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Anecdotal research leads me to believe that the Blank name geographically points to the town of Lendershausen, Bavaria, Germany, since a relative of my grandfather came to the US from their in the 1850's. The photo of this relative was as if he was a twin of my own grandfather, Zelig(Salik) Blank(itny). The son of this Solomon Blank looks much like my father, Julius, 100. Solomon shares the same longevity with my family since both my father and he became the beneficiary of their own life insurance policies when their ages passed those on the insurance companies' lifespan tables. During my research, leading me to the shtetls north of Warsaw, I found that both surnames Blank and Blankitny (a Polish word meaning blue (adj.)) came to the US via Ellis Island from the same shtetls. It seems some of the Blanks who traveled east to the kingdom of Poland kept and others changed their surnames or, when the gov't ruled all needed a surname for tax and other purposes, some of the family kept and others changed the name which has made it much simpler to research among our male-offspring-dominant family where 37 family units of Blanks and Blankitnys were in our shtetl, Krasnosielc, while other family units counted no more that four or five. All Blanks from the shtetl who came to the US in the first part of the 20th century either kept their Blank surname or shortened it to that. The only Blankitnys/Blenkitnis surviving are those Survivors from the area in Poland who ended up in Israel and then a few who emigrated to the US.