off on “nien.” That could be “viev.” Similar to Sergei Prokofiev, although Devalviev isn’t similar to any Russian surnames I could Google.

If there is a family Bible of some sort, things like birth/death certificates end up in there quite often; sometimes family correspondence. My paternal grandmother’s Bible contained a letter from the old country (Ireland) full of “blatherskite” and “Kill the Protestants” and “Be sure to keep sending the money.” (Direct quote)

I leave you with a Bob & Ray joke (paraphrased): So how do you spell your last name, sir? Dryllkenmst. How is that pronounced? It’s pronounced, “Abernathy;” It lost something in translation from the Old Country.

8

I would urge you to broaden your search to a broader group of ethnicities. My Great Grandma came here from Odessa, but had a german maiden name because she was ethnically german, not ukrainian, or russian. I came up with the same thing you did for Viascel, but couldn’t find anything but viviscal, a hair treatment of some sort on google. I dunno, weird info bubble or something. I thing just simply tried brute forcing by looking up a list of russian surnames on wikipedia and didn’t find anything that looked like it could be Viascel or that could be corrupted into Viascel. I didn’t try german surnames or finnish or swedish or polish surnames though, so that’s one idea for you though.

9

ok I got time and this has my interest, so I’ve kept looking trying to figure this out.

I wonder if it could be that perhaps an anglicized version of the original name maybe?
I know, not helping…I’m really intrigued by this for some reason so still trying to help you puzzle it out.

Do you know what part of Russia by any chance? That might be of some help to know also.

Could it be a corruption or anglicised version of Danielyan…feels like I’m reaching here, plus thats an Armenian name.

If it’s a place name…oooooh, bets are off.

10

I can empathize. When they first put Ellis Island records online, I looked for both my maternal grandparents (I don’t have any immigrants on my father’s side later than 1840), since they could have easily have gone through Ellis Island. I couldn’t find either one with any variation on the spelling of their names.

When I found the exact date of my grandfather’s entry into the county I found him! There are only eight lettters in his entire name. They got three of them wrong. And he did come through Ellis Island. My grandmother came via Baltimore.

11

Yeah, I’m wondering if something got changed – I mean, the original may likely been in Cyrillic (depending on where in “Russia” of that time she was from), and there have been various ways of Anglicizing Cyrillic over the years.

That “Isaak” name definitely looks like “Devalnien” or possibly “Devolnien” to me, but neither of those turn up much. I also wonder if one of those "n"s could be "k"s perhaps? I know “v” was posited earlier, but I’m not convinced those could be "v"s. That said, I don’t think they are "k"s, as the “k” in “isaak” has the loop in there, that handwriting "k"s often do. Wait, the first “n” could be an “m” perhaps? That said, this scribes’s handwriting is all over the place. The “a” in “Russia” surely looks like it should be an “o.” Are there more examples of the person’s handwriting further in the documents with words that are definitely known that letterforms can be compared to?

12

So if Gma’s name is Clara V??? Could Gpa’s last name be D??a?r??r … ?

The more I look at it the more I think it’s De?s a/d lrier

Lamoral had it right, I’m pretty sure the name is Desalnier. My own family history is proof that ethnicity is no barrier to being a russian immigrant to the US, it would seem that there is a possibility of french descent via Moskva, so to speak.

Gma’s name, otoh, I’ll have to come back to that another day, out of time today.

13

Yeah, now that I look at it again, that “v” may very well be a tilted “s”. “Desalnier” could plausibly work. I’m not necessarily strongly convinced of that, but I’m also not strongly convinced it isn’t that, either. With that person’s handwriting, it could be a number of things.

If we had only just settled on printing.

14

I"m also not convinced it’s Clara. I think it’s “Chana” as in “Hannah.” The second letter there doesn’t look like what we think is an “l” in the father’s last name, and it just seems like a really oddball letterform to be an “l.” And that spelling seems to exist:

15

🫰That’s it! That’s what was bothering me. I wasn’t happy with Clara either, you’re right that it just doesn’t look like an l but an h, I was just so focused on the man’s name I couldn’t see the Forrest for the names.:crazy_face:

Hmm, a Hebrew name…:thinking:

No, it will have to wait until the morrow!
I shouldn’t be on here now, as it is

16

It would seem to make sense paired up with an “Isaac.” I don’t know how common a spelling it is, but it stuck out to me as looking like “hannah” and “ch” often being written for that hard “h” sound. And it looks like Wikipedia gives it as a variation of “Hannah” in its article on that name, so it must be common enough.

17

Ok, so, it possibly could be that the names given are new names adopted upon immigration(happened sometimes) which might make sense for a russian possibly jewish person to have a french(possibly primarily Canadian French) name. The woman’s maiden name, the best I can come up with is that it’s a variation of some name. I did come across this jewish genealogy website that is focused mostly on the former Warsaw Pact countries that I tried, with no results but it did give a couple of names her’s could be a variation of, Vaiser and Vainshel. I found these names in something they call the “Jewish Encyclopedia of Russia” which also only seems to list men as far as I could tell.

With that, I’m out of time and my brain seems to have run the course of its minor obsession with your mystery.

18

Yes. The I in Isaak was exactly how I was taught to handwrite capital I (in Canada).
I would have seen that as anything from Isaak to Isaop to Isaor - so Isaak for a name from Russia seems to be right. The final letter is how I learned to write “k” minus the high initial loop. I assume the clerk’s handwriting was not his strong suite.

The last name looks to me like Devolnien but based on the second “a” in Isaak could also be Devalnien. Depending on the clerk’s handwriting (I asume this is not the handwriting of the persons themselves) that could as easily be Devalviev

Based on the final “a” in “Russia” I would agree that “Chana” seems to be right. Chana Viascel? Seems an odd combination for Russian, would it be a mishearing of Viaskel? I would be tempted to think “Vlaskel” as a Russian-sounding name, but based on the other letters “i” (including dot placement) this seems a deliberate “i”, not a “L” where the ink ran dry. And, the final letter is too deliberate for it to be another “e” as in “Vlaskee / Vlasky”.

But, it gives you a number of things to check.

(I looked up my English ancestors from old records, and somewhere in the 1700’s the name changed to add the final “s” as in “Robert” to “Roberts” or “Peter” to “Peters”. Plus often using Y for i or vice versa in names, doubling consonants, etc. I wonder how accurate names are spelled in old records in other areas of Europe? Adding in the Cyrillic-to-Roman issues with Russia)

19

Looks more like Chava to me.

That’s a Yiddish women’s name. (Or, as has been suggested, it might be Chana.) There were a lot of Jews in Russia. One spelling or another of Isaak was also pretty common.

I don’t think that helps any with the last names, though. Of course, they might have changed those.

20

Old National Lampoon bit:

Ellis Island Official: Hey you, what’s your name?
Immigrant: Michaelangelo Bonaroti.
EIO: What kind of moniker is that for an American? From now on, you’re M.C. Boone.
Immigrant: Hey, ya stamped m’hand!
EIO: That’s in case you go out, you can come back in again.

I had a great great uncle who came into the country from Prussia as Mr. PIECK (PEEK). They got his name wrong and the family name became PICK.