To those with European Roots.....
 

If you or your ancestors came from Europe:<BR>Do you know where they came from?<BR>Have you visited their country (-ies)?<BR>Or even the town where they lived?<BR>Can you speak a little bit of their language?<BR>What did you think of it and were you glad that you did not have to live there? <BR>Hoping to hear from you-a European.<BR>

Mine came from England and Scotland.<BR>Yes I have visited England.<BR>Yes I was in the town they lived in.<BR>Yes I can speak English:)<BR>I loved it and would be glad to live there.

Three of my four sets of grandparents lived in Ireland prior to moving to North America. One of my grandfathers was born in Scotland, & I have not yet been there. The others were born in Ireland, & I have visited one of their homes in Limerick. Although I enjoyed the time I spent there, I couldn't see myself living there any time soon, but have considered Ireland as a retirement venue in the far-off future. I do not speak more than a few words of Gaelic, and actually, neither did any of my grandparents.<BR><BR>BC

Both my parents were born in Holland and yes, i am on my way there next week. I would have loved to go and see their home town, but b/c i am travelling with someone else other than my husband i cannot expect them to be interested in seeing those place. My parents spoke Dutch to me until i went to school at the age of 5 , so i could get by in Holland in a pinch if i had to. WOuld i live there? Never! my roots have grown deep here in Canada.

Some of my ancestors are from Switzerland - a little town named Reutigen near Interlaken. My parents have visited and even seen the house where some of their great great grandparents lived. Some distant relatives also have a sporting goods store there with a family name on it.<BR><BR>I will visit Switzerland in July because my husband has a business trip to Lucerne.<BR><BR>The rest are from Norway, England, France. Haven't been to Norway. <BR>

My father's ancestors were from near Valdres, Norway, but I've yet to visit anywhere in Scandinavia and I don't speak any Norwegian. <BR><BR>My mother's ancestors were from Germany and Bohemia (don't know if that's in the Czech Republic or Slovakia...but I know it *was* in Czechoslovakia :) She doesn't know exactly where the Bohemian ancestors were from but I know that she and my father visited some relatives in Germany many years ago. Although I've been to Germany, and speak some German, I have not. <BR><BR>Nice question; thanks, Gaia. <BR><BR>

Where did the "fraudula" come from -- are you a fake earth goddess? <BR><BR>Both sides go back so far that there are many, many families, but all seem to be from the British/Irish islands. My maiden name, however, is so uncommon and so obviously Welsh that I know exactly which town that line of the family came from because it's the same as the family name. <BR>So I went to visit that small town between Swansea and Cardiff to visit the castle -- or the wonderful shell of it -- and the bar and the little church. Apparently the few hundred Americans with the same last name have all tramped through there, because I was constantly asked if I knew so-and-so who was there last week -- was she a cousin or an aunt?<BR><BR>No one with that surname lives in the town, however, which makes me think that our shared common ancestor took the name of the town when he moved to America, which THEN makes me wonder what he was running from!

I used to have European roots, but my hairdresser managed to touch them up. Now fortunately I look like everyone else.

While I have not traveled to the "little town between Swansea and Cardiff from which my Welsh ancestors came," other members of my family have. Just last fall they visited the ancestral farm, which still stands. (I don't think it's the same town as Lilith's, as my maiden name is one of the more common Welsh surnames and there are plenty of us remaining in Wales).<BR><BR>I was unaware of any Swiss or Alsatian ancestors when I was travelling from Venice to Amsterdam in the 1980s and decided to take detours to Berne and Strasbourg. So I experienced a little bit of a chill when one of the genealogists in my family recently discovered lines that originated in Berne and Alsace--I had been drawn to the towns of my ancestors without even knowing it.

Both my parents were born in what is known today as Slovakia. I've been back four times and speak the language. <BR><BR>I was born in Canada and can't see myself living there at all on a permanent basis although I love to visit. Since the velvet divorce, the Czech Republic is on its way to becoming a Western nation while Slovakia with its 30% unemployment rate is going the way of Russia. Sad really, since it was the Slovaks who wanted to separate to begin with.

Lilith said : "No one with that surname lives in the town, however, which makes me think that our shared common ancestor took the name of the town when he moved to America"<BR><BR><BR>Most probably, he was already using this name. Family names were often given after the region/twon/village people originated. If you moved, say, 5 miles away, you could be given the name of this other village you came from. 50 miles away, and you could be given the name of the region you came from.<BR><BR>The point in family name is to be able to tell apart two persons (with the same christian name, for instance). Having as family name the name of the town/village you were living in would have made no sense, since everybody around was from the same place. like : "John told me so and so" "Which John?" "John from Stafford" "But we ARE in Stafford! Which John are you talking about?" So, in the town you visited, most probably, nobody ever used your family name.<BR><BR>So, one of our ancestor probaly lived in the town you're refering to, moved somewhere else around the time when family names began to be fixed, and was called by his new neighbors John Whatevertown, after the name of the place he was coming from. Or perhaps he already had another family name before, but soon was mostly known as John Whatevertown.<BR>

My father, Vito, came from Sicilia as a young boy and eventually opened an olive oil business in New York City. His original name in Sicily was Vito Andolini but the immigration officers at Ellis Island only saw the name of the village he was from and named him after it, so he was called Vito Corleone. <BR><BR>I went back to Corleone, Sicily after a little problem I had in New York at an Italian restaurant but I don't want to talk about it. I do speak Italian and found Sicily and especially one young beautiful girl named Apollonia, to be beautiful. Thanks for asking...Ciao

Dear Michael Corleone, we have seen Godfather here too......<BR>To Lilith: My name comes from the Asterix Comics, there was a sneaky little man in it, always lying: Gaius Fraudulus. As I am female I had to change it, so I became an Earth Godess.

My spelling is not so good: I am a fraud Earth Goddess.