THE KOCHUBEYS FAMILY IN GENEOLOGICAL STUDIES

The article deals with the theories of the Kochubeys family origin, its history on the territory
of Ukraine. There are several versions of the Kochubeys family genesis. T.H. Shevchenko in
his poems called the Kochubeys «nagai» (nogai) concerning that they originated from the
Tatar people, who inhabited Dahestan. Probably, this family started with three Tatar brothers:
Kachubey, Kutlubugu and Dmytro. These brothers, Tatar princes were «otchychi» and
«didychi», owners the of Podillia land. Thus, this family runned the territory for a long time.
According to the researches of O. Hostyna, Australian ethnographer (one of the
representatives of this family) the Kochubeys were direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
However, the author has quite different opinion. We believe that this generation originated
from the founder of the CrimeanKhanate Hadji-Girey and his son Mengli-Girey. We can
prove it with a fact that on the place of modern Odesa during the reign of Vitautas there
was a well- fortified Hadzibey, Kochubey, or Kotsubiy stronghold. Kochubey and Kotsubey
are the same surnames with different pronunciation in different languages. This surname
was considered to be one of the noblest and the most significant among the Tatars, that is
confirmed by the title of Baya, which in Crimea was the highest after the ruling dynasty of
the Genghis Empire. It was given only to families that came from Shirinand Mansur. The other
noble families were called Murza (Murza - General -author). Kochubey is translated from
Turkic as «small», «small nobleman», «small prince», a «son of the prince».
Also, our research has studied biographies of family members and has paid much attention
to the study of descendants living all over the world.
Summing up the work we can admit that unknown pages of the Kochubeys family lives
and activities were revealed. However, the history of 1-5 generations of the Kochubeys has
not been sufficiently studied, thus in this paper we have entirely focused our attention on
them. It is worth noting that we must continue studing this interesting topic. It will allow us
to study deeply the history of this family from its founders, thus the number of white spots in
the Kochubeys genealogy willdecrease.