I have an unusual last name of a COUNTRY,?

Question:

I have an unusual last name of a COUNTRY,?

Where can I find information on the surname and not the country? I have already tries multiple genealogy sites with no luck

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Grannytoad is right, Ellis Island didn't "assign" new names. That's a very old and tiresome myth. Long before our ancestors got off the ship and were processed, the ship's purser created a passenger manifest and all of the paperwork that was handed over to the Immigration officials to process people. In order to get on the ship, our ancestors needed passports and exit visas. Those were written by officials in their homelands and were the basis of the information listed on passenger manifests. None of it had anything to do with accents or literacy of the immigrants.

If your ancestors took a surname that was the name of a country, it's quite possible there was emigration in Europe that caused it. Here's an example. The name Switzer comes from the country Switzerland. If a Swiss man left Bern and resettled in Munich, his neighbors probably called him "the Switzer"...the man from Switzerland. I have researched two brothers from Tuscany Italy who emigrated to Lorraine France and used the surname Tuscano...back in Tuscany their surname was Lombardo...their great-grandfather was from Lombardy. His ancestor's surname back in 1410 was Bosco...he was a Basque.

People throughout history chose the way they were known by their friends and neighbors. Countries like France and the Netherlands didn't even formalize surnames until the early to mid 1800s. If your ancestors were gracious enough to give you a surname that gives you clues about their origins, embrace it. It's much better than researching the ever-so-common Smith or Johnson.

How to research it is fairly straight-forward. Walk through the common records...census, passenger lists, church records, birth/marriage/death records for both the immigrant ancestor and his children, obituaries, local biographies, etc. Create as much of a picture as you can. See if you can find the actual country that your immigrant ancestor left to come to the new country. Then go back to the public and religious records there and keep researching. At some point, probably around 1400-1450, you'll find the surname mutating. The concept of the surname was evolving and there was great turmoil in Europe during that period that caused pretty significant emigration. Follow the record as far as you can go. Look carefully for wills and probate records, land records and religious records. It may take quite a bit of time, but the records won't go anywhere.