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From Marco Polo's friends?
MRG member Larry Mervis came up with the following:
"A source in London, England was reported to have a family tree dating
back some 700 years. I have not been able to confirm its existence. The
story is that the Mervis family were artisans in Delft, Holland. When
Marco Polo came back from China, he made a trip to Delft specifically to
find our family. This is reported to be the beginning of the Blue Delft
porcelain line. Supposedly Marco Polo took some of the Mervis's with him
back to Italy. A pogrom followed in Holland and the family went to
Lithuania, Spain and South Africa. Whether this is true or not, I cannot
say."
So, if this story is true, then it could be that our whole group of
Mirvis families from our compact area of central Lithuania came from Delft,
Holland many centuries ago, and were driven out of there during pogroms. An
interesting idea.
From 13th-Century Holland?
Audrey Stein Merves wrote on 10 July 1998:
In London, I spoke to Joseph Mervis who related the following story.
His father emigrated from Lithuania when he, Joseph, was a very young
boy. He grew up in South Africa and upon his Bar Mitzvah, his grandfather
came from Lithuania to Johannesburg to attend the event. He remembered his
grandfather very well. Joseph and his family were all in South Africa
during the second World War. In 1946 Joseph emigrated to London. He had
money when money was scarce in Great Britain. He started his business and
was prospering from the beginning.
One day a man walked into his office and offered to trace the name
"Mervis" for 5 L. Joseph told me he knew the history of his
name, but he also knew the man needed the money. He agreed and paid the
five pounds. About a week later the man returned with the following story.
The name Mervis (in any spelling) originated in Holland in a small
fishing village. It is believed that a fisherman went north into the sea.
There is one tracing of the name in Scotland, on the British border -- the
name suddenly appears about 800 years ago in a Christian family. All of
those Mervis's are related.
At the same time, the name appears in a small area in now Lithuania.
The name became common in the area and it appears all Mervis's are from the
same origins, hence related in some way. This information came from Oxford
University.
From the Dutch Language?
Gary Mervis wrote on 2 November 1999:
The Mervis ancestors were originally fishermen in Holland, hence the
name..... Meer = dam, & vis = fish, or Mervis!
Was it a conspiracy?!
The evidence seems to suggest that our Litvak Mirvis's registered to
live only in Baisogala. In fact, the number of Mirvis's registered as
living in Baisogala seems disproportionately large, considering the number
of people who lived there. Were they a bunch of unrelated families who got
together and decided to adopt the same surname (and similar given names) in
order to fool the authorities? To keep their sons out of the army?
Was it the Baron?
Sometimes families lived on the land of a Baron and worked for him. And
sometimes they adopted the name of the Baron when the time came that they
absolutely must take on a surname -- something they had never had before.
Was there a Baron there with a name or property something like "Mirvis"?
From the name of a shtetl?
Alexander Beider has suggested that the surname Mirvis came from the
name of a shtetl called Mil'vidy (today Milvidai). Mil'vidy is located
about 12 miles south south east of Baisogala. Could the surname have
originated because of a family that lived in the shtetl?
Benzion Kaganoff, in his book "A Dictionary of Jewish Names and their
History," p. 179, Schocken Books, NY (1977), states: "Mirvis: From
Mierzwica, a town called in Yiddish Mervitz, or Mervis. There are many
places with this name all over Russia and Lithuania." Kaganoff sees the
surname as a geographical place name. Can this be the source? But all
of the Mirvis families we have found come only from the Siauliai District!
From the name of a Payetan (composer of Piyutim)?
One of our MRG researchers, drawing from records of name origins, came
up with the connection between the name Mirvis and the Piyutim -- the
special liturgical compositions for the Yom Tov evening services known as
Maarovis, derived from the Hebrew word Maariv for the Evening Service.
Thus, Lionel Mirvis says the forbear of the Mirvis family was a Payetan
- a composer of Piyutim, and people automatically referred to him as, for
example, Zvi Maarovis (composer of Maarovis), leading to the name Mirvis.
Thus, if the variant spellings of this surname did not arise from
immigration phenomena, this would explain variant spellings such as the
double s, or the Mer.. because Maariv is spelled with the Hebrew letter
Ayyin and in Yiddish Ayyin = E. It should be remembered that surnames in
Eastern Europe are a recent innovation because of Government legislation.
A family with a name going back 500-600 years would have thousands of
members in Eastern Europe, and not just a few families centered in one
specific area. The fact that the name is restricted to families in this
one area indicates local origin.
Or was it just a very common name?!
Audrey Stein Merves wrote on 10 July 1998:
The last story is from my late cousin Dr. Perek of the Weisman
Institute. Perek was born and raised in Lithuania and got his VMD in
Switzerland. After he became a veterinarian, he emigrated to Israel (late
twenties, early thirties). When he met Stanley (my husband), the first
thing he said to us was that he came from Lithuania and pinpointed Kovno
and its environs. We corrected him by saying Stan's father and grandfather
did the emigrating and that stan was native born American.
He told us about the name Mervis being indigenous to the Kovno area, Mervis
being like Smith or Jones in England or the U.S. Mervis was also a basic
Jewish name according to Perek.
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