Family trees

[Paradox]

That site is bound to be very innacurate.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Which?
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[Motep]

More extensive research has led to the conclusion that My great-great-great Grandpa was James Monroe Fender. As to my great-great and great, they remain a mystery to me, but I may ask my grandfather if I ever get a hold of him. Now, as to my father's side, I cannot say, for he was adopted, and his birt family are a bunch of asses and evade all efforts of contact.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Good Lord, no, nothing like that. I am very proud at the complete lack of any noble blood running through my veins. Well there was this maid who worked for a certain marquis and family rumour has it that
You'll no doubt be happy to know that my family has always considered the guillotine as the final word in all thing noble.

My neck is itching in memoriam.

In the British Isles, family crests are a jealously guarded noble prerogative.

Not so over here. At some point during the Ancien Régime , this being France, an ambitious civil servant of the king discovered that there were no taxes levied yet on the bearing of arms. This gross oversight was of course duly corrected. Naturally, before long, another ambitious civil servant discovered that it was of course grosly unfair that families without a coat of arms should avoid this tax. So they were forced to adopt arms. And then promptly taxed to the hilt for it. Many bourgeois French families of enough importance and wealth hence came in the possession of a coat of arms.

Thank God we corrected this ridiculous system at the Revolution. No French government ever since has dared to levy obscure taxes.

Only the British invented a whole new system of bureaucracy to control arms. When my ancestor came over from France in the 1300s, the newly forming heraldic authority had a fit when they discovered about thirty seven other French families were using broadly the same arms. No wonder we got turned over at Poitiers, no-one had the faintest clue who was on our side.

[KukriKhan]

Apparently one of my Irish ancestors did something to warrant granting a family crest (a blue boar on white, with 3 red crosses), but I've never found out any details, other than they were from Roscommon and migrated to Cork. On this side of the pond, they were farmers.

People with Mom's surname hailed from a small town in Normandy - over here they were shopkeepers, trappers and laborers.

Aren't the 1300's about as far back as one can go (excepting nobility, who had chroniclers) for Europeans, surnames not being adopted 'til around then? Asian surnames, OTOH can be traceable way back BCE, yes?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Surnames were invented and forced upon people's throats in 1930's here in Turkey. Especially those with ethnicity were deliberately given surnames including "Türk" in it. But before that gentry and influential peasant families had their names. Initially their usage were banished but afterwards that was eased a little bit.

There are aristocratic families that can trace their roots back to pre-Ottoman times. But most of the time surnames are just meaningless and you can have multiple ones in a family.

My maternal grandfather, urged by my nationalist uncle, changed the whole family's surname; all the relatives, comprising the greatest clanlike family in the village, including the children and grandchildren of my grandfather's siblings, have a different one. When I need to introduce myself to someone of the region, I use their surname as reference ("We are of the XXXs"). My paternal grandmother's brethren had taken different surnames. The greater all-male-side family of my father has a different surname than our small branch, whose surname was given by Kemal himself... Even more interesting; I have a couple Danish cousins, the younger not speaking Turkish. He has double given names (Danish and Turkish) as well as double surnames to fit them (one of his late Turkish father and of his Danish mother).

Kurds have clan names which scarcely match their surnames. Aristocratic clans can trace their ancestry quite far backwards. Similar case exists for the Türkmen (Turcoman) clans; they can trace their roots back to legends.
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[Tribesman]

Mothers side fascinating stuff , htey ain't welsh at all just moved up with the demand for stonework, go back eventually to west moon .Fathers side , f/all before they became yanks and had thier name changed .
Wifes family ..... hey its history book stuff .

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I've started using the Geni program to map my family tree. So far I have it mapped back to my great-grandparents on my father's side. I've started contacting others in my family as well, especially on my mother's side, to see what they know. I have twenty-eight people on it so far, including all of my great-uncles on my father's side.