# All Slavic languages: Can you help me indentify this surname?



## Everydayhero

Hi! I'm new here and I'll really appreciate if you try help me in this matter:

I recently begun being interested in genealogy, so I started digging in my family history and also tried with the DNA kits for ethnicity with my parents. It turned out my dad is 15% Balkan and so am I (4'9%), and even though they have other ethnicities I dind't intherited, I found myself really involved in uncovering the Balkan side of my family because it's still along with me after several generations.

I had some ideas of where could it be placed, and some days ago I found this surname:






I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find any refference to this surname except this census in Familysearch of a woman from Slovakia living in United States:






Do you have any hint of what this surname could be? I'm running out of resources and I would like at least knowing if my hunch is true.


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## bibax

It looks like misspelled Tartalos (Tartallos). Is the text written in Kurrentschrift?

The second last name may be Tarsalla (either Italian or Finish) or Jarsalla (Finish).


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## Panceltic

Farfalla ? (Italian)


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## bibax

The loop at the end is either a letter or an embellishment. 
We need more text to do comparison.


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## nimak

Isn't the 4th letter a "k"?


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## bibax

Probably not.
IMHO it is written in the kurrentschrift. The 1st and the 4th letters are T and t.


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## nimak

Yes, it seems they are the letter "t", so the name is Tartalla.

Well, in Macedonia there is a surname *Тарталов (Tartalov)* and also *Тарталоски (Tartaloski)*, *Тарталовски (Tartalovski)*. The "nickname" of these surnames can be *Tartal*, *Tartale*, *Tartalo* or *Tartala*. In the past many Macedonian surnames were in "nickname" form and didn't have the suffixes -ov or -(v)ski.


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## Torontal

Everydayhero said:


> I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find any refference to this surname except this census in Familysearch of a woman from Slovakia living in United States:
> 
> View attachment 32312
> 
> 
> Do you have any hint of what this surname could be? I'm running out of resources and I would like at least knowing if my hunch is true.



Hi, I don't know if that helps in any way, i looked up your second name on familysearch (you took it from here, from the 1920 US census https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RX9-W9?i=6&cc=1488411 )

But that very same surname is written like this in the 1910 US census (they lived in the same place
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRJF-FY9?i=9&cc=1727033





I wonder what could be the original name of that poor guy, the American census takers corrupted it for sure )


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## jasio

Hi Everydayhero, 

If you allow me a few off-topic comments, for which I apologize.

Firstly, so called DNA ethnicity tests can be extremaly misleading, and require very thourough reading and understanding the documents you probably received. Quite recently I've found a video on YouTube where an Afroamerican young lady tried to discover her presumably African DNA heritage only to learn that her mitochondrial DNA was identified as European rather than African. :-O If you understand basic genetics it is a bit surprising indeed, but in fact, it's not that impossible either. It's because mitochondrial DNA is inherited virtually unchanged in the maternal line only. So basically, you have the same mitochondrial DNA as your mother (and her mother, her mother, etc) - and your siblings, of course. So except for a tiny risk of mutation, every reliable test based on the mitochondrial DNA should give exactly the same results for you and your mother. Another common test is a test of the Y chromosome - which you inherited unchanged from your father, his father, his father, etc. Of course, provided that you are male, otherwise you would not have it. The basic rule is the same though: apart from an even much more marginal risk of a mutation, every reliable test based on the Y chromosome, should give exactly the same results for you and for your father. As long as we consider biological parents, of course. As far as I am aware, only these two tests are currently used, because all the other genetic material is rermixed every generation, so analysing it is not currently possible. But who knows... computers get more and more powerful every day. 

Secondly, if you think about the consequences of the testing methodology, you quickly realise that if you move, say, 10 generations back (which is roughly equivalent of mere 200-250 years. or roughly speaking end of 18th century, perhaps early 19th century considering earlier marriages back then), disregarding inbreeding you might have had 2^10 = 1024 ancestors living in that period. But only up to two of them (~0.4%) left identifiable genetic traces in your DNA! And this last figure is halved every generation. This makes the whole process... well, interesting, potentially scientifically objective, yet applying to a marginal part of your true heritage - and with no relationship whatsoever to your cultural background. 

Thirdly, there is no direct 1-to-1 correlation between geographical regions, nationalities and DNA. People move (voluntarily or involuntarily), change their ethnicities over generations, yet they take their DNA with them wherever they go. Consequently, a corelation between the DNA and the region is of a purely statistical nature. Some variants of the genes happen to be found more often in certain modern regions than in the others - but they can often be found across all Europe and Middle East. This is true for virtually every location and population on Earth, but is especially true for the Balkan powder keg. Celts, Dacians, Tracians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, Protobulgars, Slavs, Huns, Magyars, Germanics, Jews... you name it - left their genetic traces in the modern populations, thus contributing to the statistical complications. More... people of Balkan origins, who's ancestors had assumed islam, were considered Turks and expelled to Turkey after the Ottoman empire collapsed in early 20th century, while the people originating from Anatolia, with various etnic backgrounds, whose ancestors had assumed Christianity and stayed with this religion, could have been considered "Greeks" and expelled from the modern day Turkey to Greece - again complicating the modern day DNA picture. Also, quite a lot of people from the Balkans had moved to modern day Italy - either as colonists in pre-Roman times (mainly in the Southern part of the peninsula, and Sicilly), as slaves in Roman times, or as migrants during subsequent millenia. Actually, until some 15th century or so, it was more common to speak Greek in the Southern part of "the Italian boot" than to speak a local dialect of Italian! Consequently, there may be quite many people of presumably Italian identity, who would in fact have "Balkan" genes. 

To make a long story short, if you asked the same questions about the names in Italian, Spanish, Greek, Albanian forums, it would increase your chances - unless there are any specific traces in the documents which would point to one of the Slavic countries of the region. To my - Northern Slavic - eye, the name does not sound Slavic though - albeit you may not be sure considering creativity of immigration officers.


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## Circunflejo

nimak said:


> Yes, it seems they are the letter "t", so the name is Tartalla.


If the name is Tartalla, it's documented both as a nickname and as a surname in Panticosa, Spain in the XVth Century and some centuries before there's a guy called Galindo tartalla related with the encomienda de Zaragoza de la orden de S. Juan de Jerusalén. In the XVIth Century, there are references of several persons that had Tartalla as surname in Villafáfila (Zamora).
It should also be said that Italian mathematican Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia was named in Spanish Nicolás Tartalla instead of Tartaglia.


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## onitamo

Thank you Jasio,   nice reply (with off topic comments).


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