It'll probably be a nightmare someday for somebody trying to sort out all the different names/spellings I've been using. Here's a few notes to make that easier.
First, the Lithuanian naming conventions (as I understand them, anyhow) follow a few simple rules. Men always use the generic family name, for example "Matulis". These almost always end in -is, -as, or -us for Lithuanians (indeed, they often Lithuanian-ize non-Lithuanian names, such as "President Obamas" or "Michael Jordanas").
For women, the family name is different depending on whether or not she is married. For example, my grandmother's married name is Marija Matuliene - that's a -ene ending tacked onto her husband's family name. Before she was married, she was called Marija Kisieliute, which is a -te ending tacked onto her father's family name, Kisielius.
That said, however, things are changing and Lithuanian women sometimes choose to use an ambiguous female family name, ending in only -e. This way, it is impossible to know if a woman is married without knowing more about her family. For example, if a woman uses "Matule", you don't know if she is married and her husband is Matulis, or if she is unmarried and her father is Matulis.
Apart from this, Anglicized versions of Lithuanian names rarely use the -ne and -te endings (for example, when I write letters to my grandmother, I usually address them to Marija Matulis, not Marija Matuliene). This is just because people get confused in the English-speaking world when members of the same family have different versions of family names (i.e. father=Matulis, mother=Matuliene, son=Matulis, daughter=Matulyte).
Furthermore, to make something plural, the ending is -ai, not -s. So if there are multiple people from the Matulis family, they are Matuliai. Beyond that, the endings of all nouns in Lithuanian (including names) change depending on how it is being used in a sentence (e.g. to express possession). I think, for example, if you were talking about the house that belongs to Matulis, you would say "namas Matulio". But that's getting beyond my knowledge of the language. Suffice it to say, the endings of names are highly variable. The most important ones to understand are:
- -ne = married Lithuanian woman
- -te = unmarried Lithuanian woman
- -ai = plural
Also, there are a few other things that will certainly be confusing:
- Marija Matuliene is also called "Chute" (short for "machute", which is a poor spelling of "močiutė", which is grandma in Lithuanian).
- Marija also is sometimes written as Maryte, Mary, Maria, or Marie.
- Vacys Matulis is also called "Tevuk" (which is a diminutive of tėvas or "father", meaning "daddy" or "papa", even though he is my grandfather).
- Vacys went by Walter for a short time after arriving in the United States.
