Documented variant · 1904
Smud
The Argentine form of the surname. It first appears in the Buenos Aires immigration register of December 1904, written “Smud or Smod”, and it is the form the family kept from then on.
In a document of this research
Smud or Smod
Where it appears
In the immigration register of the port of Buenos Aires, among the third-class passengers who arrived in December 1904, there is Malke or Molke Noel de Smud, Russian national, aged 30, with Alex aged 7, Meyer aged 5 and Eide aged 6 months. The surname was written “Smud or Smod”.
It is the first time the surname appears on an Argentine document, already in the form it would keep. Malke had arrived on 23 December with her three children: Alejandro, Marcos and Aida. Felix came later, in mid-1905.
The bridge to the Russian record
Marcos’s gravestone in Paraná preserves his Hebrew name —Meir Smud— and his father’s, Folke. It matches, name for name, the 1899 Mariupol record that lists him as Meyer Zhmud, son of Falik. That match is what allows us to say that the Smud of Entre Ríos and the Zhmud of Mariupol are the same family.
Smod and Smut
Smod is the second form on the same 1904 line. Smut is another recorded form; this research does not date it in any document.
Same surname, other families
This is the form where confusion is easiest. It is explained in other Smud families and in the surname origin page.