Origins of the Maurice family

Slovenian Roots

The ancestors of Daniel Jadran Maurice are all from modern day Slovenia.  Virtually all of them— Mavrič, Čadež, Jakin, Reja and related families — came from the region of Brda, along the present Slovenia—Italy border.  They were concentrated in the tiny village of Kozana, just a couple of kilometres from that border near the Italian city of Gorizia and its Slovenian sister city, Nova Gorica .

Slovene? Slovenian?

Note that “Slovenian” and “Slovene” can be used interchangeably as an adjective and to describe the national language.

Mavrič, Maurič, Mauri, Mauric, Maurice

Daniel’s family name appears in several different forms in Slovene, Italian, British, Australian and other historical records.

The 1921 Slovene birth certificate of Daniel’s father, Ivan, records his surname as Mavrič. The same form appears in the Church records of his birth, as do the surnames of all Ivan’s family ancestors and siblings. But in an Italian-issued passport in 1929 to Ivan’s mother, Kristina, the surname is given as Maurič (pronounced "Mow-rich" in English, to rhyme with “cow”) where the letter v has been replaced with a u. Kristina is also buried in Kozana with the gravestone marked Kristina Maurič.

What’s going on?

First some quick background on alphabets.

The classical Latin alphabet had only 23 letters. Before the letter U came into use in the Middle Ages, the letter shape V stood for both the vowel U and the consonant V. In Slovene, like many other Romance languages, V continued to be used for both sounds until comparatively recently. By the early 20th century two letters, separately representing the consonant and the vowel, started to be more consistently distinguished in the written form of Romance languages.

The Slovenian alphabet contains just 25 letters. The alphabet does not have the English language letters W, Q, X, or Y. But it does include three non-English letters: Č (pronounced as ch in English), Š (sh), and Ž (zh, as in azure). The mark above the letters is called a Caron, or, in Slovenian, strešica (literally “little roof”).

Representing both v and u with a V was further reinforced in Slovenia by the dominance of the Catholic Church to which the overwhelming majority of inhabitants belonged and the Church’s use of Latin for “official” business. In old Slovenian Church records it’s common to see Slovene Christian names written in their Latin form, for example Antonius, not Anton, and Josephus rather than Jozef.

So Mavrič and Maurič are really just two ways of representing the same surname. Typically--but not always--Mavrič will appear in older "formal" documents, like state and church records while Maurič was more likely used in day-to-day writing.

Further confusion with the Mavrič/Maurič name arises as a result of the incorporation of western Slovenia, including where Ivan was born, into Italy between the two World Wars. From the late 1920s the Italian Fascist authorities sought to purge all elements of Slovene nationality and culture, using increasingly coercive tactics that today would certainly be described as "ethnic cleansing". This included italianising Slovene names. Thus by 1941, when Ivan was conscripted into the Italian Army, his service file records his name as Giovanni Mauri (Giovanni is of course the Italian version of John, just as Ivan is the Slovene version of the same name).

By 1944, when Ivan joined the British Air Force, his surname is shown as Mauric, replacing the final Slovene character č with the English c. The same form of the name appears in 1949-1950 International Refugee Organisation (IRO) forms associated with Ivan’s displaced persons application and, later, in government documents during the first few years after Ivan and Danila’s arrival in Australia in 1950.

Finally in 1955, when Ivan and Danila became Australian citizens the surname changed again, with the addition of a final e, making it Maurice.

For the sake of consistency the Mavrič form of the name is used when discussing Daniel’s Slovene ancestors before the generation of his father, Ivan, approximately coinciding with the early 20th Century.

Introduction to Maurice Family History

From 1947 until 1992 Slovenia was one of the six republics that made up Yugoslavia.  As already described, between the two World Wars western Slovenia, including the Brda region, was incorporated in Italy.  Brda was the site of some of the bloodiest battles of World War One, although this is little known in Australia, where we naturally focus on Gallipoli and the Western front.  Before WW1 Brda, and all of Slovenia was a province of the Austro-Hungary Empire for several hundred years.  So all of Daniel's ancestors knew change and directly experienced the impact that war and political developments.

As good Catholics their births, marriages and deaths were all dutifully recorded in the files of the local church in Kozana, which has been very helpful when conducting family research!

Original Kozana Church Baptismal Book (in Latin).  This example page includes details of the birth of Ana Reja in 1777.  Ana later married Stefan Čadež, the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Daniel Maurice.  

On the paternal side the Mavrič line goes back to Andrej Mavrič, born about 1760.  The Čadež family can be traced to Stefan Čadež, born in 1775.  On Daniel’s maternal side the oldest identified relatives are Janez Jakin (born 1801) and Jernej Reja (born about 1795).

There was also much inter-marriage between its families in Kozana.  It is likely that Daniel and brother Rick are directly or indirectly related to just about everybody still living in this and surrounding Brda villages.

Austria, Argentina and Australia

While many relatives still live in Kozana, the family has also spread around the world.  Daniel’s parents, Ivan Mavrič and Danila Jakin, escaped from Yugoslavia in 1949 to start a new life in Australia.  But they were not the first of their families to leave.  Ivan's mother, Kristina Čadež, had a close association with Klagenfurt in Austria.  Today the Schumnik family who descendants of another Mavrič sibling, Ernesta, live there.  And during the 1920s and 1930s Danila's father, Rudolf Jakin spent almost a decade working in Argentina.  Two of his brothers stayed in Argentina permanently and today it is the home of a branch of the Jakin family.

Today Daniel and Rick still have direct living relatives in both Austria and Argentina and probably many other countries.

The stories of some of these ancestors are described in the chapters below.