I have been doing some reserach and can not find what my last name means can any

Question:

I have been doing some reserach and can not find what my last name means can any body help its "Lemish"

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Ahhh...this one I've researched for over a year!

Lemish is the Americanization of Lemiesz. It comes from the metal blade on an old-fashioned plough that cuts the earth. There's an old saying of turning plowshares into swords and that's from where the name was adapted.

You'll find the name in the Ruthenian areas of the former Congress of Poland. That land is now broken up, primarily into parts of Ukraine, Lithuania, Byelorussia, eastern Poland. It's around the Carpathian mountains. You'll also see people in that area referred to as "Karpatska Rus". If you pull immigration records or census records, they'll often declare their nationality as Russian or Russian Pole. They emigrated later than the German and Austrian Poles, many not coming to the US until after WWI.

That name could belong to a Ruthenian Catholic, Roman Catholic, Russian or Ukranian Orthodox or Jew. My client was a Roman Catholic from the Detroit area. His family ended up being from an area now in Lithuania, but it was considered Poland when they left. The fickle winds of geopolitics!