Sorry for the long delay, school has been absolutely out of hand! But the summer arrives a week from now, so hopefully there will be more time to write here. I believe I’ve caught up on my email correspondence recently as well, so if you haven’t received a response from me, please resend your email, just in case technology made emails vanish somewhere along the way.

Onto the names! These follow earlier posts of Government Approved, Part 1 and Government Approved, Part 2. Part 4 still to come!

This week’s category: Names from Nature – animals, plants and anything “from the earth”. I’d consider this the most common category of Latvian surnames. Though if you don’t see your exact name here, don’t panic – the authorities did not recommend diminutive forms, but most often people disregarded that and went with them anyway. So if your surname looks like a name on this list, but ends in -iņš or -Ä«tis instead, it will have that same origin. As before, modern renditions in brackets. If I am not familiar with a name, I’ve made my best guess as to how it would be rendered in modern spelling.

The book divides these names into separate categories, based on animal/plant category, so I will do the same.