Today a region once called Galicia is in Poland, but Galicia, ruled as part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, now would be parts of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. But on a ship manifests a person with these ethnic identities might have left "Austria."
Basically, you've got to research the history of war and politics. Be niche specific. Get out your maps. Look at borders. Remember borders as we think of them today weren't so official or supervised. It could be that a road was blocked but people traveled through the woods or well known farm roads. Try not to get that genealogy myopia that would have you think people couldn't move, travel, or live past a "border" be it a city, county, or country. Don't think that certain ethnic groups wouldn't deal with each other because you'll find that there are stereotypes to bust. Ethnic and religious intermarriage, for instance, did happen.
I'm communicating this because people using passenger list databases sometimes disqualify a listing over ethic identity or location.
We also need to research the changes in the names of settlements, some which have had three different names in a short lifetime. More obscure even with today's maps on the Internet that zoom, are tiny settlements that back in the day locals knew as farmsteads.
I once searched a half dozen paper and on line maps looking for a location an immigrant gave as the place he left, which appeared on a ship passenger list. In 2020 a Polish genealogy site listed this habitation and to my surprise hundreds of people lived and died there over a hundred years with about a dozen surnames repetitive. Yet it was not on these maps. At another location however, on another map listed a huge Communist Era "commune" named after one of these families. Today I understand this place must have been like - like a vale of hobbits* and only one decided to go on an adventure to America! Finally I found a reference to it in a text, basically alluding to it as a fork in the road. Maps often have some criteria such as listing only places that have a population of, say, 500 or more.
With change of place name also comes the difference in the way a place is spelled and how it's pronounced by a native speaker who also has a regional accept and may also speak a "high" or "low" form of that language. Great Grand Ma kept saying she was from a certain place but you can't find it. (It turns out she was naming the biggest city, not her suburb! Kind of like what some men do to state their football team preference as Boston Celtics so you think they're from Boston when they're from Massachusetts.
You've got to run that place name past a native speaker.
Along with ethic identity, consider the reportage. I've seen so many manifests where it seems men are ghettoized by an ethnic identity or assumption. Hey, maybe they stuck together the whole trip. But maybe not. I wonder.
I can imagine these men having conversations. Why they're traveling. Where they left and where they're going. What kind of work they're seeking and who is waiting for them. Giving advise on trains, boarding houses, and employment. Who has an unmarried sister who needs a husband? I also see how immigrants helped each other, some brothers, some brothers of a different mother, I think we today could envy the friendships they made.
C 2021
*Hobbit as in Bilbo Bagging.
