---
title: "Žemaitija"
url: https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/places/zemaitija/
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 region of western Lithuania from which the surname comes. The Slavic languages called it Żmudź, hence Zmud: “the one from Samogitia”."
---
# Žemaitija

The region of western Lithuania from which the surname comes. The Slavic languages called it Żmudź, hence Zmud: “the one from Samogitia”.

- Country today: Lithuania
- Other spellings: Samogitia, Żmudź, Жмудь
- Coordinates: 55.98, 22.25

## What is known

The family's oldest surname in a document —the 1858 census— was not Smud but Zmud, and it comes from Žemaitija —Samogitia—, a region of western Lithuania.

The Slavic languages called that region Żmudź, and the surname came from there: Zmud means roughly “the one from Samogitia”. It was a common way of identifying someone by where they came from.

This is worth bearing in mind when searching archives: in Lithuania, “Zhmud” was a very common surname and simply meant “the Samogitian”. Most of those Lithuanian records are not this family.

## Who was here

- Leizer Zhmuydya — https://smud.mateosmud.xyz/en/people/leizer-zhmuydya/

---

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