On the changing nature of given names in an immigrant population
I love solving puzzles. I often have a “spidey sense” about the answer before I have the logical reasons to lend it credence. There is something operating beneath the surface that I can’t fully explain, but I study my path to try to grasp its secrets.
I am drawn to genealogy in much the same way that I am drawn to reading. It is a way to imagine the lives of other people in other times, plus it has that added benefit of allowing me to solve puzzles. There is an impatient part of me that wants to rush the process, but I have learned it cannot be rushed or pre-judged. I need to remain open to possibilities as they unfold.
Recently, I was hired to find what I could for a client who knew very little of one side of his family. He started as do many of my clients, with the names of his grandparents, Harry Hoffman and Esther Ackerman. They were from Romania – Bucharest he thought. He wasn’t aware of any family beyond his grandfather who came over and when I went to the records on JewishGen from Romania nothing came up in that region. I could feel those butterflies that always begin a search. What if I come up empty-handed? I can only work with what is there and sometimes it just isn’t there. As I couldn’t draw on overseas records, I focused my search on the US which can often shed some light on their ancestral town.
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