I took some time this week-end to go to my local library and make some search about the Malama family, which is indeed mentionned in the few books I found about Eastern Europe nobility. The family of Malama comes from Transylvania ( to day part of Roumania and also known at some stage of History as the Austrian province of Siebenburgen ). The family can be traced back to the early 17th century when the name was Malom which is Hungarian for mill. In the early 1600s, the Princes Rakoczy made Transylvania independent from the Ottoman Empire and created a " home grown nobility ". Thus in 1653, two brothers from the Malom family were ennobled by the Princes Rakoczy and their name was changed to Malama. One century later, Transylvania had become part of the Austrian Empire. In accordance with his policy of Germanisation, Emperor Joseph II re-ennobled in perpetuity the Malamas and made them Barons von Malama of the Holy Roman Empire. In the mean time, some members of the Malama family had left Transylvania and gone to Russia, where they served Peter The Great and all the following Tzars. They had been admitted de facto into the Russian nobility and remained part of the establishment till the Revolution in 1917 when some were killed and others managed to escape to various parts of Europe. Dimitri de Malama who died in 1919 and his cousin Peter de Lamana who is alive ( and living in the UK as mentionned by other members ) belong to this " Russian branch " of the Malama family. I shall not go into further details about the genealogy of the whole Malama family here as it would sound extremly complicated, this family beeing linked from the start to Transylvania, a country which was constantly kicked about from one emprire to the next etc...
