There is a particular challenge for people looking for ancestors which came from the Old Kingdom of Romania (mostly Moldova). While the vast majority of Jews living in that area in 1850 +/ - decades, came from places where Jews did acquire surnames (Austrian Galicia and Bukovina and Russian Podolia and Bessarabia), in many if not most cases such surnames were not used in the civil records which started in 1865-66. Many Jews used occupational surnames, patronymics or surnames unrelated to the original one. In the same family and even for the same person there is a surname variability which I do not think is found in Russian or Austrian lands.
