# Germanic heritage/Name thread



## Xanados (Mar 10, 2012)

So very fascinating...

According to my reasearch, which is by no means accurate, I am quite heavily Germanic and not Celtic.

My name is Taylor Hood. Family names are Hood and Scott.
Hood= Anglo-Saxon/German

The Saxons were a Germanic Tribe located in England. Yes? "Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the Scandinavian and Baltic peoples."

The Saxon's believed in Germanic Paganism. (Something I study quite a lot.)

Scott= "The surname Scott is derived from the proud Boernician clans of the Scottish-English border region."

See? Half Scottish, half English.

Scott = Probably referring to someone who lives in Scotland/Germanic language of Scots.
Hood= English name, essentially. English is a Germanic language.

Names like Angus McDougal are Celtic, aren't they? The Highlands are predominantly Celtic. Both family names are certainly not similar to that example.

From this I can discern that I am quite Germanic. My last name is Anglo-Saxon. I never actually knew that...

I haven't done any real family tree research, but the fact that both family names are Scottish/English/German and closley related to the Borders, suggests we've been here for a while.

Edit: the Boernicians were a collective group of Picts, Angles and Vikings. This also strengthens my idea of being Germanic.

Am I just connecting stupid facts together? It is 6 in the morning... So very tired.


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## Caged Maiden (Mar 10, 2012)

hmm.... I think that what we identify with is more important than our actual blood.  The tricky thing about northern Europe is that our blood is quite mixed, and if you are American on top of that... well.. it's just even harder to get a clear picture.  National geographic does a study on the human genes called Genographic Project Participation Kit for U.S. and Canada - National Geographic Store  If you were inclined to seek out information on your deep ancestral roots, it might be a good investment.  I have considered doing it. 

In the grand scheme of things, surnames are a poor indicator of genes.  Many people had surnames based on their occupations, and when people moved, Becker became Baker or Gasiorkewiecz became Smith..... I'm from Wisconsin, and we had TONS of German, Polish, Swedish, Danish immigrant families.  Also a note about surnames, it is a very small window.  Take my name, for instance..... 

My current surname is Howitt.  Very British, but I married a guy from England, so it's okay.  I, however am 100% German (or close enough, because my family is German/Prussian, which fell in Germany through part of history, but now resides in Poland.  See how complicated a simple thing is?)  I am a first-generation American, as my mother is from Germany, but my dad's family has been here for 4 generations, both of his great-grandparents coming from Germany and Poland.
In my family, the surnames were Nickel, Obenauf, Tigges, Spotak, Puklowski (my mom's 100% German, that was her maiden name) and Wnukowski (My dad's great-grandfather).
However, my children all have the name Howitt.... no evidence of their half German roots in there at all!  So if you really want to know where you come from (as I have often wondered about myself) you gotta dig.  

Also, throughout history, there has been migration and immigration, and much of Europe was influenced by Asia and the Middle East very long ago.  Also, religion and blood are very different things.  All of Europe was Christian for a long time there.  If you were anything else, you were a heretic, and no one looked favorably on heretics (look how many Jews were burned/ hung in the Middle Ages).  Germanic Paganism was something that was early, and Charlemagne united Germany under Catholicism in the late 8th century.  So after that, there was no more Germanic Paganism, it was the Holy Roman Empire.  I'm not sure about in Scotland, because it was sort of isolated, and I'm not sure the Romans ever got far there.  Anyways, Germanic religion after that was Scandinavian, and only survived there for a few more centuries.  Iceland was the last to convert to Christianity, I don't have those dates on me right now, but it's not hard to find.  

Both the name and religion are very old (Roman era), but your more recent ancestors may be good sources of information if your desire is to know where you came from.  The good thing about being from common stock (I'm talking about me, not you) is that farmers and craftsmen didn't move around a lot, but I have often wondered if I'm not part Jewish, because like, for instance, I'm a carrier of a cystic fibrosis gene, which is very common among certain Jewish people (though not exclusive to them) and there were so many immigrants to Germany during the Middle Ages. 

 Ah well, who knows.  Hell, I bet there's loads of mistakes made in claiming ancestry.  There weren't paternity tests.    Good luck on your quest for your heritage, but don't fret if you hit a roadblock.  What you identify with is more important than anything else. (Though I would love to take some DNA tests and discover more about my more distant ancestors.  You know... see if there's something shocking in there.)


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## grahamguitarman (Mar 10, 2012)

Its a long time since I read all the history stuff about early Britain, so I may be a little rusty here (Celtic and early Anglo Saxon history, used to be a favourite subject for me).

Its Highly likely you are indeed of Germanic descent, since a large proportion of Lowland Scottish people are.  

Its a common misconception that The Scottish are all Celtic, but as you have discovered its mostly the highlands / islands that retain a largely Celtic heritage.  

The Scots language itself is a Germanic language quite separate from the Gaelic language of the Celtic tribes of the highlands.  And in fact Scotland actually gets its name from the Germanic Scots tribes who migrated from Northern Europe into present day Scotland and Ireland (though in Ireland they are now mostly limited to the ulster region)

There are a lot of parallels with what happened in England during the dark ages, where the Germanic Anglo Saxons settled in Britain, displacing or absorbing the Brythonic Celts and giving England its name.  

The native Celtic Picts were largely displaced or absorbed in the lowlands by the Germanic Scots during the dark ages. just as much of the native British population were displaced by the equally germanic Anglo saxons

BTW the prefix Mac (which is sometimes shortened to Mc) is Celtic for Son of, so names preceded by Mac are indeed most likely of Celtic extraction (such as McDougal) but not all Celtic names have this prefix though.


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## JCFarnham (Mar 10, 2012)

I'm going to ask this be moved to Research.

Would do it myself, but I'm not of this subforum


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## Butterfly (Mar 10, 2012)

Xanados - Out of curiosity, did you ever see the series 'Blood of the Vikings' by the BBC. They carried out a genetic survey of the British Isles. I know it's not exactly on subject, and that you like documentaries. If you haven't already seen this, you may find it an interesting watch. I did, anyway.

Blood of the Vikings (full documentary) | Documentaries Full Online (2012)


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## Xanados (Mar 10, 2012)

Thank you all for the informative posts. 

Yes, I shall probably do a DNA test in later weeks. I actually need to dig. After reading your posts I realize that only two surnames isn't really a good indicator.


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## Drakhov (Mar 10, 2012)

I've been surfing the Interwebs recently looking for stuff on Gaelic / Celtic history and such - you might find this extract from Surname Database - Scott interesting.

_This famous surname, has an unusual origin. Although widespread in Scotland and most of England from the medieval period, it actually derives from the Old English pre 7th Century word "scotti". This in former and ancient times denoted not a Scotsman, but an Irishman, and specifically a Gael, one who had taken part in conquering the west coast of Scotland in or about the 5th century a.d! In the English border counties though the word or name had a more general meaning of anybody from Scotland. Given the warlike conditions which applied for many centuries and may so again, the name was not always complimentary. _

So it appears that the _name_ Scott came from the Old English / Anglo-Saxon, it denoted somebody of Gaelic origin


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## Jabrosky (Mar 10, 2012)

IIRC, genetic research has shown that most British people are descended from the islands' aboriginal Paleolithic inhabitants and that the collective genetic influence of later Celtic and Germanic immigrants was relatively minor. Your average Brit can claim a Celtic or Germanic _cultural_ heritage, but the concept of Celtic or Germanic biological heritage is more problematic, especially since Celtic and Germanic are linguistic and cultural rather than biological classifications.

I am annoyed at the tendency to conflate language and culture with genetics. Linguistic and cultural movement _can_ attest to actual human immigration, but history is rife with examples of people with different phenotypes assimilating into different cultures and adopting different languages. Take the Afrasan/Afroasiatic linguistic phylum for example; it originated in sub-Saharan East Africa and still has a lot of dark-skinned African speakers, but once Afrasan-speakers diffused into the Middle East they assimilated many lighter-skinned natives and so gave rise to modern Semitic peoples like Hebrews and Arabs.


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## grahamguitarman (Mar 10, 2012)

Jabrosky said:


> I am annoyed at the tendency to conflate language and culture with genetics.



I don't think anyone here was actually talking about genetics (apart from Xanados wanting to have genetic testing done), we have all been discussing cultural not biological history.  Its one of those curious quirks of history that a minority can still displace the culture of a numerically superior population.  Hence the fact that despite being biologically outnumbered the Germanic culture displaced the Celtic language and culture in much of Britain.

To me this is why Genetics can only play a limited role in historical discussion.  It can help to trace certain biological bloodlines, but can't actually explain why certain cultures became sidelined so easily.


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## Caged Maiden (Mar 13, 2012)

I wonder, when given a choice, how people choose with what to identify.  My choice was simple because I was raised without religion or a cultural community, and though I speak German (and did when I was 3 as well) there is no German culture here to speak of.  

The Germans who came here (to America) assimilated.  But, the Hispanic culture here (in New Mexico) is really strong, and everything is in Spanish and English (Hispanic is an ethnic classification, not a race, just in case that is not common knowledge over seas).  I wonder how one chooses when they say, have a grandparent from Germany and another from Mexico, and another that's Irish, and another that's Native American (that's a pretty common combination here).  Because it seems to me that there are just some cultures which retain their cultural identities here more than others.  Does that have to do with the cultures themselves, or more with the people?  Or maybe the region they've settled in?  

There has been a long history of people assimilating, and it's funny how at one point the Norse were viking raiders, and at another they were peaceful colonists(?) who assimilated in the north of Britain, within a generation abandoning their own culture and language for that of the local people.  It must go on all over the world all the time.  Has anyone done that sort of cultural anthropological research?  I am interested specifically in what makes a group choose to leave behind their culture and assimilate, or what makes a group preserve their own culture in a new homeland.


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## Jabrosky (Mar 13, 2012)

anihow said:


> The Germans who came here (to America) assimilated.  But, the Hispanic culture here (in New Mexico) is really strong, and everything is in Spanish and English (Hispanic is an ethnic classification, not a race, just in case that is not common knowledge over seas).


The Germans probably could get away with assimilating into American society because they visually resemble Anglo-Saxons more than Mesoamericans (the ancestors of many Hispanics) do.


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## Allan Gallagher (Dec 31, 2012)

*Puklowski*

This Message is addressed to Caged Maiden in repsonse to her comment that:

[ Puklowski (my mom's 100% German, that was her maiden name) QUOTE]

I am from New Zealand and have ancesrtry originating in Prussia - Saalfeld now Zalewo in Poland. 

My mothers maiden name was also Puklowski and I have information going back to the time that the Puklowskis left Prussia in 1875 via Hamburg to emigrate to New Zealand. 

I am keen to talk to any other person who as links to the Puklowski family in Germany and Poland.

I am not sure if my contact email address is available to you through this message. Please advise if you would be interested in talking to me.

This is a bona fide enquiry. I am a Lawyer living in Napier, New Zealand, who is very interested in my ancestry and in the caseof the Puklowskis in their links to both Protestanism and Judaism.


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## Shockley (Jan 1, 2013)

Well, luckily, this has been the central focus of my studies for the last few years. 

 Here are some core things:

 - If you are of European descent, even if you are not Germanic ethnically, statistically you live in a country that is culturally Germanic. 

 As someone rightly pointed out, the UK has a predominately Celtic (Brythonic) population when you look at who they are genetically. The same is of course true of the French (Gallic Celts), Spanish/Portuguese (Celtiberians), etc. In other areas you also have other cultures that are very old and Non-Germanic - Russia (which is very Slavic), Finland (which has one of the more unique ethnic backgrounds), Italy (Italian - these seems redundant, I'll explain later), and most of the Balkan states (also Slavic). 

 Now, let's take a moment to define 'Germanic.' We can use the modern political definition, which is someone from Germany or of German extraction. Or we can use the broader definition - which I do - to mean a member of an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group, all sharing a common origin in Proto-Germanic peoples. The area that we define as lower Sweden, into Denmark and north Germany is, essentially, the womb of most modern European states culturally and linguistically.

 Something - and this is really one of the great mysteries of human history - spurred these people to just start bleeding tribes into Europe proper. This is not a rare event in human history (the same thing happened with their antecedents, the Proto-Indo-European peoples, and of course something else spurred on the Steppe peoples and a similar explosion plays a role in causing most of the later events to happen), but this is one of the more important ones. You had Goths run over to the modern Ukraine (roughly), Lombards, Franks, Burgundians, etc. settled in north-central Germany, the Teutons and Cimbri who made a mad dash for Italy and were basically exterminated, Alemanni who settled along the Rhine and Saxons, who ended up living in a rough territory going along from Jutland into east-central Germany.

 This was just the first wave. A secondary explosion of migratory peoples (the Huns and Magyars, in this case, and part of that distinct family that seems to make up the Finns as well) forced out the Vandals, an East German Tribe, and even pushed the Goths out of the Ukraine. This push, and further pushes by the Vandals and the Goths, moved everything in Europe. The Goths split into distinct groups that dominated Spain and southern Italy, the Vandals took parts of Spain and a good chunk of North Africa, the Lombards ended up in northern Italy, the Burgundians in, well, Burgandy, the Franks entered France and the Saxons, along with Angles and Jutes and Danes, ended up going into Romano-Celtic Britain and became the dominant power. 

 So, this is just background for a broad point - whatever your ethnic make-up is, if your ancestors are English, French, German, Italian, Russian Spanish, etc. then the culture they were steeped in was Germanic, even if it was a subsidiary Germanic culture like Gothic Italian or Anglo-Saxon England. This was further codified by several double-dip invasions - France was invaded by Germanic Norse warriors who became Normans, who ended up becoming the ruling elite in England and Sicily. England got a triple dose of it, even, as the Anglo-Saxons had spent many hundreds of years fighting off invasions by Norwegians and Danes, a tradition that only ended when Harold Godwinsson defeated Harald Hardrade just before his own defeat by the Normans. 

 Many of the English words we speak today, just to drive this home, are not English at all but some variant of Norse or the Norman variant of French. The word 'eggs,' for example, is not the word the Anglo-Saxons would have used to describe what chickens lay - that was something they took from invading Scandinavians. The major seat of Norse power in England, just to drive this home - was Jorvik or, as we call it now, York. So at one point the Norse control over England spanned from Wessex (which very nearly became Norse) all the way to southern Scotland.

 You might be saying to yourself - well, what if I am Scottish or Irish? Well, Scotland got it pretty hard from two sides when it came to the Germanic migrations. Not only did the lowlands get it from the Norse strong point at Jorvik, they also had to deal with the fact that large parts of their northern coast - the Hebrides, Orkney, etc. were under Norse occupation. Edinburgh, of course, is an Anglo-Saxon name due to the influence of the kings of Northumbria. Ireland is of course fundamentally more Celtic, but even its culture was fundamentally shattered and rebuilt by Germanic peoples - Dublin was ruled by the Ostmen (Vikings, essentially) for three centuries. The House of Imar, descended directly from a son of Ragnar Lodbrok (whose children would go on to rule the Danelaw, Norway, Sweden and the state I am about to desribe) had control over much of western Ireland, eastern Scotland, bits of Wales and most of the islands in between for about four hundred years. 

 The Normans would also make a point of staking a claim in Ireland, taking over quite a bit of the territory previously owned by the Kingdom of the Isles (House of Imar) and then some. Some of the names that I for a long time took as distinctly Irish and Scottish - Fitzgilbert, Fitzrobert, etc. are actually Norman (Fitz being a bastardized form of 'fils,' the French word for son). The Norman De Clare family was especially powerful, overrunning Wales and running straight into Ireland (this is what established two distinct cultural groups, the Cambro-Norman in Wales and the Hiberno-Normans in Ireland). 

 These conquerors became the leaders of their societies, building institutions, governments, etc. and establishing languages, religions, laws, etc. Even if cultures bore distinctive traits of their Celtic or Italian ancestry, the systems they lived under were still fundamentally Germanic in origin.

 We talk a lot, historically, about the influence of Greece and Rome on European history. That seems like a mistake, because the culture of western Europe is German culture writ large. The barbarians that sacked Rome are Europe today, and whatever ethnic ancestry you might have, you are ultimately Germanic culturally. 



 -- On another note, I noticed some people are starting to talk about the history of the Prussians and what caused so many of them to migrate. That's a very, very sad story, and doesn't end well for the Prussian people.


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