Origin of the name Samoilovich

The name Samoilovich can be both Jewish and Russian-Ukrainian (there is even an entire famous kazak clan of Samoilovich, which by the way does not exclude its (and some other kazak clans) origin from Jews. The name Samuil or Samoilo is a russified version of the Hebrew name Shmuel).

Speaking of the Jewish name Samoilovich, it appeared in the Russian empire in the beginning of the 19-th century when Jews were ordered to take names. The name was taken after the name of the head of the family - Shmuel, or Samuil in Russian, or Samoilo in eastern-Ukrainian dialect. And indeed in the preserved documents and records for the 19-th and 20-th centuries there are many Samuils and Shmuels sons of Samoilo that in accord with the Jewish tradition were called after died ancestors.

According to our conjecture, this name was chosen by members of one big family that by the beginning of the 19-th century spread over the Kiev gubernia. The main part of the Samoilovich family resided then near the shtetl Zolotonosha (today Cherkassk area of Ukraine). Then this was a region explored actively by people who came out of western gubernias of the empire. That is one can conjecture that the first Samoilovichs came to this region from Belorussia or Lithuania.

By the way in Belorussia one can encounter a much more wide spread version of this name - Shmulevich. However, we would not claim that all Samoilovichs and Shmulevichs are relatives, even though majority of them undoubtedly have common roots.