Tracing the evolution of a double surname
My last name is somewhat unusual. It has been misspelled and mispronounced my entire life. I always tell people that Palsa is like “salsa with a P,” but in reality, the original pronunciation and spelling is a bit more complicated.
Growing up, I’d heard that my surname used to be spelled Palsha, to align with its Slovak pronunciation, and then my great-grandfather changed it back to its original spelling. It turns out, the Slovak spelling was Palša, which is pronounced “Palsha.”
But… there’s more. As I began to research my family history and find documents referencing my ancestors, I came across something curious. A ship passenger list in the early 1900s showed was a second word paired with Palsa: Dorov (variations included Doruv, Dorog, Doruf). At first, I thought it may have been a descriptive Slovak word. But I began to find it on more and more documents, indicating that it was actually a double surname.
The earliest record I’ve found of the double surname is the marriage record of Joannes Palsa Dorov and Susanna Lazur in January 1869.
The name was passed down to their son Georgius, who was born in December 1869.
The surname continues through Joannes’ death in 1884.
Joannes’ son Gyorgy carries on the “Palsa doruv” surname when he gets married in 1893.
And when Gyorgy decides to set sail for America in 1898, he keeps the name.
Some of the documents from my family’s collection are receipts from 1898, 1899, and 1904 of Gyorgy sending money back to his wife in Slovakia before she made the journey herself, along with their children.
But once they arrived in America, they dropped the second surname. All records I’ve found after 1910 only list Palsa or Palsha alone as the surname. George Sr. used the surname Palsha from about 1920 through his death in 1951.
However, my great-grandfather George Jr. (who was born in 1912), only used the surname Palsha until he married in 1939. At that time, he began using Palsa and continued to do so for the rest of his life.
Why would a family have a double surname?
When I was at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, Utah last year, I met with a staff member who specialized in Eastern European research to discuss this puzzling discovery. She shared that sometimes families who had a large presence in a region would differentiate themselves by adding a second surname that was tied to a locality, occupation, or even another family they worked for. The research specialist said this was not a common practice in northeastern Slovakia (where my family lived), but that it could explain the double surname I was finding.
I need your help!
I have yet to discover the meaning/origin of the second surname (Dorov/Doruv). This is where I need your expertise! If you have experience with Slovak genealogy and can help solve this mystery, let me know!
This post was inspired by 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.
What’s a surname study?
How interesting! Have you ever considered doing a surname study on your last name?