Did the Normans have any presence in Ireland, as well? I know that there are some Irish surnames which point to Norman origin so that's why I am curious.
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Did the Normans have any presence in Ireland, as well? I know that there are some Irish surnames which point to Norman origin so that's why I am curious.
Ah yeah, many of those... well, paid genealogists know what their customers want to hear, and deliver it. That's essentially what those boil down to - unless they can cross-reference it with documented evidence, it's worthless. As for the general veracity of old genealogies, it really depends on which ones you're referring to. I specified ones of nobility (or of individuals with documented noble ancestry that's "filtered down," though I hate to use that phrase) in particular as these are also verified by the fact that kings recorded their children, who recorded their own children, and so on. Genealogies that can't be cross-checked in this manner are the problematic ones, and are precisely why descent from antiquity is impossible to trace. The clearest case that springs immediately to mind is King Harald Fairhair of Norway's ancestry - he claimed some long line, going back to, erm, "Odin." :icon_lol: Needless to say, his descendants are easy to know of, but any claims as to his own ancestry have no verifiable documentation behind them - all that's near-absolutely certain is that Odin didn't shag his great-great-great-grandmother.
I found the information here. http://www.houseofnames.com/Radcliffe-family-crest I had known about the landing in 1631 decades ago, we had no records of anything previous to that.
House of Names, unfortunately, really isn't a credible source. The same surname can in quite a few cases be found in individuals who are not closely related or of the same family - this is especially the case of surnames related to professions and locations. House of Names tends to treat them all like every single one comes from the same family - that's more often the case with rare surnames that don't relate to the aforementioned things, but with names like the obvious example of Smith (and to a lesser degree, yes, Radcliffe isn't all that rare and refers to a red cliff), it's likely that this surname is held by multiple families. They also generally don't cite where their information comes from. Indeed, some of it is rather glaringly wrong, the clearest example being the very notion of "family crests" in the British Isles. British heraldry simply doesn't work like that - crests belong to individuals and are considered to be rightly used by their direct descendants, but absolutely do not belong to those merely sharing a surname with the initial holder of the coat of arms.
Ah I see thanks for the heads up. I ended up using it because I remember hearing about the 1631 landing from a hard copy of our family tree. So I figured since that part matched then the rest should be accurate. What would be a reputable way to check further back?
You're welcome. :) If your family tree is legitimately traceable back to 1631, that is to say cross-referenced by census records and/or records of the families of early colonial American figures, one could always simply follow the yellow brick road. Huguenot ancestry in particular, if you have any, is often easy to trace back into Europe. The records the English kept also aren't too shabby. Ancestry.com can be decent way to get a first look, but be sure to check what records they have proving the connections made in trees - it's not very good as a final source, more just a way to find potential connections to later verify or debunk with other evidence. Genealogics.org tends to be very credible in this regard given the site owner's commitment to verification, but the range of people it has trees on is very narrow given that it's a private database. You'd have to input an already-known ancestor into the site's search for it to work, hoping that this ancestor is in the database.
The GREATEST Germanic "tribe" that ever lived!
Take that, Saxons!
I have Norman ancestry, like all the French part of my family. I lived many years in the Basse-Normandie and I'm very proud to have the blood of people with a rich history
I'd like to see some pic of modern normans ;)