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shalom - salaam - peace :-)
Whether you found us by accident or by design . . .
Whether you are Jewish, Christian, Muslim or none, you are always welcome!
So far, we got to know mainly Jewish Turkel families from Galicia (Austro-Hungary kingdom of the 17th-19th centuries). Nowadays this area is occupied by Ukraine. Between WW1 and WW2 it was governed by Poland. Even if you are not Jewish, but your name is Türkl (or quite similar, Turkel, Turkle, Terkel, Tyrkel - whatever) you are welcome to join us.
Turkel (rather Türkel written with U umlaut) is a quite rare surname among Jewish people. It was originally written Turkl (sounds Terk'l, meaning a little Turk in Yidish). We haven't resolved the puzzle yet, why Jewish Turkel folks from Galicia are affiliated with a Turkish surname meaning in Turkish "the hand of the Turk" or "the land of the Turk."
Ever since this name has been written depending on arbitrary decisions with variations like, Turkle, Tuerkel, Terkl, Terkel, Tirkel, Tierkel, Tyrkel, etc.
The earliest reference to a Jewish fellow named Türkel is Itzhak (Issac) Tirkel of Lwow (Poland), who was murderred in June 1596, while he was on his way from Yas (Romania) to Eretz Ha`Yishme-elim (i.e. the Land of the Muslims = Turkey).
This story is fully presented on the 'Turkel Tribe' website.
According to a legand, our family's surname was addopted (ca. 1740-80) by Perez (Peretz), son of Rabbi Salomon (Shlomo) ha-Sepharadi (of Spain) and a grandson to Rabbi Jacob Munian from Krakow, who became the Rabbi of New Rausnitz, Czech (ca. 1710-30). The reference to this story is presented elsewhere, in our 'Turkel Tribe' website (see below the link "All I know about").
So far we have found many quite large Turkel "dynesties" extending up to 8 generations and many more quite smaller branches of just 2-3 generations. We could not match them all, even though we are quite confident that most of them are family related. They share almost the same heritage.
The descendant trees on this site (Family Tree Maker) include only the largest branches of Tarnopol (Ternopil), Trembwola (Terebovliya) Podwoloczyska and Tysmienitsa (near Stryj, Stanislawow, Bolechow) Jews. All (or the most) of them are descendants of Perez (see the story above).
Still we know almost nothing about Mordechai Türkl's children except Israel Menachem Alter Turkl (b.1830-d.1892). We also have no clue about Mordechai's siblings. We believe that most of them if not all of them are the founders of the other branches referenced below (such as Moshe, Jacob, Schmariah & Schmel).
Our 'Turkel Tribe' website (on Geocities) includes information and stories about additional Turkel folks around the world, including "The Most Famous Turkels".
There is also a reference to non Jewish Turkels, some of them (named Turkle) are believed to be "Black Irish" rather having Danish origins descendants of a common ancestor named Thurkeld.
The dynamic tree on this site "InterneTree: Doron A Tal" and the dynamic tree on our Geocities' website, both reflect our continuously updated database.
If you have additional information or wish to make any correction, please e-mail (see on the top).
On behalf of the "Turkel-bees" thank you in advance,
Doron
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