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Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
Jeez, on my Mom's side, who knows? The Nazis put her whole village in a concentration camp in 1940, when she was only 3 years old, and she was the only member of her family to get out alive. The camp records show an ID number and her origin (Stanisicz, Croatia, which is now 20 miles inside of Serbia), but not her name. Franciscan monks gave her a name, since she didn't remember what her name was; "Helene" is French, while I suspect that "Horvath" is something that the monks thought sounded Croatian (though it's not). From some of the few memories she has from before the Germans came, I strongly suspect she was originally Croatian Muslim; from some of the rituals she remembers her parents doing, I also suspect she might have had some Gypsy somewhere in there. But who knows?
There is a firm in the US that will, for $150, send you a packet of swabs and test tubes so you can swab the inside your mouth. In a month, they will have used mitochondrial DNA to chart out your family's origins back up to 200,000 years. I hope to do that for her one day; it won't tell her any family names, but will give her an idea of where her ancestors are from.
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My last name is a muddled up version of the original Serbian name, so I'm not sure what my exact name is. I could have other stuff floating in me as well, some even suggested that maybe I could have some Greek in my somewhere. That test does sound interesting, going back to 200,000 years. Sometimes I wonder if I have "UFO roots," I have trouble going back past 1880 although on Mom's side I can get close to 1850. I knew one guy on Fidonet, the old BBS system, who could trace his family history back to 600 BC in ancient Babylon.
As to Irish origins, some do say the Irish and Basques do share DNA types so it is possible they came from the Basque region a long time ago and went north. I've also heard of "black Irish" where some have dark, black hair although they say that came from Spanish sailors who settled there after the British wiped out their fleet in 1588.
Chuck M.