---
title: "Zhmud"
url: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/name-variants/zhmud/
lang: en
work: "The Smud Family: A Jewish Family History from Ludza, Latvia to Entre Ríos, Argentina"
author: "Mateo Smud"
licence: CC0-1.0
summary: "The form of the surname in the birth record of Meyer —later Marcos Smud—, entered in 1899 in the registers of the Mariupol synagogue: the document that names three generations and joins the Russian branch to the Argentine one."
---
# Zhmud

**Documented.** The form of the surname in the birth record of Meyer —later Marcos Smud—, entered in 1899 in the registers of the Mariupol synagogue: the document that names three generations and joins the Russian branch to the Argentine one.

## First documented appearance

1899 — «Zhmud» — Marcos's birth record — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/sources/#partida-1899

Other spellings: Жмудь, Жмуд

## Where it appears

In the State Archive of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, among the 1899 registers of the Mariupol synagogue, there is a birth record that reads: surname, Zhmud; name, Meyer; father, Falik; paternal grandfather, Kopel; mother, Ester Malka. The date is 25 January 1899, in the Julian calendar.

That Meyer is Marcos Smud. The father is Felix, who appears in Russian Empire papers as Falik Zhmud. The grandfather is Koppel. This is the record that made it possible, a century later, to join the family that reached Buenos Aires in 1904 to the one the 1858 census lists in Novy Zlatopol.

 
 Archival reference 
ДАДнО, fond 211, opis 1, file 19, record M13. See the source 
 

## What the word says

It is the same word as Zmud, the form of the 1858 census: in Russian, Жмудь is the name of Samogitia, and “Zhmud” meant “the Samogitian”. That is exactly why it is the most misleading form to search for.

## In the archives

A search for Zhmud on JewishGen returns hundreds of records from Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania. Most of the Lithuanian ones are not this family, which appears as Zmud in the 1858 census and is found in Ludza and the Ekaterinoslav colonies.

## What this form does not prove

In Lithuania “Zhmud” was a very common surname and simply meant “the Samogitian”: most Lithuanian records bearing it are not this family. There are Zhmuds in Estonia with no connection to this line. Finding a Zhmud does not prove descent from it; what proves kinship here is the 1899 record, which names the child, his father and his grandfather.

## People under this form

- Marcos Smud — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/people/marcos-smud/
- Felix Smud — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/people/felix-smud/
- Koppel Zhmood — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/people/koppel-zhmood/
- Malke Noel — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/people/malke-noel/

## Related variants

- Zmud — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/name-variants/zmud/
- Zhmuydya — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/name-variants/zhmuydya/
- Smud — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/name-variants/smud/

See also: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/other-smud/ · https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/surname-origin/

---

The Smud Family · genealogical research by Mateo Smud, published under CC0 1.0. Machine index: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/llms.txt