I asked my husband, who is Bulgarian, if he could be of any help, and he says both names sound like they may have been smaller villages that may no longer exist. Regarding Sarba, he also suggesting searching for it under these Cyrillic spellings: Шерба, Шарба

These spellings may take into account some of the changes in transliteration since that time.

 

He also passed along this link to the National Registry of Populated Places: http://www.nsi.bg/nrnm/

There is an option to translate the page to English built into the site, and you may be able to find something in their records. It doesn’t have comprehensive coverage of the period you are concerned with, but it does have some helpful information about administrative-territorial structure changes that occurred post-1878 on the info page.

 

Good luck!

 

Rebecca

 

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Emily-Jane Dawson
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2017 6:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Cities in Bulgaria

 

I looked in a couple of older gazetteers (Ritters geographisch-statistisches lexikon, published 1905-1906; and Nouveau dictionnaire de geographie universelle, published 1879-1895) and found nothing under the spellings you gave.  

 

It may help to remember that Bulgarian is written in the Cyrllic alphabet and transliteration styles may have varied over time.  Also, the contemporary nation of Bulgaria is of relatively recent vintage; Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908.  I suspect the borders have shifted over time, and Ottoman Empire-era names may not have been commonly rendered in the Bulgarian language.

 

Best of luck! 

 - Emily-Jane

 

 


 

Emily-Jane Dawson

Reference Librarian

Multnomah County Library

Central Library

Sunday-Thursday

503.988.5728

multcolib.org

 

Image removed by sender.

 

my preferred pronouns: she/her

 

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Dennis Matthews <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hello Everyone,

 

I have a patron doing some genealogical research and would like to verify the location of two cities in Bulgaria around the 20th century.  Immigration papers have the cities listed as Sarba, Bulgaria around 1898, and Lunedovo, Bulgaria around 1913.  I haven’t been able to locate anything online so I was wondering if there was a gazetteer or some other resource to verify the spelling of each and whether the towns still exist. 

 

Thanks,

 

Dennis

 

Dennis G. Matthews

Library & Archives Paraprofessional 6

Western Washington University

Western Libraries

516 High Street

Bellingham, WA  98225

Email: [log in to unmask]

Telephone: 360.650.3098 (Collection Services--Cataloging Dept.)

                     360.650.3272 (Map Collection)

Fax: 360.650.3044