Ukraine Genealogy

Guide to Ukraine ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Country Information
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. Ukrainian is the official language.

Locating Town of Origin in Ukraine
In order to research your family in Ukraine, it is essential that you have identified the place where they came from. You must know the city, town, and church parish that they came from. It will be difficult to identify the place of origin by going directly to Ukraine sources. Therefore, you will need to search in United States (or other country of arrival) sources first. See Ukraine Finding Town of Origin to learn how to search for the Ukrainian place of origin in United States records.

Jurisdictions
Ukraine has 24 provinces (oblasti, singular - oblast'), 1 autonomous republic* (avtonomna respublika), and 2 municipalities (mista, singular - misto) with oblast status**.

Because most of Ukraine's population speak Russian and Ukrainian, there are two different ways of spelling names of cities, historical cites, last and first names and many other words in English. One will be based on Russian and another - based on Ukrainian. English traditional is how major websites (such as Wikipedia) transliterate Ukrainian place names. English ALA-LC is how the Library of Congress and the FamilySearch Catalog transliterate Ukrainian place names. Below is a table that will help you identify the right spelling of cities.

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.
 * Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
 * Learning Center - Online genealogy courses
 * Historical Records
 * FamilySearch Center locator map