Changing Place Names Mapped

The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, part of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has unveiled a new interactive map feature on their website: Mapy z Przeszłością (Maps of the Past). The online tool superimposes historical maps over a modern map of Central and Eastern Europe, allowing researchers to visualize and compare shifting borders and place names over time. 

The turbulent nature of Poland’s history, with its boundaries expanding, contracting, and disappearing over several centuries, is reflected in the geographic range of the maps available as overlays. The new map tool is useful for users with ancestry from modern Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, or the historical territories of the German, Russian and Austrian Empires.

In Central and Eastern European genealogy, you will encounter place names that changed depending on who controlled an area and when. This complicates research as we sort out and weigh the accuracy of the various place names that are found in overseas sources. For example, researching a Lithuanian immigrant ancestor, you may find that their town of origin is reported in its Polish form in the sources of the country they emigrated to, such as Great Britain, America or Australia, reflecting the official name from the early nineteenth century. The same town or village may be recorded in another record with an approximation of its Russian name, from when Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. The town name may also appear in its Lithuanian form, which became official in the twentieth century. Researchers with Jewish ancestry may also find a distinct Yiddish form of their ancestral town or village recorded in overseas sources.

A historical map with Polish placenames overlayed on a modern map of Grodno, Belarus

With the new map overlays, a researcher can alternate between historical periods, translating placenames in the process. This is most effective for placenames with Polish and German variants. Pay attention to the names of nearby towns and villages. Those placenames may appear later in religious or civil records. Some maps also include symbols that mark the nearest religious community.