How to Search Geneteka from British Family Records

Geneteka is the free index of Polish birth, marriage and death registers run by the Polish Genealogical Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne). It holds more than 68 million entries from over 6,000 parishes and civil registers, and many entries link to a scan of the original page. It will only find your ancestor if you search in the form the Polish clerk used, not the form that appears in a British record.

Most British families start with an anglicised name, a birthplace spelled by ear in a census or naturalisation file, and a date of birth from the 1939 Register or an army form. This guide shows how to turn those clues into a Geneteka search that works, how to read what comes back, and where to look when the index has nothing.

What Geneteka covers, and what it does not

Geneteka is an index made by volunteers from parish and civil registers. Each entry gives the year, the entry number and the main names, and it points to the register that holds the full record. It is free and needs no login. The interface has an English version, although parish and place names stay in Polish.

Coverage follows today’s Polish provinces (województwa), with separate sections for Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, which cover the former eastern territories of Poland. The index is strongest in central and southern Poland. Provinces that were German before 1945, such as zachodniopomorskie and lubuskie, have very few entries. For Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), the separate Poznań Project indexes more than a million marriages from 1800 to 1899, and Geneteka’s home page links to it and to a few other regional databases.

Two limits matter most. First, a parish is only searchable for the years volunteers have indexed, so a blank result can simply mean nobody has indexed that register yet. Second, recent records are thin. Polish civil registry offices keep birth registers for 100 years and marriage and death registers for 80 years before passing them to the state archives, so most indexing stops somewhere between the 1910s and 1940s.

Start from what the British records tell you

A Geneteka search needs four things: the Polish form of the surname, the Polish form of the first name, the parish, and a range of years. British records rarely give any of them in usable form, so rebuild each one first.

The surname: spelling, diacritics and female forms

Undo the anglicisation before you search. Shepansky is Szczepański; Wisniewski on a British certificate is Wiśniewski. Our guide to anglicised Polish surnames explains the usual changes: sz and cz written as sh and ch, w written as v, and ł written as w.

You do not have to type the Polish letters. Geneteka ignores diacritics, so Wronski finds Wroński. What it will not do is guess a shortened or translated name, so Shepherd will never lead you to Szczepański.

Adjective surnames change with sex: Kowalski for a man, Kowalska for a woman; Zawadzki and Zawadzka. A normal search already includes both forms. Exact search is stricter and drops the female form, which can hide a daughter or a mother. Nouns such as Nowak do not change, but older registers sometimes call a wife Nowakowa and an unmarried daughter Nowakówna. Married women are usually recorded under their maiden name in their children’s baptisms and in their own death entry.

The first name: Polish, Latin, Russian and German forms

Registers were written in Polish, Latin, Russian or German, depending on the date and the partition. Geneteka indexers enter the Polish form, and the search matches some Latin and German equivalents but not English ones. When we tested the search in September 2026, these were the results:

Name used in Britain	Polish form to type	Other forms Geneteka matched	Forms that found nothing
Albert	Wojciech	Albert, Adalbertus	-
Joseph	Józef	Joseph, Josephus, Josef	-
Thomas	Tomasz	Thomas	-
John	Jan	Joannes, Johann, Iwan	John
Frank, Francis	Franciszek	Franz	Frank, Francis
Stanley	Stanisław	-	Stanley

The rule is simple: always type the Polish name. Stanley was usually Stanisław, Walter often Władysław, Albert often Wojciech, and Frank usually Franciszek. If a name gives nothing, try the obvious alternatives in turn.

The place: finding the parish and the province

British clerks wrote places as they heard them, and before 1918 they often named the ruling empire rather than Poland: Russia, Germany (Prussia) or Austria. Nashelsk, Russia is Nasielsk; Plotsk is Płock. Naturalisation records often give the fullest version, as our guide to naturalisation records for Poles in the UK explains.

A village rarely had its own church, so you need the parish that served it, and you need to know which modern province it now lies in. Geneteka’s parish search box on the home page finds parish names only, not villages. If you have only a village, search the whole province and read the Place column, or identify the parish first using the steps in how to find the parish for a Polish village.

The date: allow for drift

The 1939 Register gives an exact date of birth, but only for people living in Britain on 29 September 1939. Post-war arrivals, including soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces, will not appear in it, so take their date from army or naturalisation papers. See UK census records and the 1939 Register for what each source records. Dates given in Britain can be a year or two out, and in the Russian partition registers show both Julian and Gregorian dates, about 12 days apart. Search at least three years either side.

The Geneteka search form, field by field

Open geneteka.genealodzy.pl and choose the English version. The search page has these parts:

Births, Marriages, Deaths. Three tabs choose the record type. Each type is searched separately.
Province. The modern province, or Ukraina, Białoruś, Litwa or Pozostałe (other).
Parish. Leave it as all locations, or pick one parish. The list shows the indexed years next to each parish, marked U (births), M (marriages) and Z (deaths), for example Nasielsk (U 1709-1922, M 1709-1922, Z 1710-1922).
Person: Surname and Name. At least two letters in each box you use.
Or: a second Surname and Name. A second person, used with Relationship search.
Range of years. From and to.
Options. Exact search; Relationship search; Skip search in parents column; Include search in nearby parishes (15 km radius), available once you pick a parish; and Search only indexes added in the past, for checking new additions.

By default a surname search also looks in the parents’ columns, so a search for Kowalski also returns children whose mother was born a Kowalska. Tick Skip search in parents column to see only the person. Relationship search is the most useful option for families: put the father’s surname in the first box and the mother’s maiden name in the second, and Geneteka lists the births of every child of that couple in the parish.

Reading the results

Birth and death results show Year, Record (the entry number in that year’s register), Name, Surname, Father’s name, Mother’s name, Mother’s surname, Parish, Place and Remarks. Marriage results show the groom’s name, surname and parents, then the bride’s, then the Parish. Place is the village or town where the family lived, which is often not the parish seat.

The Remarks column holds small icons. Hover over them to see:

the exact date of the event and any notes the indexer added
where the register is kept, such as a state archive branch or a diocesan archive
who indexed the entry
a link to a scan, where one is online, on the society’s Metryki site, FamilySearch, Szukajwarchiwach or a diocesan site
a form to report an indexing error.

Always note the parish, year and record number. Together they locate the entry in any copy of the register, whether or not Geneteka links to a scan. Then read the original: the index leaves out ages, godparents, witnesses, house numbers and marginal notes.

Checking what is indexed for a parish

Before you decide that a person is not there, check the coverage. The year ranges in the parish list are the quickest check. The Registers page, linked from the home page, lists every indexed register by province, record type and years. A separate page, Check the occurrence of the name, counts a surname across provinces. It is useful when a British record gives only Russian Poland and you need to see where the name clusters.

Gaps inside a range are common. A parish shown as births 1808 to 1925 may be missing single years, and Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox and Jewish registers are listed separately (ewang., prawosł., mojż.). Search the right denomination.

A worked example (illustrative)

This family is invented, but the clues are typical. An English family knows their grandfather as Albert Shepansky, a baker in Manchester. The 1939 Register gives his date of birth as 23 April 1896. The 1921 census gives his birthplace as Nashelsk, Russia, and his naturalisation file names his parents as John and Mary Shepansky, mother born Wroblewska.

Surname. Shepansky rebuilds as Szczepański. His mother would appear as Wróblewska; typing Wroblewska is enough.
First names. Albert is most likely Wojciech. John is Jan and Mary is probably Marianna or Maria.
Place. Nashelsk is Nasielsk, a parish in present-day Mazowieckie province. The parish list shows births indexed to 1922, so 1896 is covered.
Search. Births tab, province mazowieckie, parish Nasielsk, surname Szczepański, name Wojciech, years 1893 to 1899.
If nothing appears. Clear the first name, tick Relationship search and enter Szczepański with Wróblewska as the second surname. That lists every child of the couple, and a Wojciech born in spring 1896 with a birthday that matches the Julian or Gregorian date is your candidate. Then tick nearby parishes, because the family may have lived in a neighbouring parish.
Confirm. Open the scan, check the parents’ names, and use the parents’ names to find their marriage in the same way.

In this case the British paper trail gave three independent checks: the date, the place and the parents’ names. When all three agree with the register, the identification is safe.

When Geneteka has nothing: next steps

A blank result has several possible causes: the parish is not indexed for those years, the name is spelled in an unexpected way, the family belonged to another denomination, or the register did not survive the wars. Work through them in this order.

Scans without an index. Szukajwarchiwach, the portal of the Polish State Archives, has millions of free scans of civil and parish registers, many not yet indexed. Its vital records search lets you find registers by place. FamilySearch and the society’s Metryki site hold other filmed registers.
Parish offices and diocesan archives. Many Catholic registers never went to the state archives. The parish or the diocesan archive may search them, usually by written request in Polish.
Civil registry offices (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego). Births from roughly the last 100 years, and marriages and deaths from the last 80, are still held locally. Copies go only to the person concerned, close relatives such as descendants, and others who can show a legal interest. See the 100-year rule in Polish genealogy.
Other indexes. The Poznań Project for Greater Poland marriages, and the regional databases linked from Geneteka’s home page.

Unindexed Russian-language registers from the late 19th century are the most common stopping point. If you reach it, our Polish vital records search covers a single record, including registers Geneteka has not indexed.