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The Lisoň Family |
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Origins
The name “Lison” can be found in a number of places in Europe. In French-speaking countries the name is not uncommon and derives from “d’Elise”, a relative or descendant of Elizabeth. In the southwest region in Poland around Częstochowa and Katowice there are a number of families bearing the name of Lisoń. No ties between either group and our family have been found. Instead we have proof that our branch of the Lisoň family has its origins in a small village in the foothills of the southern slope of theTatras, a mountain chain at the western end of the Carpathians. This area is now in northeastern Slovakia but before World War I it was part of the Felvidék , the “highlands” or “Upper Country” of the Kingdom of Hungary, the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. More specifically, a large number of Lisoň families have their origins in the village of Nižné Repaše (Alsórépás in Hungarian). During the late 19th and early 20th century, the height of the exodus from this region of Hungary to the United States, many passenger arrival list entries for the port of New York bear the family name “Liszony”, the Hungarian spelling of the name. These immigrants are listed as being born in Alsórépás and have as their final destination cities and towns in eastern and western Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio around Cleveland and Youngstown. Some of them, giving up the traditional spelling in order to have their new American neighbors pronounce their name correctly, changed the spelling to Leeson or Leason. Many Languages, One Name What form of your family name do you use when you are an ethnic Rusyn living in an area populated predominantly by Slovaks but which is governed by Hungarians? This is the conundrum our ancestors faced while living in their home village. Official documents mandated that they use the Hungrian spelling - Liszony - and use the Hungarian convention of placing one’s family name first, followed by one’s given name. Among the Slovaks, the same name was written as “Lisoň” . But since they were Byzantine Rite (Greek) Catholic, it is likely that they belonged to an ethnic group, the Rusyns, whose members were scattered throughout the Carpathian mountains in what is now Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine and whose language is grouped with Ukrainian and Russian, using the Cyrillic alphabet. In the records of the Greek Catholic parish in Nižné Repaše, kept in Rusyn, Hungrian and Latin, the family name is written “Лисонь”.
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