Why some of the family names of immigrants changed?
Families have roots and names have rules. Baabdat, the beautiful village of Maten, formed families that were known as the Baabdati families. Nevertheless, the change in some of them because of the distance added and removed some letters from the names which unfortunately made some of the immigrant families lose their real name...
How did that exactly happen? What lies behind it?
Two major factors made this change in the identity of the family names:
- The wrong or vague translation is one of the main reasons. The Baabdati expatriates to immigration countries made a mistake in spelling or writing their names because they didn't speak the foreign language. Thus, the names were written as they were pronounced in each country or any language according to the surname, profession or local names... That's what made the local authorities and harbor management register the name of these immigrants in a different random way. For example, the Corbani family was known in Argentina as the Flores family, the Melki family as Martinez and the Lahoud Labaki family as Dominguez.
- Another factor that led to this problem was to keep the name known in Baabdat in the foreign countries according to the tribe, grandfather, father or nickname... For example the Iskandar Fadoul Labaki family was known in Argentina as Fadul, the family of Nassif Mansour Labaki in Brazil became Mansur and the family of Tannous Najem Labaki became Nallim in Argentina. Spelling modifications were also made in the way the names and families were written differently such as: Melki, Mulqui, Melqui ....and Labaque, Labaqui, Lavaque, Labaki, Lavaki, Labaké...
This fact doesn't mean that whoever adopted these family names or other ones is necessarily from Baabdat. There are a lot of families who have origins in Lebanon or in others countries.
All these changes in the writing, pronunciation and adoption of new names, made the search for the Baabdati family roots, the places of the immigrants in the diaspora and the people who originate from Baabdat, difficult and confusing, especially that some of them were pronounced and written like foreign family names already existing in the immigration countries. It's normal that all these causes and results affected the accuracy of the statistics regarding Baabdati expatriates.
Dear relatives,
As a matter of fact, we would like to inform you that a lot of changes and modifications occurred to the names and surnames of a big number of Baabdatis who immigrated for various reasons, the most important being the lack of understanding of the hosting country's language.
Here is a small and brief example. It will just give you an idea of the modifications and changes to those names.
The name Youssef, for example, is known in spanish and portuguese as: Jose.
The name Jeryes, is known in the two same languages as: Jorge
The Labaki family was replaced sometimes with: Lávaque, Fadel, Mansour...
The Melki family became in other languages: Mulqui, Martinez...
The Obeid family was converted into Rached, Thomas...
The Corbani family turned into Flores, Nemer...
A lot of names and surnames of the Baabdati residents and immigrants are mentioned on our site as they are written in french, which is the second official language in Lebanon after arabic.
Hence, when you look for someone in the family tree, try many times to modify the spelling of one of the three names of the person in the search boxes: First Name, Father's Name and Family Name.
If the answer remains unfound, contact us so that we help you in your search, clarify any information, correct any name or add any novelty to the information.
It is important for you, to believe, that if we join our hands, we will make the name of Baabdat known all over the world. We are always at your service. Let's all always be at the service of Baabdat and its people whether residents or immigrants.
