Rodziny - Polish Genealogical Society of America

Moikrewni.pl—A Review of a Polish Genealogical Web Sitewith Surname MappingRobert P. Sliwinski, M.S., e-mail Genealogical Web sites designed forPoles are becoming fashionable thesedays, because of an emerging interestin family history in Poland. One recentlydeveloped site catering to Polishcitizens and allowing them to createfamily trees online is www.moikrewni.pl (Figure 1). This site, written in Polish,has a unique feature that may alsobenefit Polish-American genealogists:its surname mapping.The very existence of this site is aninteresting development because, forthe longest time, Polish citizens werevery private and did not like providingany personal information online. Sitesthat do give such information are protected,and you need to register to buildyour tree. There are, however, typicallysome features that are available to allwithout registering.In Polish, moi krewni (pronounced mo´yeekrev´-nee) means “my relatives.” Thesite’s title, therefore, uses appropriate Polishwords to describe its theme.Worth noting, however, is the fact thatthis site is just one of a family of genealogicalWeb sites created by OSN Online SocialNetworking GmbH, based in Hamburg, Germany.Similar sites were designed for otherlanguages, including English, German,Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and BrazilianPortuguese. The English version, http://www.itsourtree.com/, is very similar to the otherWeb sites, but there are slight differencesbetween the various language versions.Moikrewni uses the basic “let’s build afamily tree” idea as its starting point. Additionally,it provides a forum, contact information,and a section regarding the company’spolicies. As I said, though, the featuremost valuable for Polish-Americans is the“Mapa nazwisk” or “surname map” at http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/. Mapping of surnamesin current-day Poland can potentially be auseful tool to locate lost relatives in the oldcountry. It is especially useful for uncommonsurnames.Remember, however, that the site isgeared toward the Polish speaker, and aname you type into the “Mapa nazwisk” boxcould be only partially correct. The Polish6 Rodziny, Spring 2008Figure 1. Home page of www.moikrewni.pl (all screen capturesused with permission of the Moikrewni webmaster).diacritical marks are very important on thissite, and the database may contain numerous,slightly different variants of surnameswith diacritical marks. For instance, if youtype in Sliwinski in English and click on thebutton that says “Szukaj” (Search), you willget a map for Sliwinskis in Poland; but thismap will be misleading and incomplete.In Polish the standard spelling of thisname is Śliwiński, with acute accents overthe s and n. Variant spellings of the nameinclude Śliwinski and Sliwiński. To illustrate,a search for Sliwinski tells you that asof 2002 there were nine Polish citizens whowere listed under that name in the databaseof PESEL (a Polish government agency)from which these figures were compiled.There were 31 entries for Śliwinski and 119for Sliwiński. A search for Śliwiński, on theother hand, shows you there were 8,955Poles who spelled it that way. The diacriticalmarks make a difference!What’s more, Poles use feminine formsof many surnames, including those typicallyending in -ski, -cki, -zki, and -ny. Thestandard feminine form is Śliwińska, and9,570 Polish citizens went by that formas of 2002—not something you’d want tooverlook. The variants Sliwinska, Śliwinska,and Sliwińska, though not technically correctby Polish spelling rules, should not be