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GROVEMAN GRUWMANN GRUVERMAN GROVMAN GROWMAN
The Groveman family name, in Europe, was adopted/assigned when the family was required, by the government, to have a surname. Because the name was generally written in a Slavic language, it was spelled several different ways in English. Often, the English spelling was determined by a clerk who did not understand Slavic letter sounds. The letter ‘o’ in Slavic languages has the sound of ‘uh’ in the English words ‘uh oh’. So, it was vaiously spelled, in English, as ‘o, u, or aw’. The ‘v’ in the Slavic name was converted into the English ‘v’ or ‘w’ - but never into ‘b’; Gruvman was never Grubman. The final ‘n’ was sometimes doubled to become ‘nn’. There are a couple of research findings when Groveman was alternately written as Groverman. In the US, mostly, the spelling of the name was Groveman, though Grovman persisted in certain family groups. I believe that had to do with the way the name was pronounced since most people in the US would have heard the sound of the Slavic or Yiddish ‘o’ as the English long ‘o’.
Before the Gruvman name was adopted, the family probably had a Sephardic name since Sephardim used surnames at an earlier time. No one knows why they did not keep the original name, but I was told that it was definitely changed.
The Dictionary of Jewish Surnames in the Russian Empire states the following about the name, Groveman: " Grover N: grov(er) [Yiddish] grey haired {Graver, Groer, Groerman, Groman; Gru, Gruman, Gruver (Gruvor), Gruverman (Gruferman, Graverman), Gruvman; Grauman, Graur, Grauèr, Grauerman}". Could the name have been 'assigned' as a joke? Red-headedness is a common trait in the Groveman family.
An interesting twist concerns the great war between the Swedes and Russians in the early 1700's. The Swedes were defeated in two major battles - one in the Ukraine and one in Bessarabia. May thousands of Swedish soldiers remained in those areas and became part of the local populations. The name Gruvmann is a Swedish surname (which means miner man). Did some Grovemans intermarry with Swedes? Could that be the reason so many Grovemans have red hair?
I am not alone among Groveman descendants who were told that all the Grovemans are related. That is wrong. Early US censuses and commercial and military records show Grovemans living in the US. Those Grovemans appear to have descended from immigrants from the British Isles. However, their descendants eventually married out of the Groveman surname or died without leaving heirs. At the end of the 19th century, when they petered out, the US Grovemans were almost all descended from Eastern European or Eastern Mediterranean countries.
Evidence shows that some families with Swedish, Italian, and other surnames, changed their surname to Groveman. So, some living Grovemans may be descended from them. We have a DNA project on FamilyTreeDNA with a DNA standard from a Groveman relative. DNA from any person with the Groveman name can be compared to that standard to determine if they are relalate to the Grovemans in this web site. If it was determined that they were not related, their DNA would become a standard for finding other Grovemans who are related to them. (Groveman DNA information? Write to me at jlBlafer@gmail.com.)