I am trying to locate any records about my grand father.
His name in "Yechezkel Fleker" or in hebrew "יחזקאל פלקר" and I am trying to search some polish archives for information about him.
I am not sure what alternate spellings should I use for both his first name and surname.
I tried both Yechezkel & Ezekiel and used http://www.origins.net/namex/NameXSearch.aspx to get some alternate spellings but I am looking for some source that is more aware of the polish language features.
Thanks
Using many of the suggestions here It seems like I managed to find at http://jri-poland.org a reference to my grandfathers birth with the spelling Ichezkel Fleker.
Next task is to see if I can get my hands on an actual birth certificate.
One thing to do is look in the JewishGen Given Names database that might help with suggesting alternate "offical" names.
The more complicated answer is that depending on where you are searching for your ancestor's name, you might need to try different things. For example, if you are looking through ships' manifests, you have to keep in mind that someone from Poland who emigrated to the US around the turn of the 18th-19th century likely went through a German port of departure. Thus you should be looking for "Germanified" spellings of names. This Germanification might not affect the way Polish names are written as much at it would affect Russian names, but it's possible that your ancestor was a Russian speaker.
Some databases support Soundex indexing, so that may help match with inexact spelling; when that's not an option, try searching with just the strong consonants: fl*k*r for Fleker for example. In my experience, these tend to survive mispronunciation and mistranscription better than other letters.
For the first name "Yechezkel", try Behind the Name. It says that it is the Hebrew form of "Ezekiel" and gives a number of variants for the name.
If you look up "Polish Yechezkel" on Google, I think you'll find that there are many sites where the name "Yechezkel" is given. You'll likely have success with that name, once you search records that actually contain your grandfather.
For "Fleker", despite its Argentine bias the Hebrew Surnames site has good information and a list of variances. You can try some of the more plausible variations they give there.
