Unmarried female Surname Spellings

by Tom S.

 

Jennifer,

In Lithuania, female surname endings change based on marital staus while male surname spellings stay the same regardless of marital status.

If Lukosevicius is the family surname, the males in the family would use the same spelling regardless of whether they were married or single.

The surname spelling for the wife would Lukoseviciene (married females surnames all end in IENE) while any unmarried daughters would go by Lukoseviciute. Surname endings in US change to UTE (or IUTE in older days). For example, Senkus would be Senkute (or Senkiute in older days). Other unmarried female endings would include YTE (Rulis becomes Rulyte) and AITE (Jankauskas becomes Jankauskaite).

Since the changed spelling in not common in Englsih speaking countries, you sometimes find cases where a mother and her children are emigrating and all of their surname spellings get recorded using the mother's surname spelling (i.e., they all end in IENE, even the males).

Hope this clarifies things.

Tom S.



Posted on May 7, 2010, 11:35 AM

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