I read and was told for many years the name Chaiken meant seagull. Recently, I heard as the name Chaiken contains the word "Chai", it meant good luck. I choose to believe our present and future Chaiken relatives will all have good luck through our ancestral name.

My immediate family of Philadelphia Chaikens, Leizor (Louis), my 2nd great uncle, Mire, my great grandmother, and Leizor (Hillel), my great uncle, were born in Nezhin, Russia, today Ukraine. We have thus far documented our earliest direct ancestors to be Yankel Chaiken born circa 1764 and his brothers Ber and Aron Wolf. Unofficialy, we have been told their father was Moishe of Kobrin, born circa 1740, the son of Jacob and Perel.

Though all of our direct Chaiken ancestors were born in Nezhin, many moved or immigrated. Mire moved after the birth of her children to Odessa. Hillel moved after his marriage to Chernigov, a neighboring town to Nezhin. In 1890, Louis was the first to immigrate to Philadelphia.

We are certain all of the Chaikens born or living in Nezhin are related. We also believe our early Chaiken ancestors (pre-1775) were from Belaruse and Mogilev.

Through census records and Ellis Island manifests, we have verified the earliest known Chaiken to have immigrated to Philadelphia was Joseph Chaiken and his wife Anna who arrived in America in 1885. Joseph was an apprentice Tailor. We hope to connect him to our family shortly.

Many Chaikens immigrated from Russia to the New York area and to Israel. We are now working on connecting these families to our tree.

Through the years I had always heard that my father, Harry Sovel, the son of Manya and grandson of Mire, and Luba Chaiken Potamkin, the granddaughter of Hillel, had always wanted to create a Chaiken family tree. It is many years later now and they have both passed away, but our Chaiken family tree is created. We hope that family members looking at this site will add names of the present generations to the tree.

Please enjoy the site..........