How far back can you trace your ancestors?

[Äike]

Anno Domini 1381

[Kiyant]

Me
Cavit(my father) 1967
Nedim(Grandad) 1910
Mehmet(Great Granddad) 1880
Ruslan(Great great Grandad) 1843
Atilla(Great great great Grandad) 1817
And someone of my Ancestors had the name Serifgil (Because thats my families/clans name) Dont know the date

[Rudel]

For all important branches and uninterrupted : XVth century.
For major branches : reliably up to the middle XIIth century, at least on the paternal line. Possibly the XIth century, but that's conjectural. Most likely linked to a good chunk of the nobility of the County of Bar, could probably go down to the Dark Ages if not for major lack of records.

[Tropico]

1822 Spain. Potentially 1800 France.

[Loki]

For all important branches and uninterrupted : XVth century.
For major branches : reliably up to the middle XIIth century, at least on the paternal line. Possibly the XIth century, but that's conjectural. Most likely linked to a good chunk of the nobility of the County of Bar, could probably go down to the Dark Ages if not for major lack of records.

[Aurora]

1600's on both sides of my family.

[Dombra]

1600´s on my fathers side

I know that some French came to Åland in the 1700´s, hence my second second surname That's all "ancient" I know in my mothers family, but I think there are some of my family in Finland who has done more research

[Leadchucker]

Maternal side only to late 1800's ( Do you know how many Daffyd Morgans there are in Wales?)
Paternally back to about 1100 AD in Britain, specifically London and East Anglia then to Virginia in America around 1675.

[Rudel]

What's so funny ? Does my lineage put you off ? Are you laughing just for the sake of being a childish retard all over again ?

As for the records (since it should be mentioned, "Internet genealogy" is pretty much crap), I've had hard time to gain access to the more ancient ones, before parish registers (pre XVth-XVIth century), but I've managed to grab some stuff over time.
Still waiting on the charters from the library of the abbey of Saint-Mihiel though.

[Stanley]

Tracing your ancestry back to, say, the 1500s requires knowing several thousand ancestral lines. That's all but impossible. I think people are answering to the question: how far back is your farthest traceable ancestor?

I haven't personally done much genealogy research. Growing up I was always told and thought of my ethnic background as "Irish, English, and Swedish", as that's what my family identified by. Looking up my family's surnames on google years ago corroborated that and it wasn't until I got a little more inquisitive a few years ago that I got the real picture. I found out the parents of my maternal grandfather's mother were from Luxemburg and that my "English" grandfather was of colonial American descent and mixed with other British and German.

I signed up for the ancestry.com free trial and mostly piggybacked on what other users had, particularly for my colonial ancestry, and searched a few records confirming the Irish/Swedish/Luxemburgian origins of my Midwestern immigrant ancestors from Europe, most of whom were born in the old country in the mid-to-late 19th century. I can't trace these ancestors any farther back.

For my old-stock American descended grandfather, I can trace 1/4 back to mid-1800s Indiana and the remaining 3/4 to various locations on the colonial east coast or Europe, to the 1600s or 1700s, depending on the line.