Ragusin.

A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

The name Ragusin appears to be derived from the Republic of Ragusa. This was a small, medieval maritime power centered on the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia that existed from ca. 1200 until 1805. They contested at various times with Venice, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire control of the Adriatic and trade throughout Mediterranean Sea. At some time a diplomat or captain or trader from Ragusa was most likely referred to as Ragusin (signifying a person from Ragusa) and in, at least, one case the name stuck. As I stated on my homepage, I believed this happened only once and therefore all Ragusins are related. The purpose of this website is to try and prove or disprove my belief.

What family name do I encounter when researching my Ragusin (using my spelling) family? The answer may be surprising, but is that it depends. The spelling of Ragusin depends on what country the records come from and who is recording them (different languages); it depends on the age of the record (languages change through time, alphabets as well); and believe it or not, it depends, in some languages, whether the Ragusin being reported on is the subject, object or direct object of the sentence.

I have already commented in another post that my branch of the family spelled Ragusin with an “s.” There are other Ragusin family members in the United States who spell it with a “z.” Even the Croatian scribes who wrote the records alternated between “s” and “z.” The post cards I have that were sent to my grandfather by his sister in Europe spelled the name with an “s.” The Croatian Catholic Church began using the Latin script (like the letters I am typing with now) about 1790. Prior to that they used used an ancient Cyrillic-like script called Glagolitic. Even the scribes using Glagolitic alternated between various forms of “s” and “z.” Some of these differences might be due to different dialects.

In addition, Latin and Croatian are two languages that decline their nouns including names. This means that a suffix is added to the end of every noun to identify its number (singular or plural), gender (male or female) and case (subject, object, or direct object). Many Croatian records give our name as Ragusinu or Ragusina. Still older records have other variant endings. However, this is not the true name, but is the true name (“Ragusin”) plus a grammatical suffix (“a” or “u”).

Another issue is that many times when an Italian speaking priest (probably Venetian) reported on a Ragusin they recorded the name as Ragusini. The extra “i” is is not demanded by the Italian language or grammar, but seems to be cultural. When my grandfather’s sister, Eleanora, moved from Croatia to Italy, her name changed from Ragusin to Ragusini. When her and her son Ugo emigrated to Australia they did so with Italian passports bearing the name Ragusini. They are both buried in Australia with the name Ragusini. Eleanora’s baptismal record from Crikvenica, Croatia shows her true name to be Ragusin.

In the discussions above I have only addressed spelling variations that are not misspellings. Given the pronunciation Ragusin can be spelled with an “s” or “z.” Given the grammatical demands of Croatian and Latin, suffices might be added to the name Ragusin in some contexts. But none of these are misspellings. In those days people did not walk around with identification cards. They simply pronounced their name the best they could and the clerk or scribe sounded it out and wrote it down phonetically as best they could. Remarkably I have seen very little variation (except as mentioned above) and only two obvious misspellings–spelled with two letters “g,” in one instance and two letters “s” in another.

Copywrite 28 Dec 2021 Thomas John Ragusin