FIRST NAMES OF THE POLISH – LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH: ORIGINS & MEANINGS   – ELECTRONIC VERSION  4.7 MB DOWNLOAD – link will appear on your bookstore receipt

Authors: William F. Hoffman and George W. Helon

ISBN 978-0-9985857-7-2

This is a revision of a printed book by the same authors published by the Polish Genealogical Society of America in 1998 under the title First Names of the Polish Commonwealth: Origins & Meanings.

In terms of content, the PDF is roughly 95% the same as the print version. A few typos have been corrected, and some material has been updated. The main advantages of purchasing the PDF are:

1) Lower price – there are no printing or shipping expenses involved.

2) Greater portability – you can bring it with you on a tablet or laptop.

3) Easy searchability – a PDF can easily be searched for specific terms.

Like surnames, first names have their variants, translations, equivalents, linguistic and phonetic renderings that can puzzle genealogists. Learning their meanings and variations can serve as an important family history tool.

This companion book to Polish Surnames includes three chapters of historical and linguistic background followed by a 300-page list of names used in the old Polish Commonwealth of these origins: Czech, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Latin, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. Appendices include informational charts on the Polish, ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew, Russian Cyrillic, and Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabets, as they apply to name derivation and usage, as well as a list of Cyrillic forms of common Jewish first names.