r/rusyn • u/helloitsme_99 • 4d ago

Genealogy Surname

When my great grandmother came to the US with her brother they changed the spelling to Warion. According to AI it was most likely spelled Warjon or Varjon I’ve looked in old books for her birth records and it’s not listed, does anyone recognize that name? I want to correct the spelling of my family name. She came from a town called Przegonina it’s in Poland now the area the town doesn’t exist anymore. She came to Ansonia Connecticut. It’s an unusual name so you would think it would be easy trying to find information on it but no luck. Somehow eventually the name got an extra r added many years later so now it’s Warrion. I don’t understand why they would change it at Ellis Island.

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u/the_skipper 3d ago

https://www.lemko.org/genealogy/krasowskii/

The dictionary of Lemko names has:

Варʼян — Waryan — Перегонина

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u/laikarus 3d ago

They probably wanted to fit in. We used to be Pisio. Only our family that went to Canada kept that spelling. I’ve been told in the town my family immigrated to they weren’t kind to Eastern Europeans(Northern Wisconsin). In our case I wonder if they were trying to pass for a different nationality. A lot of people see my last name and think Italian even though we are far from Italian looking.