Thanks, Sergej.

Do you have any specific contact details of the Split archives? Can I contact them through email and do they usually get back?

Check the links page, there you can find their website.
They should get back to you, however it all varies per person.

Hi all,
I just read the comments and I am writing directly hoping to be helpful. It is very interesting because there are a lot of albanians having this surname. I can confirm that there is a village called Borici in Shkoder (north-west of Albania) and in Shkoder there are a lot of people having the same surname. But in another big city in Albania (Fier, south-west of Albania) there are many inhabitants with the same surname. These people (the Fier's inhabitants) are muslims instead of them in Shkoder that are catholics. So, I don't know if there is any relationship between them? I shall investigate a little bit more about their origin if it will be interesting.

Hi ,

I asked for Borici in Albania and there are also some people holding this surname in a village of Diber (north-east). Lastly, I visited this village during my holiday and I had contact with these people. They agree that are muslims and in the first years of 20-th century many of them have gone to live in Fier. Maybe, they have been muslimized in the period of Ottomans Imperatory. So, the root of Borici's Fier people is in Diber. Also from this root are the Borici's people of Elbasan (another city near this village).

I asked them also if they knew something about their origin but nobody didn't know such a thing or better saying, do not have any documentation about it. They say that the ancient origin might be in Dalmatia but these are anecdotal.

Neritan,

Thank you for your post, it was informative.

Abor,

Did they tell you anything?

I think I may be able to help with *unstucking*

There are many pan-Slavic surnames that were derived from the same root. Best place to researchthat would be academic resources and linguistic studies that covered the subject, if you are researching that aspect of your genealogy.

You cannot really trace the ethnic affiliation of your ancestor backwards through a surname origin or distribution only, especially one that transcends so many borders that exist today, various religions and close spellings.

You should always try to determin the ethnicity your ancestors had at the time they emigrated.

If you have no information to start on - try this:

-Look at the place of residence where your ancestors settled after imigrating. Were there any ethnic communities present or formed at that time, was there any temple built or parish started tied to such community?

-Look at all possible spellings in imigration records and determin where the people who settled in the same area as your ancestor came from.

- What ethnic groups&religions did your ancestors marry into? These can give some ideas, as they often married within what I call *the comfort zone* -people of same origin/similar religious affiliation.

Only when you have established their location and ethnicity before emigrating, you can look back and then trace the history of that particular branch and perhaps connect it to some earlier documented migration or common ancestor.

Also, you may be confused by the fact that the surname seems to be of Serbian and Croatian origin - did you know that Austro- Hungary had large ethnic Serbian population living in what is today Croatia,Bosnia, Serbia,Slovenia and Hungary, and that many people who were later recorded as stating their ethnicity in US censuses to be SERBIAN or YUGOSLAVIAN actually were not coming from Serbia but places like Trebinje in Croatia someone mentioned here, and ethnic Serbian communities that existed there?

That can explain the distribution of the toponyms too, as people from the same ethnic group or clan migrated back and forth between places in Croatia, Bosnia and Hungary over the centuries.

I will look up territorially about the distribution of the surname in Austria-Hungary for you, but please try to find some more information on your end too, so that we can help you more.

P.S. Contacting municipal archives is always difficult, usually they will only do a look up if you provide the name and birth year of your ancestor and the place of residence. Sometimes they do not respond at all even if you have all that

Nertian,

What is the name of the village you visited?

Sergey,

I have contacted the Split archives, but I never received a reply from them -- they also didn't have an appropriate command of English in official communications...

*Stuck...*

Many thanks, yugaya!

I will look up territorially about the distribution of the surname in Austria-Hungary for you, but please try to find some more information on your end too, so that we can help you more.

I have done some research on my side related to the demographic and territorial distribution of the Borici/Boric last name. As I've mentioned above, there exist two such villages in Scadar, northern Albania, which proclaim to have or to be of Serbian minority. That regards Albania. I also conducted some backtracking based on ancestral info, and that led to Dalmatia; the city of Split to be precise. 

I shall be waiting for your search results with advance appreciation for your insights!

***

Sergey, the Split archives did not get back to me (by phone/email, nor by regular mail)...

Abor

So:

re the Albania Slavic settlements in the North and villages named BORIČ there - no surname BORIĆ in records, the  Serbian Orthodox settlers that first arrived in this area called VRAKA in 1810. did not have that surname among them (well documented community and its subsequent migrations). If there is an earlier Slavic connection in regard to the old toponym or Albanian surname BORICI, it did not stem from these settlers.

 BORIĆ people who immigrated to US mostly came from the LIKA - region of Austria-Hungary (today in Croatia) . LIKA was part of the MILITARY FRONTIER province where many people settled,  especially during the  XVIII century.

Significant clusters of  BORIĆ family who then later from LIKA  migrated further are found in Bosnia - region POUNJE, Bosanska Krajina.

I found only a few immigrants to US from the Split area, where the surname is documented in  XVII and XVIII century, and these may be also connected to the BORIĆ family on the island of BRAČ there, first documented in the vital records of the island in 1595.

Large presence of ethnic Serbs in Austro -Hungary with surname BORIĆ was in the VOJVODINA region in Serbia today (XIX century but I haven't looked at earlier records and documents in detail, and cannot tell you where they came from without that).

You will find both ethnic Serbs and ethnic Croats with this surname who emigrated from Austria-Hungary.

A more detailed analysis would mean consulting the Serbian Orthodox Church censuses, and Status Animarum recports  of the Roman Catholic Church from the Austria Hungary in all of the places where the surname appeared .

Sorry for the late responce.

Admin thank you for your appreciation.

abor, the name of village is Zabzun, Albania.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=zabzun+albania&hl=en&ll=41.343825,20.401611&spn=0.98769,1.755066&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.352165,56.162109&hnear=Zabzun,+Albania&t=m&z=9

in this village there some inhabitants surnamed Boriçi. From these people in aprox. 1930 they have moved to Fier and the Fier branch of Boriçi is from Zabzun.

Also there are some people surnamed Boriçi living in Elbasan and Tirana that have the same origin (Zabzun).

It's become very interesting now to me too, to know about Boriçi

Zabzun, interesting. Not so far from the Macedonian border so I wonder if there are any connections eastwards. Anybody have experience with the Albanian archives?

Thank you yugaya, neritan, and Sergej for the prompt participation.

Neritan and yugaya: If the Boriçi of the village of Zabzun have moved to the cities of Elbasan and Fier and Tirane, what the origins of the Boriçi of the city of Skadar (Shkoder)? Note that there are two villages name Boriç in that area. Could they have migrated from Montenegro, and Split and Lika in turn? Is there any such record?

yugaya and Sergej: I might need some quick input regarding this Croatian paragraph, since I don't understand the language: http://www.geni.com/surnames/borić . 

yugaya: I did read your information regarding Lika and Bosanksa Krajina. In fact, I ran across this document:  http://www.familycetic.net/sources/milan_karanovic.pdf. If you search for "Boric", it gives three matches. However, I don't understand the language and I wish I knew what the author wrote. If sb could provide some help in that I'd appreciate it.

yugaya, the Boric, Borici, Boricic, Borich, Borick seem to have the same lineage, though this is just an allusion that comes to mind from what I have been examining these past two years that I started this. More hints would be greatly helpful.

Your thoughts?

Abor

I agree with yugaya!

One of trace for Borić family, you can find also in Lika's village Mogorić ( Magoric is name which was used before WWII). Mogorić is about 25km away from Gospić, Croatia nowdays.
The village's cementry has not destroyed.
I am, not sure wheather any of Borić family stayed in Mogoric after 1995. but I can check.

Borići from Mogorić family are ethnic Serbs.

Thank you, jasminka. It would be really helpful if you could check. 

It seems to me from all these inputs that the Borici's are either Croatian or ethnic Serbs in Croatia or other former-Yugoslav republics. It puzzles me to learn about the Borici in Albania...