Hello. I have a longstanding and frustrating mystery in my genealogical research: my great-grandfather's surname.
My great-grandmother, Miriam Mindel Soifer, married Solomon Cheplivourstza, in 1908 in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine. He died in an accident, leaving her with four young children. Many a story later, she came to the US with them.
Problem is, I can't find ANY other people with the surname Cheplivourstza.
The mystery was partly explained when I was able to get a copy of her (Russian Empire) passport: 

From what I could string together from the Cyrillic, the pronunciation would likely have been closer to "Cherlivoursza"--presumably, someone transliterated it not knowing that what looks like an English "p" is a Cyrillic "r." However, this is of limited help: I still can't find any reference to this name or something similar. 

Has anyone come across a similar name from that general region?
--
Scott Rothstein