Buzik as a First Name or Nickname

The name Buzik puzzled me at first. It looked like a nickname, but I wasn't been able to find it as a common nickname of another Yiddish, Ukrainian or Russian name. The closest I could find in JewishGen.org's Given Names Database was Buzhi, used as a Yiddish nickname for Barukh in the Ukraine.

I ran a search in the Ellis Island database (1892-1924) for men whose first names started with "Buz" using the wonderfully convenient form provided by Steve Morse. I got eight results that were reasonably similiar to Buzik: Buzik (1), Buzic (3), Buzica (1) and Buzech (3). One of the Buzics had his name spelled that way on list of passengers detained for special inquiry. On the corresponding passenger manifest, his name was spelled Buzde.

The passenger manifests were dated from 1892 to 1911, and the amount of information they record on each man's home town/region/country increased over time. Here's what I could find:

• Buzica Frankin was from Serbia.
• Buzech Peretz was from Jassy in Romania.
• Buzic Julika was from Hungary. The name of the town had been overwritten, so I couldn't make it out.
• Buzic Matulic was from Malat in Austria (i.e. the Austrian Empire).
• Buzik Schinorok was from Nowograd in the Russian Empire. Nowograd means "New City," so not surprisingly there's more than one possibility:
  • Nowogród in the Łomża gubernia, 124 km NNE of Warsaw;
  • Novgorod in the Novgorod gubernia, 489 km NW of Moscow;
  • Novgorod Severskiy in the Chernigov gubernia, 259 km NE of Kiev; and
  • Novograd Volynskij in the Volhynia gubernia, 206 km W of Kiev.
• Buzech Weinstein was from Koretz, almost certainly Korets in the Novograd Volynskij district of the Volhynia gubernia, 238 km W of Kiev.
• Buzech Tartakowsky was from Birdichew, i.e. Berdichev in the Kiev gubernia, 150 km WSW of Kiev.
• Buzic Kupermann, AKA Buzde Kusserman, was living in Tomaschpol, i.e., Tomashpol' in the Podolia gubernia, 256 km SW of Kiev before he immigrated. He was born in Zabokrye, possibly Zhabokrich, 23 km from Tomashpol'.

Note that three - possibly four - of these eight men came from a relatively small region west of Kiev. "Our" Buzik, Buzik Rabinowitz, is of course from Chopovichi in the Kiev gubernia, 119 km WNW of Kiev.

I also found a reference to "Buzik Portnoy (from Stariky)" in Israel Greenberg's account of events in Rokitnoye in 1942. This account is part of the Rokitno-Wolyn and Surroundings; Memorial Book and Testimony. The town referred to lies 249 km WNW of Kiev in the former Volhynia gubernia. Staryky is a small town 14 km away.

I found three references in on-line genealogies for men named Baruch who went by Buzik as a nickname. One of them was born in Vinnytsia in the Podolia gubnernia, 198 km SW of Kiev. For the other two, I have no information on their birthplaces.

Of the 13 Buziks I've found, six or possibly seven of them came from a sort of lopsided kite-shape formed by Chopovichi to the east, Rokitno to the north, Korets to the west and Tomashpol' and Vinnytsia to the south. Berdichev and Novograd Volynskij lie within this shape. It's an area of about 17,340 square km, smaller than the US state of New Jersey, larger than Connecticut. For the remaining six Buziks, four come from scattered locations (Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Austria) and two come from unknown locations.

In the "About the Author" section of Buzzy Jackson's book, Shaking the Family Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist, Jackson describes how her grandmother, Mary Mindl Yaffe Baum, contributed to the nickname "Buzzy." Baum called her granddaughter buzik, which the family believed to be either a Yiddish or Russian word for burr - "a tiny seedlike thing that clings to you," as Jackson puts it. However, Jackson also states that she's been unable to find a Russian, Yiddish or Ukrainian speaker who recognizes this word.

In a private e-mail, Jackson quoted her own mother, Baum's daughter, who reported that Baum used the word buzik "when presented with examples of extreme cuteness." She also confirmed that Baum was "from Rovno, near Kiev," and not from Galicia. Now my own aunt claimed that Chopovichi was a suburb of Kiev. It's actually 119 km away. Applying a similar standard of "near Kiev" to Rovno - Rivne in Ukrainian - there are three possibilities:

• Rivne (Rovne in Yiddish, Rovno in Russian) in the former Volhynia gubernia, now in the Rivnens'ka oblast, 303 km W of Kiev. This is the largest of the three possibilities and the one I've highlighted on the above map;
• Rivne (Rovne in Yiddish, Rovnoye in Russian) in the former Kherson gubernia, now in the Kivovohrad oblast, 259 km SSE of Kiev; and
• Rivne in the former Volhynia gubernia, now in the Volyns'ka oblast, 500 km WNW of Kiev.

There's also a Rivne in the Lviv oblast, 509 km WSW of Kiev, but before WWI this would have been in Galicia in the Austrian Empire.

In the course of looking for Buziks and buziks, I tripped over the Middle High German word butze. Middle High German refers to a form of the German language used between roughly 1050 and 1350. It's believed to be one of the foundations of Yiddish. According to the Dictionary of American Family Names (Patrick Hanks, ed; published 2003), in MHG butze denoted something small: "an apple core, a small piece of something left over, a small person, a poltergeist." (Butze should not be confused with bütze meaning a well or puddle. The umlaut changes the spelling and the meaning. Butze and bütze are as different as cat and cot.)

Now let's go back to JewishGen.org's Given Names Database. According to this database, Buzhi is used as a Yiddish nickname for Barukh in the Ukraine but not in other areas. However, in Poland the Yiddish nicknames for Barukh include Butche, Butshl, Butshe and Butsyo. I.e., nicknames that sound more like butze than buzik. The Given Names Database also includes the feminine Hebrew name Buzya (Yiddish: Buzye) for the Ukraine but not other regions. Nicknames for this name were Buzi, Buzia and Buzie.

All of this got me wondering if there might have been some kind of interplay in development between words and names. If the word buzik was used in the area of the Ukraine west of Kiev to indicate something small, this might have fostered the use of names and nicknames that sounded like buzik for children. Yiddish certainly displayed regional variations. It might be that Yiddish as spoken in the area west of Kiev - and nowhere else - included a word buzik that originally derived from MHG butze. It might also be that the nicknames used for Barukh in Poland reflect a transitional form of butze/buzik.

All of this is highly theoretical. I'm neither a linguist nor a Yiddish scholar. I can neither speak nor read Yiddish. (My father refused to teach me, as he considered Yiddish to be a greenhorn language.)

However, I do have plenty of raw data available to me on the first names given by people from different areas of eastern Europe: the Ellis Island database. A search for people whose first names started with Buz- and who identified themselves as Jewish yielded a sample population of 28 women and 28 men. (Of course, not all Jewish immigrants identified themselves as Jewish to the immigration authorities rather than Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Only three of the eight Buziks mentioned above identified themselves as Jewish. But I wasn't trying to capture all Jewish immigrants but rather a sufficiently large sample of Jewish immigrants. Running the search without the Jewish specificiation resulted in 211 results that included people like Buzio Ammaturo of Caserta who were irrelevant to the question I was trying to answer. Anyone who's interested in analyzing this larger data sample is welcome to go for it.)

Of these 56 people, 25 were either born in the Ukraine or, in earlier records that didn't distinguished place of residence from place of birth, came from the Ukraine. All of these people were from towns located in one of three gubernii prior to WWI: Kiev, Volhynia (NW of Kiev) and Podolia (SW of Kiev). 17 people were from towns identified as being in Russia that I either couldn't find or had too many possible identifications. They might or might not have been from the Ukraine. I simply can't tell. Three people were from towns in Russia that were definitely outside the Ukraine (two from Vilna in Lithuania and one from Minsk in Belarus).

11 people were either born outside Russia or, in earlier records that didn't distinguished place of residence from place of birth, came from outside Russia. Four of these people identified themselves as having been born in Romania, but in towns that were located in the Bessarabia gubernia (S of Podolia) before WWI. Two were from other areas of Romania. Three were from Galicia, one was from Hungary and one was from London.

Based on this sample, I think that the hypothetical association of Buz- names with the area west of Kiev (possibly extending south into Bessarabia?) holds up pretty well.