Jane <rgsjez@verizon.net> wrote:

Hello,
I am trying to find out our true family name. My grandfather came here

from Vilna around 1895. His name was Bograd, or something like it, nobody

is really sure. The story goes that he lost his papers on the ship, and he
wound up taking papers >from a little boy named Eduard Zeman who died during
the journey.

I found Eduard Zeman's name on a passenger manifest. I hoped that there
would be a name identical or similar to Bograd on that manifest, also.
There was nothing even close.

My father (hence, my grandfather) was a Kohen. Maybe I could approach
the problem >from this angle. Is there a compilation of names of Kohenim
somewhere? It might be very helpful.

There are some names that are quite common among Kohanim:
Cohen and its variants, Kaplan, Katz, Rappaport, Shapiro...
see e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohen#Cohen_as_a_surname>.
Nothing that sounds like Bograd that I know of. But not every
Kohen has one of those common names.

Robert Israel
Vancouver, BC, Canada