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What’s in a name?

I guess it all boils down to how much value you put in it. Some love to look back to their roots, search through the records to determine their ancestors and in doing so, perhaps learn a little more about themselves. Whereas others are content with the here and now, and leaving the past just where it is, in the past. I definitely fall into the former category. For a long time I’ve had an interest in finding out more about my roots, where my ancestors came from, what type of people they were, and why they chose to move where they did.

So far I’ve relied mainly on other family members to gain knowledge on what can be found of my roots, though with the passing on of the extended family’s main knowledge gatherer a year back, perhaps that new knowledge gatherer should become me.

Korea still displays extensive – and some would say, obsessive – reverence to their ancestors and family line, where seemingly all families contain records on their family lines, and bloodlines are treated with utmost importance – hence the resistance for many to even consider marrying outside the Han minjok (Korean ethnic group). Though, this is changing rapidly. So, no doubt, living here – where many bask on their ‘pure’, ‘undiluted’ bloodline has no doubt prompted me to learn more about my ‘mixed’, ‘diluted’ bloodline.

Yesterday, I happened across this site, which seems like a great, free! first stepping point in learning just a snippet about your family history – your and your ancestors’ surname. The site provides a clear, concise history on – at this stage – largely European, in particular Anglo-Celtic, surnames. It’s a interesting site to look at if you know a few of your ancestors’ last names.

From the knowledge given to me both through word of mouth and through previously mentioned relative’s research I know I have ancestral links to Salisbury, Wiltshire and Cornwall in England, Lowland Scotland, County Tipperary in  Ireland, and numerous other locales in the British Isles. Most of my ancestors seemed to have landed on the British Isles somewhere between the last two thousand and two hundred years, and most probably came from anywhere and everywhere in Europe such as Normandy, the Iberian peninsula, the Dutch Lowlands, Roman lands, Scandinavia and Saxony in getting there. Brits as a whole are a very mixed lot – as are all groups of people once people take their nationalist and ethnic bias away.

I also possess some Jewish ancestry and it’s strongly suspected, though thus far not proven without doubt, that I also have some indigenous Australian ancestry – most probably Wiradjuri as said relative – whose records are frustrating scant* lived in the Gulgong area of New South Wales, just west of the Great Dividing Range within the realm of the Wiradjuri people. (* – there’s many reasons for this all somewhat sad, depressing but true. Them being, 1. Indigenous people weren’t regarded as people – at least in the terms of being equal to European Australians are were thus not counted in Censuses or other Government documents in the 18th, 19th and 20th century leading up until 1966 – depressing ain’t it!; 2. People of mixed ancestry, or half-castes as they were known were often taken from their families in order to be brought up as ‘civilised’ members of society; and 3. ‘being stained with the tar brush’ ie. having some native ancestry was something so shameful – more so that being of convict stock – that individuals with knowledge of their true ancestry would go out of their way to conceal or disguise their ancestry by saying they were Black Irish or some such.)

I ended spending an hour looking up all the surnames of ancestors that I can remember starting from closest to most distant and the interesting thing is that the information on the surnames on the website largely correlates with the information I have been provided by my family members and relatives. So, if you happen to be have of the following surnames, or have a relative or ancestor with one of the following surnames, say g’day as we may well have a tenuous link with each other!

GRAHAM, CORNISH, PEACOCK, HANCOCK (HANDCOCK), MACNEILL, BARRETT, GOULDTHORPE, O’SHEA, SMITH