Luxembourg Gazetteers

Why Use Gazetteers
A gazetteer is a dictionary of place-names. Gazetteers list or describe towns and villages, parishes, states, populations, rivers and mountains, and other geographical features. They usually include only the names of places that existed at the time the gazetteer was published. Within a specific geographical area, the place-names are listed in alphabetical order, similar to a dictionary. You can use a gazetteer to locate the places where your family lived and to determine the civil and religious jurisdictions over those places.

There are many places within a country with similar or identical place-names. You will need to use a gazetteer to identify the specific town or village where your ancestor lived, the commune the town was or is in, and the commune or parish where records about the person were kept. For example; Luxembourg (country), Luxembourg (district), Luxembourg (canton), Luxembourg (commune), Luxembourg (city). In Luxembourg the records are usually in the commune level. Since Luxembourg city is the largest city in Luxembourg it has several communes or boroughs to check for records. Use the gazetteer to find the commune for civil records and the parish for church records.

Searching suggestions:
This gazetteer is pre- 1930. It is alphabetized by municipality/commune. Search the gazetteer by using the [Ctrl ‘F’] key combination. The gazetteer does not recognize variations of spelling, capitalizations, or the use of “?” or “*”. Exact diacritic use is required, do not spell out umlauts. Use of “ö” will achieve results, use of “oe” will be unsuccessful. For example, if searching for “Trotten-Straße” a search for Trotten-Straße would give results, but a search for Trotten-Strasse will give no results.

Language and suffixes:
Town/village/localité names may appear in French, German, or Luxembourgish in the gazetteer. The location may appear in the original record in any of the three languages. For example, Clerf is the German version of Clervaux. Clervaux is a commune as well as a town. It appears in the gazetteer in commune field only as Clervaux though it may appear in the records as Clerf, Clierf, Cliärref, Klierf, or Cliärrwer. In addition to, and because of the language variations, there exists a challenge of suffixes. For example, suffixes like "-ange" frequently appear in the location name and in the original record may appear as "-ingen". Searching without the ending “-ange” or “-ingen” may provide better results.

Results:
A blank field in the gazetteer does not mean there are no records available. A listing of several parishes, as in Luxembourg City, does not ensure record availability. This is a listing of the most likely locations for records. Civil records in Luxembourg are almost always available at the commune level. Church records are located at the parish level.

Hansen Map Guide:
The Map guide to Luxembourg Parish Registers by Kevan M. Hansen is a very easy, clear, and concise guide to the parish registers. It includes maps that give the locations of each town and subdivisions, which will aid in circular searches. Page numbers are referenced in the gazetteer.

Online Gazetteers

 * Geographical Handbook Series: Luxembourg, Compiled from the US Office of Naval Intelligence geographical handbook series and other unidentified sources]