Hello all,
I have been doing some research on the history of the [b]BORICI[/b] family name that persists among many Balkan people. I have found out that this last name is shared among Serbians, Montenegrins, and Albanians. In the former two, the last name is written with the diacritic [b]ć[/b] (transliterated), so the name reads as [i]Borići[/i]. But in the latter, it is written as [b]Boriçi[/b], with the Turkish/Albanian letter [b]ç[/b].
Furthermore, I have discovered that several geographical names in the Balkans are spelled exactly as [i]Borici[/i], or with some variations, such as [i]Boric[/i] or [i]Boricje[/i]. Hence, we have villages (in Albania/Montenegro) spelled as Boric or Borici; we have a mountain south of Kosovo (spelled, I guess, Boric), and some other places in BiH or Croatia, including a Croatian location spelled [i]Boricevac[/i].
Last, but not least, I have found that several south-Slavic people share the last name Borici. I have found this in Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia, and in Albania it seems to be quite common. In light of that, the last name Borici seems to be a patronym.
As per the "Balkan fever", one could not state where one's family name is derived from unless confronted with facts. Therefore, I decided to write to this forum to ask for help in determining the origins of people whose last name is Borici (or Boric, as the closest variation). I would be very grateful if you could clarify this to me, at least with opinions, but mainly with facts. Is it South-Slavic, Albanian, Slavic in general?
Thank you!
I think we once wrote an article on this. Surnames are given to people due to an ancestor with a certain name, or they are named after a place, event etc. Spelling is of the outmost importance.
There is no quick answer to this, you would have to do genealogical research. It is possible that it involves one family that split up into a Christian and Islamic branch. Its also possible they have nothing in comon whatsoever. There are Serbian families with the surname of Djordjevic but also Roma families. They are not related at all, the only comon thing they share is perhaps an ancestor with the name of Djordje.
Some families have "typical" Ottoman names but even than you cannot see what ethnic background this person has without a doubt.
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Thanks for the response, Sergej.
Other than the genealogical trace, which poses an extreme difficulty, is there any geopolitical and demographic argument that can be given with respect to such a last name? For instance, one may find in some south-Slavic encyclopedia or archive library that the BORICI-s have moved from a region to another, and have been Turcized, Slavicized, or Albanianized or any combination thereof.
What is your input on this?
A genealogical trace is the key factor in any research. Especially in a region that has been plaged by geopolitical misinterpretations on demographics. I would need to see some more primary sources to give you any advice. Also the timeframe is important. If you want to know if one family has the same roots as they other you need to dig in the archives. Baptismal books, Tefters etc. and see if you can find commonalities. No commonalities means most likely no comon ancestor. Also just as in the rest of Europe most people didn't have surnames before Napoleon.
So unless you give me something concrete the answer is at it is. Hope this helps.
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Thank you, Sergej. I will get back to you with more details...
as is my understanding Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins etc using an i at the end of a name such as (Boric) Borici is to designate plurality. for example the boric's. (This may not always be the case). place names in serbia and such related to a surname would use an i to indictate that now or once this region was inhabited by a certain family such as Borici (the Boric's). so the actual surname in serbian would not be Borici but Boric. Albanians on the other hand do use an i at the end of surnames. so maybe if you are looking for the surname Boric look at the Slavic lands if you are looking for the surname Borici look to the albanian lands. However the Borici of Albania might have a Slavic background in themselves as northern Albania was once part of the Serbian kingdom.
Thanks for the info, arsenic.
It seems to be quite difficult to find information in English for the Boric/i surnames. If anyone has additional details, I'd be obliged if it is shared here.
There are some Borics in New Zealand that originated from Dalmatia, from memory, before journeying there if that helps.
They might have more info at the historical society: http://www.dalmatian.org.nz/
Thank you, zubacic, I'll be contacting them to attain more info, if any available!
I'll share related details here if in case other people bump into similar questions.
Hello all,
Is anyone aware of an online Croatian Genealogy Project, equivalent to this one? So far, the clues I have found trace back to Dalmatian (Croatian) roots.
Thanks you.
zubacic Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are some Borics in New Zealand that
> originated from Dalmatia, from memory, before
> journeying there if that helps.
>
> They might have more info at the historical
> society: http://www.dalmatian.org.nz/
I contacted the society and a Boric family got back to me with limited information. Evidently, the had migrated from Croatia to New Zealand, but the information they provided is insufficient pertaining to my goals...
Hi again,
I suspect I'm stuck at this point. Having contacted various people of interest, I seem to have reached a dead end. Is there any archival society in Serbia which I can contact for additional inquiries?
Thanks.
Can you tell me if you got new information or not?
I need to have a town name from which the ancestor came in order to direct you.
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Sergej, the new information I attained is as follows:
The New Zealand Borics of Croatian descent sent me the following among other data:
[quote]We 'Boric' come from Podgora, Dalmacija, Hrvatska (Jugoslavija) 1925.
[/quote]
What do you think?
Oh thats easy, Contact the archives in Split and request information.
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Thanks, Sergej.
Do you have any specific contact details of the Split archives? Can I contact them through email and do they usually get back?
Check the links page, there you can find their website.
They should get back to you, however it all varies per person.
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Hi all,
I just read the comments and I am writing directly hoping to be helpful. It is very interesting because there are a lot of albanians having this surname. I can confirm that there is a village called Borici in Shkoder (north-west of Albania) and in Shkoder there are a lot of people having the same surname. But in another big city in Albania (Fier, south-west of Albania) there are many inhabitants with the same surname. These people (the Fier's inhabitants) are muslims instead of them in Shkoder that are catholics. So, I don't know if there is any relationship between them? I shall investigate a little bit more about their origin if it will be interesting.
Hi ,
I asked for Borici in Albania and there are also some people holding this surname in a village of Diber (north-east). Lastly, I visited this village during my holiday and I had contact with these people. They agree that are muslims and in the first years of 20-th century many of them have gone to live in Fier. Maybe, they have been muslimized in the period of Ottomans Imperatory. So, the root of Borici's Fier people is in Diber. Also from this root are the Borici's people of Elbasan (another city near this village).
I asked them also if they knew something about their origin but nobody didn't know such a thing or better saying, do not have any documentation about it. They say that the ancient origin might be in Dalmatia but these are anecdotal.
Nertian,
What is the name of the village you visited?
Sergey,
I have contacted the Split archives, but I never received a reply from them -- they also didn't have an appropriate command of English in official communications...
*Stuck...*
Neritan,
Thank you for your post, it was informative.
Abor,
Did they tell you anything?
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
I think I may be able to help with *unstucking*
There are many pan-Slavic surnames that were derived from the same root. Best place to researchthat would be academic resources and linguistic studies that covered the subject, if you are researching that aspect of your genealogy.
You cannot really trace the ethnic affiliation of your ancestor backwards through a surname origin or distribution only, especially one that transcends so many borders that exist today, various religions and close spellings.
You should always try to determin the ethnicity your ancestors had at the time they emigrated.
If you have no information to start on - try this:
-Look at the place of residence where your ancestors settled after imigrating. Were there any ethnic communities present or formed at that time, was there any temple built or parish started tied to such community?
-Look at all possible spellings in imigration records and determin where the people who settled in the same area as your ancestor came from.
- What ethnic groups&religions did your ancestors marry into? These can give some ideas, as they often married within what I call *the comfort zone* -people of same origin/similar religious affiliation.
Only when you have established their location and ethnicity before emigrating, you can look back and then trace the history of that particular branch and perhaps connect it to some earlier documented migration or common ancestor.
Also, you may be confused by the fact that the surname seems to be of Serbian and Croatian origin - did you know that Austro- Hungary had large ethnic Serbian population living in what is today Croatia,Bosnia, Serbia,Slovenia and Hungary, and that many people who were later recorded as stating their ethnicity in US censuses to be SERBIAN or YUGOSLAVIAN actually were not coming from Serbia but places like Trebinje in Croatia someone mentioned here, and ethnic Serbian communities that existed there?
That can explain the distribution of the toponyms too, as people from the same ethnic group or clan migrated back and forth between places in Croatia, Bosnia and Hungary over the centuries.
I will look up territorially about the distribution of the surname in Austria-Hungary for you, but please try to find some more information on your end too, so that we can help you more.
P.S. Contacting municipal archives is always difficult, usually they will only do a look up if you provide the name and birth year of your ancestor and the place of residence. Sometimes they do not respond at all even if you have all that :(
Jugoslava
SGS web team
Many thanks, yugaya!
I have done some research on my side related to the demographic and territorial distribution of the Borici/Boric last name. As I've mentioned above, there exist two such villages in Scadar, northern Albania, which proclaim to have or to be of Serbian minority. That regards Albania. I also conducted some backtracking based on ancestral info, and that led to Dalmatia; the city of Split to be precise.
I shall be waiting for your search results with advance appreciation for your insights!
***
Sergey, the Split archives did not get back to me (by phone/email, nor by regular mail)...
Abor
So:
re the Albania Slavic settlements in the North and villages named BORIČ there - no surname BORIĆ in records, the Serbian Orthodox settlers that first arrived in this area called VRAKA in 1810. did not have that surname among them (well documented community and its subsequent migrations). If there is an earlier Slavic connection in regard to the old toponym or Albanian surname BORICI, it did not stem from these settlers.
BORIĆ people who immigrated to US mostly came from the LIKA - region of Austria-Hungary (today in Croatia) . LIKA was part of the MILITARY FRONTIER province where many people settled, especially during the XVIII century.
Significant clusters of BORIĆ family who then later from LIKA migrated further are found in Bosnia - region POUNJE, Bosanska Krajina.
I found only a few immigrants to US from the Split area, where the surname is documented in XVII and XVIII century, and these may be also connected to the BORIĆ family on the island of BRAČ there, first documented in the vital records of the island in 1595.
Large presence of ethnic Serbs in Austro -Hungary with surname BORIĆ was in the VOJVODINA region in Serbia today (XIX century but I haven't looked at earlier records and documents in detail, and cannot tell you where they came from without that).
You will find both ethnic Serbs and ethnic Croats with this surname who emigrated from Austria-Hungary.
A more detailed analysis would mean consulting the Serbian Orthodox Church censuses, and Status Animarum recports of the Roman Catholic Church from the Austria Hungary in all of the places where the surname appeared .
Jugoslava
SGS web team
I agree with yugaya!
One of trace for Borić family, you can find also in Lika's village Mogorić ( Magoric is name which was used before WWII). Mogorić is about 25km away from Gospić, Croatia nowdays.
The village's cementry has not destroyed.
I am, not sure wheather any of Borić family stayed in Mogoric after 1995. but I can check.
Borići from Mogorić family are ethnic Serbs.
Thank you, jasminka. It would be really helpful if you could check.
It seems to me from all these inputs that the Borici's are either Croatian or ethnic Serbs in Croatia or other former-Yugoslav republics. It puzzles me to learn about the Borici in Albania...
You cannot possibly document any link or prove it based on fragments or general information - you would need to research all available historical and ethnography sources from here and Albania, look for migrations, document the origin of each family, branch and surname - a research like that could only be carried out with visits to original holders of these documents and records -archives , would only be possible with extensive knowledge of all local languages as well as those that were in official usage , and would be in time and knowledge needed equivalent to doing a PhD thesis on this subject.
I am still baffled as to why are you researching all possible variants of these *maybe* connected surnames - I know of a few such successful researchers who made an effort to do that, and they have spent decades documenting their migration and origin theories of a particular surname or a family.
If you are interestred in figuring out where your direct ancestors came from and what their origin was - both immediate one before emigrating and the more distant origin of a clan or a surname please give us more concrete, specific data on the last known ancestor you know of .
I promise you a valid srtarting point for your research and direction where to look for records based on facts. if you are for any reason uncomfortable about sharing private information, you can send me a PM or an email - yugaya@gmail.com.
If you are a member of SGS Rodoslovlje I will contact relevant archives on your behalf and assist you further.
As for the question you asked- the area you are wondering about (Skadar) has a history of intertwined tribes and origins, and documented Slavic presence even for the period of their initial, pre-Christianic times arrival to the Balkans.
@ the two links you posted: the first one - http://www.geni.com/surnames/b... is a copy from a second-hand web source ( I call these *Balkan crap genealogy*) - usually run by people too inclined to document surnames as only as belonging to their own ethnicity - when you see wording like* ...surname X is mainly Croat/ mainly Serb..." best avoid it - ethnicity that was attached to a surname can only be determined by looking at original documents and needs to be determined for each and every family and smallest village of origin separately .
The sentence "Borići su uglavnom Hrvati, dobrim dijelom iz okolice Senja, a rjeđe su i Srbi (iz okolice Vinkovaca)"
translates as "BORIĆ are mainly Croats, in large part from the SENJ area, and more rarely Serbs from VINKOVCI surroundings".
Avoid such shady sources in the future if you are keen on working with facts. :D
- here are the ethnic Serbian BORIĆ families from just one original source that can be documented in Ličko-SENJSKA županija, in VRHOVINE and MOGORIĆ, so definitely in the SENJ area for which the link claims otherwise:
(source -database of The Serbian business association 'Privrednik' ('The Merchant') and the ethnic Serbian children it sponsored)
Second link - http://www.familycetic.net/sou... - is to a study by a priest& later ethnologist-curator MILAN KARANOVIĆ (1882-1955)- he published over 150 articles on ethnology and origin of families, He mentiones the BORIĆ surname that is found in LIKA in Croatia after migrations as one of the branches of the original BOGUNOVIĆ clan. I would consider him, given the amount of field research he did, the resources he had at his disposal (church vital records and original documents) , and his life choice of science over priesthood a reliable source.
Jugoslava
SGS web team
Sorry for the late responce.
Admin thank you for your appreciation.
abor, the name of village is Zabzun, Albania.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=zabzun+albania&hl=en&ll=41.343825,20.401611&spn=0.98769,1.755066&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.352165,56.162109&hnear=Zabzun,+Albania&t=m&z=9
in this village there some inhabitants surnamed Boriçi. From these people in aprox. 1930 they have moved to Fier and the Fier branch of Boriçi is from Zabzun.
Also there are some people surnamed Boriçi living in Elbasan and Tirana that have the same origin (Zabzun).
It's become very interesting now to me too, to know about Boriçi
Zabzun, interesting. Not so far from the Macedonian border so I wonder if there are any connections eastwards. Anybody have experience with the Albanian archives?
Sergej
Serbian Genealogical Society
Srpsko Rodoslovno Društvo
Thank you yugaya, neritan, and Sergej for the prompt participation.
Neritan and yugaya: If the Boriçi of the village of Zabzun have moved to the cities of Elbasan and Fier and Tirane, what the origins of the Boriçi of the city of Skadar (Shkoder)? Note that there are two villages name Boriç in that area. Could they have migrated from Montenegro, and Split and Lika in turn? Is there any such record?
yugaya and Sergej: I might need some quick input regarding this Croatian paragraph, since I don't understand the language: http://www.geni.com/surnames/borić.
yugaya: I did read your information regarding Lika and Bosanksa Krajina. In fact, I ran across this document: http://www.familycetic.net/sou.... If you search for "Boric", it gives three matches. However, I don't understand the language and I wish I knew what the author wrote. If sb could provide some help in that I'd appreciate it.
yugaya, the Boric, Borici, Boricic, Borich, Borick seem to have the same lineage, though this is just an allusion that comes to mind from what I have been examining these past two years that I started this. More hints would be greatly helpful.
Your thoughts?
Abor
Lastly I was reading occasionally a historical book in albanian. In this book it was a phrase written about an earl Boriçi that has moved from Albania in Italy during the 15-th century. It seems that people surnamed Boriçi have existed in Albania at that time. I am investigating more about it.