Search the collections at the Center for Jewish History
Once you have a town name, there are many printed gazetteers and online databases that include variant spellings. Many of these provide the map coordinates of the town, as well as its modern and historical political jurisdictions. To locate the town on a map, see our separate research guide on maps
Web Resources
JewishGen Communities Database. This database contains information on about 6,000 Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, including alternate and historical names for each town in various languages and transliterations, its political jurisdictions during different time periods, and links to relevant JewishGen resources. You can search for towns using either the exact spelling or the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex. Soundex searches find similar-sounding names with variant spellings. The Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex is especially suited to Eastern European names (e.g., “v” and “w” are considered the same).
Sephardic Gazetteer: Jewish Communities in the Sephardi Diaspora (compiled by Mathilde Tagger). This database is similar to the JewishGen Communities Database, but focused solely on the Sephardi diaspora. Entries on individual communities contain alternate spellings, province, country, and latitude and longitude.
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) GEOnet Names Server (GNS). This website is the official repository of standard spellings of all foreign (non-U.S.) geographic names, sanctioned by the United States Board on Geographic Names (US BGN). The database also contains variant spellings (cross-references), which are useful for finding purposes, as well as non-Roman script spellings of many of these names. All the geographic features in the database contain information about their location and administrative division. The database is updated weekly.
Resources at the Center for Jewish History
Mokotoff, Gary, and Sallyann Amdur Sack with Alexander Sharon. Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust—Revised Edition (Avotaynu, 2002). This gazetteer lists towns according to variant spellings. Present-day Kirovgrad, Ukraine, for example, can be found by looking up Elizabetgrad, Jelissawetgrad, Kirowo, Kirowograd, and a number of other alternate names. This book also provides the map coordinates of the town, as well as an estimate of the pre-WWII Jewish population.
Genealogy Institute DS 135 .E83 M65 2002
Cohen, Chester. Shtetl Finder Gazetteer (Heritage Books, 1989). This gazetteer has information on about 1,200 cities, towns, and villages in the Russian Pale of Settlement as it existed in 1900; in the Russian provinces of Samogita, Livonia, and Kurland (later combined with other Russian territory to form Lithuania and Latvia); in territory in the 19th century empire of Austria-Hungary; and in some additional places in 19th century Romania, Hungary, and Prussian Poland.