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The link above from familysearch.org is a list of (mostly) free sites that show the distribution of surnames on maps of different countries, or in the case of the top one, of the world!
I've happily lost a few days looking through many of these and verifying relationships, getting leads and just having fun. In one case I've narrowed down the area of a country where an ancestor came from by comparing locations of surnames in the family tree of known relatives. Pretty awesome!
Tell us how it helps you, if it does. Either way enjoy!
Pretty fun. I wish I still had my Ancestry.com account and lots of time. I would pick up where I left off in my genealogical searches. Some of my forebears had adopted new names when they were freed after 1865, so lots of searches end there.
Pretty fun. I wish I still had my Ancestry.com account and lots of time. I would pick up where I left off in my genealogical searches. Some of my forebears had adopted new names when they were freed after 1865, so lots of searches end there.
Keep in mind that you can go back to Ancestry.com for a free two week trial if you no longer have a subscription, and the database is growing exponentially.
The link above from familysearch.org is a list of (mostly) free sites that show the distribution of surnames on maps of different countries, or in the case of the top one, of the world!
I've happily lost a few days looking through many of these and verifying relationships, getting leads and just having fun. In one case I've narrowed down the area of a country where an ancestor came from by comparing locations of surnames in the family tree of known relatives. Pretty awesome!
Tell us how it helps you, if it does. Either way enjoy!
Awesome site but.... I bet most Americans have their last name because their guberment told them to change it to something more... "American." Only reason I know what my real last name is because my grandfather kept his immigration papers. Thankfully they kept it on that at least.
Awesome site but.... I bet most Americans have their last name because their guberment told them to change it to something more... "American." Only reason I know what my real last name is because my grandfather kept his immigration papers. Thankfully they kept it on that at least.
That is a bit of a twist on this old myth but regardless, still inaccurate. The government never asked or told anyone to change their name. If your surname was changed, it was by the choice of your ancestors, because they wanted to integrate in American society. The government doesn't and never did have the right to instruct or force anyone to change their name. It would be wise not to make such assumptions about history - this is how myths start.
there is the not so infrequent occurrence of clerical error in immigration, registration, and census records. I have found my forebears names spelled any number of ways by in attentive census recorders.
Keep in mind that you can go back to Ancestry.com for a free two week trial if you no longer have a subscription, and the database is growing exponentially.
If you have not done so, you might consider DNA testing. I just got my 23andMe results, and that is fascinating.
Wish I could afford it. The Ancestry free trial still requires giving a credit card # and then cancelling later...did that before. Besides I have too many other priorities now. Perhaps another day.
Awesome site but.... I bet most Americans have their last name because their guberment told them to change it to something more... "American." Only reason I know what my real last name is because my grandfather kept his immigration papers. Thankfully they kept it on that at least.
Actually, that is not a very widespread phenomenon, though it did happen to a few people. To support your remark there was a man featured on a news show years ago. He had been raised with the surname Smith. When he discovered his family had entered at Ellis Island with an unwieldy Greek surname that had been changed, he took back the lost and forgotten name. And I say, good for him!
On the other hand, if someone does a great deal of genealogy, they get a much better feel for this type of thing, and we learn that the above was an exception. But many people have a mistaken image of everyone going through Ellis Island. In fact proportionately very few did. I have ancestors who immigrated from the 1620s to the 1890s in coastal states or ports as varied as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York (not Ellis, just the city), Virginia, Charleston, SC, and New Orleans, LA.
Wherever and whenever people immigrated many knew their own names and reported them correctly on birth, marriage and death certificates as well as census records. Whether they spelled them consistently is another matter. I was recently studying a family in my genealogy who started out being named Grünewald The name progressively became Grunewald -> Grunwald -> Greenwald -> and lastly Greenwalt. This could have easily progressed to Greenwood and has in some families.
No member of "gubmint" had anything to do with this or most other family changes. These are natural progressions as people became Americanized, sought easier pronunciations and spellings of their names, and knew less and less about how the names had been spelled or said in their original languages.
I have two relatives, one on my maternal side and one on my paternal side whose lasts names have 3-4 variations each, simply because of clerical error and/or illteracy, and those weren't the only ancestors whose names changed spelling. As recently as last year, when Ancestry transcribed the 1940 census, the person who inputted it into their database incorrectly read the handwritten census and added another spelling to our family name. They refused to change it in their database when I brought it to their attention and just added the correct spelling in as an "alternate spelling", though the original handwritten census very clearly, to me, spelled our name correctly. It happens.
And sometimes it IS the government who changes names. In 1860, King Kamehameha IV signed the Act to Regulate Names in Hawai'i. Children had to take their father's given name as a surname and were given a Christian first name, and their Hawaiian previous first name then became their middle names. The law wasn't repealed until 1967 <-- very recently, and no, it didn't affect "just a few" people!
Actually, that is not a very widespread phenomenon, though it did happen to a few people. To support your remark there was a man featured on a news show years ago. He had been raised with the surname Smith. When he discovered his family had entered at Ellis Island with an unwieldy Greek surname that had been changed, he took back the lost and forgotten name. And I say, good for him!
That doesn't mean the name was changed because the government told them to do it though - or even that it was changed by error.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TribalCat
And sometimes it IS the government who changes names. In 1860, King Kamehameha IV signed the Act to Regulate Names in Hawai'i. Children had to take their father's given name as a surname and were given a Christian first name, and their Hawaiian previous first name then became their middle names. The law wasn't repealed until 1967 <-- very recently, and no, it didn't affect "just a few" people!
We were clearly talking about the US government, given the numerous mentions of America, Americans and American society. I was not speaking for other governments in other countries (in 1860, Hawaii was not a part of the US).
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