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[Surname] Re: Ziert
in reply to a message by Kate
It certainly looks German rather than Russian, and Gustav and Emil don't sound very Russian. Perhaps they were from one of the old German communities settled in Eastern Europe. Wolynien looks like a German spelling of Volhynia, now in Ukraine.
The question is - does Ziert represent the German spelling or the non-German pronunciation? If the Z represents the sound then the surname might derive from some given name like Sieghart, and so be the name of a male ancestor. If the Z is the German spelling, then I can only suggest that it could be a corruption of Ziegert, which the "Oxford Names Companion" explains as a metonymic for a maker of goat's cheese (Ziegerkaese).
All very uncertain.
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