Show us your roots!

[ignoramus]

Guys, How far back have you traced your ancestry?

I'm a little fascinated with the colours, patterns and symbolism of medival English/Scottish clans/traditions.
Do you have a house flag? Kilt pattern? Did your ancestors make mead?  Boru?
Anyone have a family totem pole?

The further back, the more exciting! It's like travelling through time.

Here's mine (if you're having trouble sleeping)

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Mine's not all that exciting really. I mentioned this before, Being an Aussie born Greek, I wasn't all that fussed about my parents culture.

Myself and my 2 older sisters didn't really embrace much of the Greek culture growing up. It helps that the parents weren't all that perturbed about it either. 

(They weren't educated at all).



Anyway, one day, a Greek teacher explained the origins of our surname. It literally means "Victory over the Turks".

Dad was a Spartan, and during the 400 years of Turkish rule 1421-1821 (Ottoman Empire), the Turks didn't really bother with the harsh arid mountainous landscape of Sparta.

In this regard, the Spartans are generally considered pure blood as a general rule, as the woman of that area were not raped or taken.

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Any Americans who can trace their origins back to mother England?
Any famous dudes in your past?  The Wild West? Murdered? Got hanged? Bumped into Emmet Brown? Anything.

[Angrboda]

The first to be named Watanabe were the samurai clan founded by Watanabe no Tsuna (953-1025), a descendant of the Emperor Saga. Tsuna established the Watanabe branch of Saga Minamoto clan, taking the family name from his residential area Watanabe, Settsu Province.　He was companion in arms to Minamoto no Yorimitsu (944-1021), and famous for his military exploits in a number of tales and legends. Dominating Settsu Province as a focal area of maritime transportation in medieval Japan, the Watanabe family spread its influence widely. Their descendants settled in other areas, including Kyushu.

[ignoramus]

Ras, did I mention my descendants had to fight off the odd wild donkey! Those thing can be dangerous!
(ignoramus stops kidding himself * cries* ...he comes from a lineage of people hiding in caves)

Seriously! Samurai? Emperors? Fuck me! (not literally)

[account_inactive]

Haven't really traced it that much, I do know that I am Scottish with a little bit of Irish in there somewhere.

[Gawdzilla]

I can trace mine back as far as Ellis Island. My greatgrandparents changed their names when they got to the US. Evidently they left Ireland in a great hurry and didn't want anybody tracing them here.

[ignoramus]

Did they pinch a loaf of bread like the Aussie convicts here?

[The Valkyrie]

Haven't really traced back beyond three or four generations. There is family folklore that the branch of the family that went to the US spawned a president. One Teddy Roosevelt, apparently.

Just heresay. I've seen nothing to confirm it.

[Gawdzilla]

Did they pinch a loaf of bread like the Aussie convicts here?

No, they were "Prots in the South" according to Grandpa. Whatever that means.

[Whateverist]

Warning: TLDR

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I did a bit of searching on a trip to France some time ago. My surname comes from my great, great grandfather on my father's side. He started out training to be a lawyer and switched to studying medicine. Somehow because of failing health it was determined he should try his luck in the gold rush which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but hey, I wasn't there. But he didn't mine, he farmed food for miner's which seems to have worked out well financially.

He had sailed to San Francisco around the tip of South America but he later returned to Paris after crossing US by land. Somewhere near Chicago he met and married a woman from Switzerland. They had twelve children in all of which my great grandfather was the fourth youngest. At least three of the eldest boys became doctors, two of whom moved to Australia. The eldest was involved in founding the first school of epidemiology in England.

But there wasn't money to see them all through school so my poor great grandfather became a minister. When the miner's farmer died his wife along with the four youngest siblings moved back to the US through Walla Walla, Washington. My great grandfather plied his trade as a god-botherer near Hood River, Oregon. His only son, Sheridan Mark, my grandfather apparently tried several occupations including opening one of the first general stores in the area where one could actually gather the items directly and bring them to a clerk to pay. He doesn't seem to have gathered a lot of respect from my mother who made sure that I and my siblings never met the man. Apparently after marrying my grandmother who had been an instructor of women's athletics where he went to college and having seven surviving children he ditched the family to take up with a younger woman. So my grandmother went to work at a cannery until she died in her forties of a high fever. (The name of which escapes me at right now.) The two youngest of my father's siblings were taken in by their only aunt and the three eldest were old enough to make it on their own with the two oldest of my father's sisters already being married. But my father and his just younger brother became wards of the court. My poor father had a pretty rough start.

I told you it was too long and you shouldn't read it.

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[account_inactive]

Did they pinch a loaf of bread like the Aussie convicts here?

No, they were "Prots in the South" according to Grandpa. Whatever that means.

Probably referring to being Protestants in the Southern part of Ireland, which has been mainly Catholic..since...well...forever.