Re: VMs: Re: nationality [was: Hieronymus Bosch...]

["Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dennis,

>         Thanks to Rafal and Dana.  Do either of you, or
> anyone, know which family crest was Wilfrid's?  

The name of the coat-of-arms is Habdank or Abdank or Awdaniec,
and you can see it for example here:

   http://www.psychodiagnostic.ca/1ABDANK.gif

Polish heraldry is also very, very different from the British
and other European systems. Arms have their names and many families
all use the same arms - often, as in this case, several dozen.
In theory they were all originally related, before present
family names were formed. One can think of them as clans.
So this is not Wojnicz's arms exclusively. There were perhaps
sevaral thousand people who also had right to it at that time.

> Was "Wojnicz" spelled thus in Lithuania, under whatever
> regime?  I know Lithuanian orthography is not the same
> as Polish, which is so distinctive.

Well, there was no "Polish regime" in Lithuania! :-) After all,
it was a Lithuanian dynasty that ruled the Commonwealth for
two centuries. And, of course, from 1772 until 1918 it
was "Russian regime".

As I explained, the nobility in Lithuania was polonized and
they spoke Polish. Actually, the Lithuanian language disappeared
and was only reconstructed in the 19th c. with the national
awakening - on the basis of Samogitian.

To complicate things further, the official language used
at courts and documents in Lithuania during its union
with Poland was Ruthenian (Old Belorusian). Throughout
the 19th c. it was obviously Russian.

I am writing all this just to show that the question cannot
really be answered. It is like asking "What is the spelling
of Sean Connery's name in Gaelic under the English regime?"
It just doesn't matter. 

Best regards,

Rafal
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