Judith Berlowitz wrote:

Dear Uk-Genners,
Two branches of my BER(E)LOWITZ family came to America

from Ukraine in 1906 and 1907, respectively. One

branch (Yankel B., 1906) listed "Orechowka" as town of
residence, while the other branch (David B.,
1907)listed "Orechow, Tawrizesk." Family tales place
Orechow (Orekhov) near Ekaterinoslav, while Google
searches show an Orechowka (Orekhovka) in Belarus and
another near Lugansk. Questions are:
1. Are these two interchangeable names for one town?
2. Are they two towns, one smaller (-ka) than the
other, perhaps across the Dnieper river >from each
other (another family tale)?
3. Where is Tawrizesk?
This website
http://www.traveljournals.net/explore/ukraine/locations/o/16.html
may help or confuse...
Judith Berlowitz
Berkeley, California

A few remarks that will, I hope, help you find the places:

1. Ekaterinoslav is now Dnipropetrovsk (Rus. Dnepropetrovsk).

2. "Tawrizesk." is probably not a town name, but an abbreviation for
"Tavritcheskaya gubernia" aka Crimea or Taurida Gubernia. "Tavrida"
is/was another Russian name for Crimea, >from the Greek name of the
peninsula. Ekaterinoslav was the capital city of the adjacent gubernia
(Ekaterinoslav gub.), so we are talking about the same region. (The "z"
in "Tawrizesk." is probably a mistranscription of the Russian character
for "tch", which can indeed be confused with the Latin character "z".)

3. Russian names such as Orekhov or Orekhovka became Orikhiv, Orikhivka
in Ukrainian. It may help to search for the current Ukrainian names.

4. I don't think the two names denote the same locality. Orekhovka
implies to me a village, while Orekhov, a town (although there are no
100% reliable rules when it comes to proper names). Incidentally, there
are bound to be many places with names derived >from the word
"orekh"/"orikh", which means "nut" -- usually hazelnut in this part of
the world --, because hazelnut is very common there. So it may be indeed
difficult to find the right place.

-Margaret Mikulska
silvagen@gmail.com
Warsaw, Poland / Princeton, NJ, USA