Origin of the name Sorkin

The name Sorkin comes from the name Sara (its Yiddish version is Sorka). Correspondingly, taking into account Russian rules of words forming, Sorkin means son of Sorka.

A Swedish researcher Bjorn Sorkin supposes that the name comes either from Belorussia or from Ukraine. We think the name came from Belorussia. In the Ukrainian dialect of Yiddish the name sounds as Surka. Consequently the family name would have been Surkin. On the other hand in shtetls located in Belorussia the name was pronounced with "o", as Sorka.

At the moment we cannot say with certitude that all people with this family name are relatives. It is not excluded, even though highly improbable, that this name was given, after the name of their mothers, to several unrelated people. However we think that still in this case all people with this name are members of one family. Most probably, eight-nine generations ago the ancestors of Sorkin families were in direct contact. Today several ways of writing the name are known. The most wide spread ones are: Sorkin, Sorkine (French way of writing), Sarkin, Serkin, Sirkin.

It is known that a century and a half - two centuries ago, people with this name lived in the following towns and shtetls: Mogilev, Brody, Gomel, Novozybkov, Byalistok, Rakvere, Zhlobin, Bazan, Korma, Maleskovichi and Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk).
One of the Sorkin families from Mogilev moved to the Latin America in the beginning of the 20-th century. And already from the Latin America part of the family moved to Canada.
Part of the family from Novozybkov (located 30 km from Gomel) stayed in Belorussia, while part moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Major part of the Sorkin family comes from the town of Brody. They reached this town, located not far from Lvov, from nearby Belorussia.
The Sorkin family whose descendant is Jordan Parr who resides today in the US also comes from Gomel. Descendants of the Sorkin family from Byalistok, who left in the beginning of the 20-th century, also live today in the USA. Before the World War II several Sorkin families lived in Byalistok. Their majority was killed by Germans.
The Sorkin family that today resides in New Zealand comes from Zhlobin.
Another branch of the Sorkin family immigrated to the USA from Bazan after the Russian revolution.
In the beginning of the 20-th century the family of Berl (Bernard) and Esther Sorkin moved to Estonian town Rakvere together with fourteen children. One of these children, Shimon, fled from Estonia to Sweden in 1940. His son Bjorn Sorkin who for long time considered himself the only person with this name, started the genealogical research and discovered many members of this family in different countries.
The family of David Sorkin comes from Ekaterinoslav. David Sorkin was born in 1814 and lived for 102 years. He had several children from two wives (both named Sara). David Sorkin, being completely healthy, died from an accident, when he got over-cooled on the way home. One of his sons, Girshl perished during the Russian-Japanese war. His other children moved to America in the beginning of the 20-th century. His son Lazar (Lewis) served in the Russian czar's army, he was a private secretary of one of the generals. In 1911 he moved to Liverpool and after three more weeks he arrived in Philadelphia. He lived for 90 years. His great grandchildren live in the US today. It should be noted that many people from this family were long livers.

In any case, at the moment we can safely say that people with this name spread all over the world. Using partly our own information and partly information kindly offered by Bjorn Sorkin and other members of the family, we composed a map of the family spread over the world.
And so it turned out that about 150 Sorkins reside in Israel, about 300 in Russia (out of them 43 in Moscow and 58 in Saint-Petersbourg, while in Saint-Petersbourg there are also 37 Serkins which is apparently a variation of the family name); in New Zealand 1; in Germany - four; in Mexico - 10; in France - 8; in Sweden - two families; in Argentina - about 50 people; in Canada - 15; in Australia - 5, in Swiss - 8, in Southern Africa - three families; in Spain - two families; in the Great Britain - 20 and in the USA - about 650 Sorkins. Among American Sorkins there are mainly lawyers, doctors, writers, jewelers and professors of several universities.