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Re: anyone heard of "Ilko" or "Hylko"
in reply to a message by Bill
I'm also doing research and my great great grandfather was buried in cohoes ny and the papers called him Alex. Census data has his name as "Ilks" and wwi draft card has him down as "Ilko". His wife was from Galacia her name was Anna Kowal, both arrived 1899. He is from somewhere that I can NOT make out! Looks like "lubvo" or something like that. It's definitely not Lviv. Trying to decrypt this is very difficult. They also crossed out their mother tongue language. It said Ukrainian but has a like through it and above that "OL" old language maybe? Not sure. If I don't get back my email is amnatale89@gmail.com
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Angela, we might be researching the same family. I am trying to figure out who Ilko Lepak was in later census documents. I have Kowals in the tree, also. He made several trips to the US, and was Galician.
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Kowal is a Lemko surname. (Many Lemkos would describe themselves as an ethnographic group belonging to the Ukrainian nation. Others believe they are an ethnic group distinct from Ukrainians. Galician just means from Austria Hungary's province (before 1918) - the Lemko settlement area is in the Carpathian Mountains of southeast Poland) If you look it up, you might open a whole lot of information for your research. :)
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I also have a great grandfather with the name Ilko, from Mycow area of Galacia (present day border of Lubelskie, Poland and Lviv, Ukraine). He most definitely identified himself as Ukrainian. I have records which show his name as Elko, Ilko, Ilza and Elias. His marriage record, which appears to be in his own writing, shows his name as Elias. None of my relatives ever recall his name being Elias. Ilko is possibly a short form of Elias?
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I am also searching for my grandfather who I had always known as Alex, but I appeared to find him on a ship manifest under the name Ilko. He is also from Galicia and of Polish/Ukrainian extraction like many in this thread. Just trying to figure out if anyone found out if it was short for anything
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The most authoritative sources I’ve seen say Ilko is a variant of Elias/Eliasz/Eliyahu in the Suwalki/Podlaskie region of Poland (under Russian Empire in late 19th C). I have an ancestor shown as Ilko in most birth records of his children (in JRI-Poland database), and once as Icko (which is usu. a variant of Isaac). To add to the confusion, I had hoped both were variants of Hillel, which is the name of a person who would be a critical missing link between my line and others I know of in the Suwalki/Wizajny/Przerosl area. Happy to hear from anyone who’s seen that Hillel/Ilko or Icko variant, or has other info: andem at earthlink.net
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