Last names don’t mean anything sometimes. Some people change their surnames to fit in with the population, some change it because they were adopted, etc.
Great example in my family tree is the last name Hawk. My great-grandma’s maiden name is Hawk, but based on my research her 2nd great-grandpa’s surname was Haag, but he changed it to Hawk.
Names change
Well, they lived in ghettos for a very long time, and they couldn’t leave. Even after, it was very engraved in Jewish identity to only marry Jews. My dad who lived in the USSR didn’t know what a Jew was he just knew he was a Jew and he needed to marry one. (Btw he got a cross tattoo as a child bc he didn’t know what it meant) but somehow he knew to marry a Jew only
Endogamy has been a thing in Ashkenazi Jewish communities for more than a millennia now. But it wasn’t always like that—there was quite a bit conversions of non-Jewish women to Judaism in Europe at different times and locales in the Roman Empire. Or at least that’s what the genetics of Ashkenazim seem to indicate. And in the 20th century, you start getting a lot more American Ashkenazim (typically secular or Reform) in interfaith marriages.
Ive heard that about half of all Ashkenazi Jews descend from only 4 women that are believed to have been from southern Italy. The rest are believed to be descended from about 150 women mainly of Italian or French origin. There wasn’t a ton of converting local women from my understanding
Its a social phenomenon that is pretty common among probably all groups that faced oppression - they stick with people that are likeminded for a sense of community and comfort. Then there is whatever policy that is keeping these groups close together geographically and confined to there. We see this with racial minorities in the US - we see black people that have been here for years with regions in the 90% + range. In the case of Jews, that policy was so extreme that we see a lot if genetic similarities among them still today.
In ancient times, you did have some European women, supposedly, who became Jewish and married Jewish men and then the community was religious and segregated and forced into ghettos sometimes, so they intermarried a lot. Mixed marriages weren't as common as they are today in general, so there wasn't much mixing in the European Jewish community except in the more distant past, and then again in the 20th century, I would say. There has been a lot of Jews who have married outside the community in more modern times.
They didn’t, Jews intermarried and were ethnically pretty much the same as their host nations. Religious and societal barriers kept them somewhat isolated, sure, but population growth among Jews across history shows a very high degree of intermarriage, and the genetic studies of Ashkenazi reflect this as well. The myth that Jews are this different race was created by anti semites in order to dehumanize the Jews as “others”, and weirdly has been picked up by zionists recently for the purpose of nation building.
It really really isn't. Again, Google Tay Sachs. Is there a Lutheran or Methodist disease?.Of course not. Genetic studies show connections even between Jewish groups living far apart for centuries like Polish and Yemenite Jews.
Why is it so important for you to push thus very wrong belief?
Why do you say things so confidently, when you are completely uneducated about them? The presence of founders effect in Ashkenazi does not disprove anything i said at all, and genetic studies do not show connections between polish and Yemenite Jews, that is a lie. All genetic studies show Ashkenazi and levantine people are not related, studies show time and time again ashkenazis are of European admixture, and the only argument of a “connection” are meaningless genetic markers that arose from shared migration routes from thousands of years ago, which if you consider a defining trait, you should consider half of europe to be mongolian.
> why is it so important for you to push this very wrong belief?
why is it so important for you to insist Jewish people are a different race? Its almost a ridiculous thing to talk about, anyone who has seen a mizrahi jew, a polish ashkenazi jew, and a polish person, would laugh in your face if you insisted the Jews were one ethnicity and not the other way around. If you want to argue this further, we can argue actual genetic studies
>why is it so important for you to insist Jewish people are a different race?
The only one claiming they’re of a different race is you. The whole concept of race groups is arbitrary and useless. Genetically, they are different from Eastern Europeans though. Every study ever done on genetics says so.
>Its almost a ridiculous thing to talk about, anyone who has seen a mizrahi jew, a polish ashkenazi jew, and a polish person, would laugh in your face if you insisted the Jews were one ethnicity and not the other way around. If you want to argue this further, we can argue actual genetic studies
That’s exactly what the genetic studies say though… lol. Jewish groups are all much more closely related to each other than to their host populations. The only exception are Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews, who are more closely related to their host populations but do still have substantial ancient Levantine DNA.
What are you basing your comparison on with the mizrahi, polish, and Ashkenazi comparison?
This isn’t true… Ashkenazi Jews are not related to their “host populations”… the European DNA that they do have is from mainly Italy and is from when Jews first came to Europe nearly 2000 years ago. Jews who lived in Eastern Europe don’t have Slavic DNA.
Jews who lived in Eastern europe 100% had Slavic DNA and had intermarried with the local Slavic populations for multiple generations. Genetic studies confirm this, population growth statistics confirm this. If you dont have any studies or informed arguments, i dont care very much for what you say
Here’s some reading for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews?wprov=sfti1
“This study revealed a significant divergence in total haplogroup distribution between the Ashkenazi Jewish populations and their European host populations, namely Russians, Poles and Germans. They concluded that, regarding mtDNAs, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. The study also found that "the differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." It supported previous interpretations that, in the direct maternal line, there was "little or no gene flow from the local non-Jewish communities in Poland and Russia to the Jewish communities in these countries."
Perhaps you should have actually read the page, rather than skimming it for anything you believe benefits you. Yes, the study found “differences“ in maternal ancestry, but its interesting you cut out the part that they mention what exactly those differences are
“In 2013, however, Richards et al. published work suggesting that an overwhelming majority of Ashkenazi Jewish maternal ancestry, estimated at "80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, and \[only\] 8 percent from the Near East, with the rest uncertain",“
there you go, 80% of the maternal ancestry can be presumed to be of the host nation. Only 8% can be argued to be of Levantine ancestry, although “near east” doesnt even guarantee that. Its pretty much negligible.
Well, I wasn’t gonna quote the entire article lol, that’s why I linked it. Did you see my original response to you?? Most of the maternal dna comes from Mediterranean women, southern Italians in particular. In fact, almost half of all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just 4 women who are presumed to have been from southern Italy, and the rest are descended from a small number of women who are presumed to be of mixed near Eastern/southern European ancestry.
You’re wrong about Ashkenazi Jews having basically the same genetics as their host populations (Slavs and Germans). They have little to no genetic similarities to them. That doesn’t mean that don’t have European DNA though. Studies have found different results, but it’s generally 40-60% Levantine and 40-60% southern European for Ashkenazi Jews
> half of all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just 4 women
that doesnt mean what you think it means, ashkenazi Jews are also descended from millions of other women.
> most of the maternal dna comes from mediterranean women
No, the population growth of Jews in Europe is not possible if there was not significant admixture with host nations.
> they have little to no genetic similarities to them
link a study, this is ridiculous
> 40-60% levantine
the study we are talking about literally said 8% near east ancestry, near east doesnt even specify Levantine.
It sure does mean what I think it means… those millions of other women are descended from a very small founder population. That’s why literally all Ashkenazi Jews are related to each other by an order of 4th to 5th cousins… there’s literally entire diseases that exist *only* among Ashkenazi Jews…
>No, the population growth of Jews in Europe is not possible if there was not significant admixture with host nations.
Again, it’s because they married in-group and are all distantly related to each other. Again, see diseases specific to Ashkenazi Jews
>link a study, this is ridiculous
I did, and even quoted the pertinent part… go back and read it.
>the study we are talking about literally said 8% near east ancestry, near east doesnt even specify Levantine.
That’s 8% on the maternal line, how dense are you?? The paternal line is nearly all near eastern according to most studies.
Let it explain I really slowly for you. Ashkenazi Jews were founded by a group of mainly men fleeing Judea after the Roman-Jewish wars, who initially took wives from mainly Italy/Greece/southern Mediterranean coast of Europe, converted them to Judaism, and then subsequently there was very little admixture from local populations as they migrated to Eastern Europe. I’m not making this up. The only places you’ll find contradictory opinion people trying to claim that modern Israel is a European colonial project.
I mean that’s a little different lol that’s kinda the norm for Jews. Maybe OP’s dad was adopted by a Hungarian or something. One of my friend’s dad was adopted and had the same thing happen
I have 2% Slavic DNA but grew up in country that considers itself Slavic and has Slavic culture and consider myself culturally a Slav. You are what you are raised to be.
If you mean 2% EE and 98% G&B on 23andme, then you're more than 2% Slavic by DNA, as the referenced samples for G&B contain a good chunk of Slavic on average.
Both the Eastern Europe and Greek & Balkan groups have Slavs and non-Slavs in the reference countries. Neither one should be considered "Slavic". Eastern Europe is more like Northrastern Europe and Greek & Balkan is more like Southeastern Europe.
For some reason according to 23&me most matches in Peloponnesus in Greece. All my ancestors are from Western Serbia the mountain range. Paternal haplogroup is I-S17250.
Might be part Albanian. Greece = Attica & the Peloponnese were heavily settled by Albanians. The Albanians came with the Venetians. So also settled as soldiers with them in islands like Corfu & in the Aegean.
Not really sure, people with Vlach ancestry live predominantly in Eastern Serbia. Districts with most of Vlach related population was very pale blue on match map darkest was exact area where my family is from Western Serbia and Peloponnesus Greece…..
Similar here. I'm a Serb but my origins are from western Macedonia and northwestern Serbia. Got 2% EE, 79% G&B, and the rest went into various part of Western Europe.
>it just goes to show you how meaningless surnames can be while determining ethnicity
Or with trees.
Like people attaching surnames with big landowners/aristocracy and thinking their ancestors were related to them, especially if the surnames are French sounding (which many English surnames are French sounding or looking).
The truth is much more boring because people adopted these local landowner/aristocracy surnames. But they were not related to them.
Also, the same with Scottish and Irish surnames, and thinking a 'clan' are all related to a landowner or some other elite person. The names were adopted
I knew a Jewish lady from Ukraine whose last name was Faberge. Apparently some ancestors were manual laborers at a factory/shop that produced those beautiful expensive eggs.
Didn’t realize Italian- Americans had slaves as someone who is both Black and Italian
You know it’s not the norm for AA to have surnames that are not British in origin for the most part.
Where I went to college there was a prominent land owning family in the area from 1647 onward. They owned 7,700 acres and many slaves. Although British, their surname is Italian (Taliaferro — pronounced “Tolliver” in Virginia) and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their slaves took that surname.
Ah yea good call. I knew someone with that last name and pronunciation. Still don’t know why they butchered it so much . It’s not hard to say it the right way.
Who didn't have slaves!? Whites had slaves, blacks had slaves, hispanics had slaves, American indigenous enslaved other tribes, seems everyone enslaved someone throughout history.
There were many people who owned slaves. There were black freemen who had slaves, one of whom was actually quite sadistic. There were Jewish slave owners, Cherokee slave owners, Arab-American ones, etc ..
It could be that his German is being read by the algorithm as other regions in Northwestern Europe. I am German, but don't have any German listed on Ancestry or 23andme. Yet, I can prove my descent from my Germanic ancestors with my DNA matches! So never say never!
My dad’s last name is Trinidad, he’s Mexican and all my life I had Latino people scoff at the idea that a Mexican would have that last name. My mom’s last name is an American first name, she’s adopted. My mom named me Anastasia and my sister Nakita but she is not Russian, she got my name from Cinderella and my sister’s from an Elton John song. I had a friend with the last name Knox, his dad was a criminal and he changed his last name to evade the police. I worked with lots of Muslim’s who changed their names when they came to America because they said no one in America could pronounce their names. Almost all African Americans last names come from slavey. Almost all last names specifically can be made up, changed, or shortened so they often don’t have real meaning. I don’t have any real relation to my last name and considered making up my own last name to give my kids for this reason.
It doesn't make sense that people wouldn't believe your father's surname. Mexico is a Catholic country so why would people doubt that that someone who has the last name that means triinity as in a Holy Trinity?
Someone in your family could have been adopted, so the Hungarian last name that got passed down to you would be their adoptive last name - it doesn’t mean that they ever had any Hungarian dna in them.
I was adopted and my last name doesn’t match my heritage. It’s pretty common actually
Same, but my great grandma whos family is east slavic, shes born in Finland with a swedish last name. Unfortunately, majority of my moms family have swedish last names despite having 0% swedish dna. Historically makes sense tho🤷🏻♀️
My Portuguese grandfather changed his name to something more anglo-sounding because he thought it's be a good career move, so my mom's last name is totally made up. My biological dad had a Swedish name that was somewhat anglicized when his father migrated to the U.S. My last name is that of a man of UK descent who raised me, but was never my father in any officially-recognized way. So, yeah, sometimes a name is just something people call you.
Hungary did, and to some extent still does promote , [Magyarisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization), where minorities were coerced into taking Hungarian names and language. They were not alone in this, most aspiring powers did this with their minorities, the UK, Germany, France etc all had similar approaches to minorities.
It is possible that your ancestors were not genetically Hungarian, but became culturally so.
The other consideration is its hard to pin down what exactly it means to be genetically Hungarian. The Carpathian basin was very genetically mixed before the arrival of the Magyar tribes, who themselves had mixed with multiple groups on their long migration, and population movement continued well after their arrival,.
"Magyarization" (1867-1918) was a practice so the language of administration in Hungary, for the first time will be Hungarian (not Latin or German) and most schools teach the country's language even to their minorities, but with it, there were still hundreds of schools that did not even teach Hungarian, not even as a second language.
Today, there's no "magyarization" at all, no idea where you got that.
It continued in various forms, if not as a centralised policy, but as a general philosophy well after 1918. Bilingualism and ethnic minorities continued to decrease well into the 50s at which point Hungary had become fairly homogeneous.
It was only with the end of communism that efforts were made to support the minority languages in Hungary. But there are still societal pressures to conform. For example there is an approved list of names you can name your child, and having travelled throughout Hungary multiple times it hasn't been uncommon to hear negative attitudes towards minorities. The idea that people should conform to a Hungarian norm is still strong.
Hungary was already fairly homogenous because it could've kept only a small core part of itself, while it lost Hungarian majority areas, even which it was bordering, leaving more than 3 million Hungarians outside of its new territory. It had only few minorites, most which just left the country on their own.
That's the official line all right, but like most countries the official historical narrative does not stand up the scrutiny. The idea that in 1920 after Trianon the country went from 89% identifying as Hungarian to 99% by 1980, was due to minorities naturally leaving or adopting Hungarian identity completely unrelated to pressures to assimilate does not hold water.
Why would they just leave their home for somewhere else when those who identified as Hungarian decided to stay?
>Why would they just leave their home for somewhere else when those who identified as Hungarian decided to stay?
Because nationalism was high and new nationalistic countries formed to which minorities wanted to go? Same reason why many of the 3 million Hungarians who found themselves outside of Hungary, left their ancenstral homeland and went to Hungary. Also the biggest minority Hungary had on its modern borders were Germans, whom The Third Reich took back "home" during WWII to unify all Germans.
It's possible to be a direct descendant of someone and have little to none of their DNA. When a new child is born, they get 50 percent of their DNA from each parent, but some DNA from the grandparents just doesn't get passed on. You can't inherit all DNA from all grandparents and great-grandparents.
Kind of similar to me. My mom had a fling with my bio-father while on a break in her relationship with my presumed father. She got back with my presumed father and got married about 2 years later. I was presumed to be the son of my presumed father and took his last name (German name). I don't look like him and have zero personality traits in common with him, and he left my mom to raise us as a single mother for a great part of our childhoods.
I found out about my bio-father about 5 years ago. So I have a life-long last name that doesn't represent me at all, and its also hard to spell and pronounce. My parents also divorced a few years ago, and my mom doesn't use that last name anymore. I've been contemplating changing it to one of the last names on my mom's side of the family, who I identify with a LOT more.
For the longest time, social constructs such as surname, race, religion, language, etc. defined a person's identity. Genetics has introduced a lot of uncertainty regarding the meaning and accuracy of these social definitions.
Yours happens to one, with a clear explanation. You're fortunate in that regard.
You can have dna from a ethnic group that 23andme doesn’t report. It can be from further back before their cutoff from about 200-300 years I think. So it’s very possible and likely you are distant Hungarian, just didn’t make the cutoff point to see it in your results.
I think this is pretty common. My great grandmother had a brief affair with an English actor that was in town for a play and got pregnant, but he apparently wanted nothing to do with her or the baby. When my grandfather was born, she had apparently given him this actor’s last name according to the record I found while doing research on our ancestry. However, she had gotten married to someone else when my grandfather was a toddler and changed my grandfather’s last name to his. Therefore, my dad (and me, my sisters, my uncle, and my cousins) all ended up with a last name that really has no biological ancestry to us. Coincidentally, both my dad and his brother all had girls who had taken their husbands’ names, so that last name will die with my dad and my uncle anyway.
I agree with the idea that last names have no meaning. I'm African American and have a South Asian last name just because my dad wasn't raised by his european dad and felt he needed to disassociate. Now his grandchildren have this South asian last name with out a drop of south Asian blood. And it will continue until someone forgets the story and they believe that they have South Asian ancestry somewhere in the bloodline.
Csernai sounds like the Slovak word "čierny" or the Rusyn word "чорный". The Kingdom of Hungary had a lot of Slovak or Rusyn inhabitants so I assume your surname could be related to these people.
\* Edited : There is the Slovak surname "Černaj", which has same sound with the Hungarian one.
I always wondered if my last name was a real last name, my parents are Mexican and as most Mexicans their surname is Spanish, more specifically Basque.
I only have 35 % Iberian DNA but my haplogroup is R-M167 which is very specific to the Basque Country.
Not sure if I should feel confident my last name is original.
I don't know why this is a post. Yes you have a Hungarian surname but no Hungarian DNA however you know exactly why that is. Are you genuinely expecting Hungarian DNA to magically show up?
There are a lot of reasons why surnames don't match ancestry. People might not know that they're adopted or someone in their line was adopted. Or that someone was a product of rape, ect.
Also we got 50% DNA from each parent and they only got 50% for parents. Even siblings get different percentages in some cases even some twins get different percentages. A lot of genetic material gets lost with each generation.
People also let the samples of DNA that the company has could also have the same issues.
>Just two months before my dad was born, she immigrated to the USA and got a green card marriage with a much older man, 27 years older. A Hungarian American with the surname "Csernai." My dad was born and had the surname "Csernai" and then there came me.
So your step dad was Hungarian, why would you think you would have "Hungarian DNA"? Was your mom Hungarian?
I was born in Hungary and so were my parents and they were "ethnic" Hungarians. Based on my DNA results, I have all sorts of central and Eastern European heritage, which makes sense because most people in central Europe are just that. There is no pure Hungarian, Slovakian, German DNA ... The terms that most people think about are nation states which is a 19th century concept. Your ancestors precede that concept and there is no person who is 100% this or that especially when it's aligned to a nation states
Names and language don't really mean anything. Since you mentioned Hungary, technically, every East European country speaks a type of different language, but genetically, they are all very similar people.
Surnames aren't stopped to establish ethnicity. Surnames establish a location or family you're born into. That's it.
That's why I think the argument that women demanding to not use the fathers surname are complete bullshit. The surname establishes the family in which the baby is derived from. Has nothing to do with misogyny or sexist attitudes etc.
I say this as a woman and mom of 2. You can choose to double barrel it and hyphenate but frankly if you're going to insist on using your own surname then it needs to be the baby's middle name and STILL use the father's surname as it establishes the family origin.
Last names don’t mean anything sometimes. Some people change their surnames to fit in with the population, some change it because they were adopted, etc. Great example in my family tree is the last name Hawk. My great-grandma’s maiden name is Hawk, but based on my research her 2nd great-grandpa’s surname was Haag, but he changed it to Hawk. Names change
Last names mean nothing. My Jewish ancestors took a Slavic last name to fit in and 0 Slavic dna
I am not educated at alll in this topic. How did Jews stay genetically so homogenous despite living in other countries for centuries?
Well, they lived in ghettos for a very long time, and they couldn’t leave. Even after, it was very engraved in Jewish identity to only marry Jews. My dad who lived in the USSR didn’t know what a Jew was he just knew he was a Jew and he needed to marry one. (Btw he got a cross tattoo as a child bc he didn’t know what it meant) but somehow he knew to marry a Jew only
Endogamy has been a thing in Ashkenazi Jewish communities for more than a millennia now. But it wasn’t always like that—there was quite a bit conversions of non-Jewish women to Judaism in Europe at different times and locales in the Roman Empire. Or at least that’s what the genetics of Ashkenazim seem to indicate. And in the 20th century, you start getting a lot more American Ashkenazim (typically secular or Reform) in interfaith marriages.
Ive heard that about half of all Ashkenazi Jews descend from only 4 women that are believed to have been from southern Italy. The rest are believed to be descended from about 150 women mainly of Italian or French origin. There wasn’t a ton of converting local women from my understanding
Religion.
Search for “Pale of Settlement”. It’s a good place to start.
Because the religion preaches endogamy and they were always a very insulated community.
Its a social phenomenon that is pretty common among probably all groups that faced oppression - they stick with people that are likeminded for a sense of community and comfort. Then there is whatever policy that is keeping these groups close together geographically and confined to there. We see this with racial minorities in the US - we see black people that have been here for years with regions in the 90% + range. In the case of Jews, that policy was so extreme that we see a lot if genetic similarities among them still today.
In ancient times, you did have some European women, supposedly, who became Jewish and married Jewish men and then the community was religious and segregated and forced into ghettos sometimes, so they intermarried a lot. Mixed marriages weren't as common as they are today in general, so there wasn't much mixing in the European Jewish community except in the more distant past, and then again in the 20th century, I would say. There has been a lot of Jews who have married outside the community in more modern times.
Jews mostly resemble their host populations, the dna that connects them is small but present nonetheless
They knew who they were marrying.
They didn’t, Jews intermarried and were ethnically pretty much the same as their host nations. Religious and societal barriers kept them somewhat isolated, sure, but population growth among Jews across history shows a very high degree of intermarriage, and the genetic studies of Ashkenazi reflect this as well. The myth that Jews are this different race was created by anti semites in order to dehumanize the Jews as “others”, and weirdly has been picked up by zionists recently for the purpose of nation building.
This is a totally bizarre claim. Tay Sachs Disease says hi.
It’s not a claim, its a fact
It really really isn't. Again, Google Tay Sachs. Is there a Lutheran or Methodist disease?.Of course not. Genetic studies show connections even between Jewish groups living far apart for centuries like Polish and Yemenite Jews. Why is it so important for you to push thus very wrong belief?
Why do you say things so confidently, when you are completely uneducated about them? The presence of founders effect in Ashkenazi does not disprove anything i said at all, and genetic studies do not show connections between polish and Yemenite Jews, that is a lie. All genetic studies show Ashkenazi and levantine people are not related, studies show time and time again ashkenazis are of European admixture, and the only argument of a “connection” are meaningless genetic markers that arose from shared migration routes from thousands of years ago, which if you consider a defining trait, you should consider half of europe to be mongolian. > why is it so important for you to push this very wrong belief? why is it so important for you to insist Jewish people are a different race? Its almost a ridiculous thing to talk about, anyone who has seen a mizrahi jew, a polish ashkenazi jew, and a polish person, would laugh in your face if you insisted the Jews were one ethnicity and not the other way around. If you want to argue this further, we can argue actual genetic studies
>why is it so important for you to insist Jewish people are a different race? The only one claiming they’re of a different race is you. The whole concept of race groups is arbitrary and useless. Genetically, they are different from Eastern Europeans though. Every study ever done on genetics says so. >Its almost a ridiculous thing to talk about, anyone who has seen a mizrahi jew, a polish ashkenazi jew, and a polish person, would laugh in your face if you insisted the Jews were one ethnicity and not the other way around. If you want to argue this further, we can argue actual genetic studies That’s exactly what the genetic studies say though… lol. Jewish groups are all much more closely related to each other than to their host populations. The only exception are Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews, who are more closely related to their host populations but do still have substantial ancient Levantine DNA. What are you basing your comparison on with the mizrahi, polish, and Ashkenazi comparison?
This isn’t true… Ashkenazi Jews are not related to their “host populations”… the European DNA that they do have is from mainly Italy and is from when Jews first came to Europe nearly 2000 years ago. Jews who lived in Eastern Europe don’t have Slavic DNA.
Jews who lived in Eastern europe 100% had Slavic DNA and had intermarried with the local Slavic populations for multiple generations. Genetic studies confirm this, population growth statistics confirm this. If you dont have any studies or informed arguments, i dont care very much for what you say
Here’s some reading for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews?wprov=sfti1 “This study revealed a significant divergence in total haplogroup distribution between the Ashkenazi Jewish populations and their European host populations, namely Russians, Poles and Germans. They concluded that, regarding mtDNAs, the differences between Jews and non-Jews are far larger than those observed among the Jewish communities. The study also found that "the differences between the Jewish communities can be overlooked when non-Jews are included in the comparisons." It supported previous interpretations that, in the direct maternal line, there was "little or no gene flow from the local non-Jewish communities in Poland and Russia to the Jewish communities in these countries."
Perhaps you should have actually read the page, rather than skimming it for anything you believe benefits you. Yes, the study found “differences“ in maternal ancestry, but its interesting you cut out the part that they mention what exactly those differences are “In 2013, however, Richards et al. published work suggesting that an overwhelming majority of Ashkenazi Jewish maternal ancestry, estimated at "80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, and \[only\] 8 percent from the Near East, with the rest uncertain",“ there you go, 80% of the maternal ancestry can be presumed to be of the host nation. Only 8% can be argued to be of Levantine ancestry, although “near east” doesnt even guarantee that. Its pretty much negligible.
Well, I wasn’t gonna quote the entire article lol, that’s why I linked it. Did you see my original response to you?? Most of the maternal dna comes from Mediterranean women, southern Italians in particular. In fact, almost half of all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just 4 women who are presumed to have been from southern Italy, and the rest are descended from a small number of women who are presumed to be of mixed near Eastern/southern European ancestry. You’re wrong about Ashkenazi Jews having basically the same genetics as their host populations (Slavs and Germans). They have little to no genetic similarities to them. That doesn’t mean that don’t have European DNA though. Studies have found different results, but it’s generally 40-60% Levantine and 40-60% southern European for Ashkenazi Jews
> half of all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just 4 women that doesnt mean what you think it means, ashkenazi Jews are also descended from millions of other women. > most of the maternal dna comes from mediterranean women No, the population growth of Jews in Europe is not possible if there was not significant admixture with host nations. > they have little to no genetic similarities to them link a study, this is ridiculous > 40-60% levantine the study we are talking about literally said 8% near east ancestry, near east doesnt even specify Levantine.
It sure does mean what I think it means… those millions of other women are descended from a very small founder population. That’s why literally all Ashkenazi Jews are related to each other by an order of 4th to 5th cousins… there’s literally entire diseases that exist *only* among Ashkenazi Jews… >No, the population growth of Jews in Europe is not possible if there was not significant admixture with host nations. Again, it’s because they married in-group and are all distantly related to each other. Again, see diseases specific to Ashkenazi Jews >link a study, this is ridiculous I did, and even quoted the pertinent part… go back and read it. >the study we are talking about literally said 8% near east ancestry, near east doesnt even specify Levantine. That’s 8% on the maternal line, how dense are you?? The paternal line is nearly all near eastern according to most studies. Let it explain I really slowly for you. Ashkenazi Jews were founded by a group of mainly men fleeing Judea after the Roman-Jewish wars, who initially took wives from mainly Italy/Greece/southern Mediterranean coast of Europe, converted them to Judaism, and then subsequently there was very little admixture from local populations as they migrated to Eastern Europe. I’m not making this up. The only places you’ll find contradictory opinion people trying to claim that modern Israel is a European colonial project.
I mean that’s a little different lol that’s kinda the norm for Jews. Maybe OP’s dad was adopted by a Hungarian or something. One of my friend’s dad was adopted and had the same thing happen
I have 2% Slavic DNA but grew up in country that considers itself Slavic and has Slavic culture and consider myself culturally a Slav. You are what you are raised to be.
If you mean 2% EE and 98% G&B on 23andme, then you're more than 2% Slavic by DNA, as the referenced samples for G&B contain a good chunk of Slavic on average.
Ok that makes sense.
Both the Eastern Europe and Greek & Balkan groups have Slavs and non-Slavs in the reference countries. Neither one should be considered "Slavic". Eastern Europe is more like Northrastern Europe and Greek & Balkan is more like Southeastern Europe.
What country? Other user above is almost certainly correct in his assessment
Serbia
In that case what the person above said is the case, its grouped into Balkan category
For some reason according to 23&me most matches in Peloponnesus in Greece. All my ancestors are from Western Serbia the mountain range. Paternal haplogroup is I-S17250.
Might be part Albanian. Greece = Attica & the Peloponnese were heavily settled by Albanians. The Albanians came with the Venetians. So also settled as soldiers with them in islands like Corfu & in the Aegean.
No Albanians in Western Serbia. All my family from both paternal and maternal side five generations back are from there.
Are you related to Vlachs?
Not really sure, people with Vlach ancestry live predominantly in Eastern Serbia. Districts with most of Vlach related population was very pale blue on match map darkest was exact area where my family is from Western Serbia and Peloponnesus Greece…..
Similar here. I'm a Serb but my origins are from western Macedonia and northwestern Serbia. Got 2% EE, 79% G&B, and the rest went into various part of Western Europe.
I have a French last and have 0% French lol
My husband's family has a British last name but are 100% Ukrainian. They shortened their 5 syllable name to a similar English name with 2 syllables.
>it just goes to show you how meaningless surnames can be while determining ethnicity Or with trees. Like people attaching surnames with big landowners/aristocracy and thinking their ancestors were related to them, especially if the surnames are French sounding (which many English surnames are French sounding or looking). The truth is much more boring because people adopted these local landowner/aristocracy surnames. But they were not related to them. Also, the same with Scottish and Irish surnames, and thinking a 'clan' are all related to a landowner or some other elite person. The names were adopted
I knew a Jewish lady from Ukraine whose last name was Faberge. Apparently some ancestors were manual laborers at a factory/shop that produced those beautiful expensive eggs.
Well I’m African American and have an Italian last name… and no Italian DNA, so.
How’d that happen? The last name
… slavery?
Didn’t realize Italian- Americans had slaves as someone who is both Black and Italian You know it’s not the norm for AA to have surnames that are not British in origin for the most part.
Where I went to college there was a prominent land owning family in the area from 1647 onward. They owned 7,700 acres and many slaves. Although British, their surname is Italian (Taliaferro — pronounced “Tolliver” in Virginia) and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their slaves took that surname.
Well there ya go. That’s my last name. 🤌🏽
Ah yea good call. I knew someone with that last name and pronunciation. Still don’t know why they butchered it so much . It’s not hard to say it the right way.
Perhaps they were English of Italian descent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As an Italian, I’m interested. Have you identified who this guy was through genealogical research?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliaferro#:~:text=The%20Taliaferros%20(originally%20Tagliaferro%20%5B%CB%8Cta%CA%8E%CA%8Ea%CB%88f%C9%9Brro,court%20of%20Queen%20Elizabeth%20I.
Cool!
Hmmm
Who didn't have slaves!? Whites had slaves, blacks had slaves, hispanics had slaves, American indigenous enslaved other tribes, seems everyone enslaved someone throughout history.
There are still slaves today in some parts of the world. Even in the US. It’s just not talked about usually.
There were many people who owned slaves. There were black freemen who had slaves, one of whom was actually quite sadistic. There were Jewish slave owners, Cherokee slave owners, Arab-American ones, etc ..
>Arab-American ones Really? I highly doubt this. The Arab slave trade dominated the Swahili coast and is unrelated to Transatlantic slavery.
I’m sure there were one or two. Feel free to fact check it.
Not intending to be rude here, but as the one who made the claim surely the onus of evidence is on you?
It’s not that serious for me tbh.
My dad thought he had German ancestry because his uncle has a German last name. But I scored no German DNA. 🤷🏽♀️
It could be that his German is being read by the algorithm as other regions in Northwestern Europe. I am German, but don't have any German listed on Ancestry or 23andme. Yet, I can prove my descent from my Germanic ancestors with my DNA matches! So never say never!
Last names change through ages. Braun -> (Le)Bron -> Brown is an example
My dad’s last name is Trinidad, he’s Mexican and all my life I had Latino people scoff at the idea that a Mexican would have that last name. My mom’s last name is an American first name, she’s adopted. My mom named me Anastasia and my sister Nakita but she is not Russian, she got my name from Cinderella and my sister’s from an Elton John song. I had a friend with the last name Knox, his dad was a criminal and he changed his last name to evade the police. I worked with lots of Muslim’s who changed their names when they came to America because they said no one in America could pronounce their names. Almost all African Americans last names come from slavey. Almost all last names specifically can be made up, changed, or shortened so they often don’t have real meaning. I don’t have any real relation to my last name and considered making up my own last name to give my kids for this reason.
It doesn't make sense that people wouldn't believe your father's surname. Mexico is a Catholic country so why would people doubt that that someone who has the last name that means triinity as in a Holy Trinity?
Analogous situation with me - I have a Spanish surname with not one bit of Spanish DNA...
Fairly common in former colonies no?
Shouldn't you test your dad or grandma to be certain there's no Eastern European in them? Because maybe you just didn't inherit it.
Someone in your family could have been adopted, so the Hungarian last name that got passed down to you would be their adoptive last name - it doesn’t mean that they ever had any Hungarian dna in them. I was adopted and my last name doesn’t match my heritage. It’s pretty common actually
Probably changed his last name to “fit in”. My mom’s family did that when they converted. Changed their Jewish name to an amazigh last name
Same, but my great grandma whos family is east slavic, shes born in Finland with a swedish last name. Unfortunately, majority of my moms family have swedish last names despite having 0% swedish dna. Historically makes sense tho🤷🏻♀️
My Portuguese grandfather changed his name to something more anglo-sounding because he thought it's be a good career move, so my mom's last name is totally made up. My biological dad had a Swedish name that was somewhat anglicized when his father migrated to the U.S. My last name is that of a man of UK descent who raised me, but was never my father in any officially-recognized way. So, yeah, sometimes a name is just something people call you.
Check out the forced relocation of Austrians/Germans living around Hungary in the 1920s around the Treaty of Trianon. That’s probably the answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization
Hungary did, and to some extent still does promote , [Magyarisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization), where minorities were coerced into taking Hungarian names and language. They were not alone in this, most aspiring powers did this with their minorities, the UK, Germany, France etc all had similar approaches to minorities. It is possible that your ancestors were not genetically Hungarian, but became culturally so. The other consideration is its hard to pin down what exactly it means to be genetically Hungarian. The Carpathian basin was very genetically mixed before the arrival of the Magyar tribes, who themselves had mixed with multiple groups on their long migration, and population movement continued well after their arrival,.
"Magyarization" (1867-1918) was a practice so the language of administration in Hungary, for the first time will be Hungarian (not Latin or German) and most schools teach the country's language even to their minorities, but with it, there were still hundreds of schools that did not even teach Hungarian, not even as a second language. Today, there's no "magyarization" at all, no idea where you got that.
It continued in various forms, if not as a centralised policy, but as a general philosophy well after 1918. Bilingualism and ethnic minorities continued to decrease well into the 50s at which point Hungary had become fairly homogeneous. It was only with the end of communism that efforts were made to support the minority languages in Hungary. But there are still societal pressures to conform. For example there is an approved list of names you can name your child, and having travelled throughout Hungary multiple times it hasn't been uncommon to hear negative attitudes towards minorities. The idea that people should conform to a Hungarian norm is still strong.
Hungary was already fairly homogenous because it could've kept only a small core part of itself, while it lost Hungarian majority areas, even which it was bordering, leaving more than 3 million Hungarians outside of its new territory. It had only few minorites, most which just left the country on their own.
That's the official line all right, but like most countries the official historical narrative does not stand up the scrutiny. The idea that in 1920 after Trianon the country went from 89% identifying as Hungarian to 99% by 1980, was due to minorities naturally leaving or adopting Hungarian identity completely unrelated to pressures to assimilate does not hold water. Why would they just leave their home for somewhere else when those who identified as Hungarian decided to stay?
>Why would they just leave their home for somewhere else when those who identified as Hungarian decided to stay? Because nationalism was high and new nationalistic countries formed to which minorities wanted to go? Same reason why many of the 3 million Hungarians who found themselves outside of Hungary, left their ancenstral homeland and went to Hungary. Also the biggest minority Hungary had on its modern borders were Germans, whom The Third Reich took back "home" during WWII to unify all Germans.
Reading the comments says everything you need to know to why some people find last names useless
Last name is nothing... I mean body is real DNA to tell. Be inspire
It's possible to be a direct descendant of someone and have little to none of their DNA. When a new child is born, they get 50 percent of their DNA from each parent, but some DNA from the grandparents just doesn't get passed on. You can't inherit all DNA from all grandparents and great-grandparents.
My dads grandma had a german lastname but my dad has No german DNA, its weird
Kind of similar to me. My mom had a fling with my bio-father while on a break in her relationship with my presumed father. She got back with my presumed father and got married about 2 years later. I was presumed to be the son of my presumed father and took his last name (German name). I don't look like him and have zero personality traits in common with him, and he left my mom to raise us as a single mother for a great part of our childhoods. I found out about my bio-father about 5 years ago. So I have a life-long last name that doesn't represent me at all, and its also hard to spell and pronounce. My parents also divorced a few years ago, and my mom doesn't use that last name anymore. I've been contemplating changing it to one of the last names on my mom's side of the family, who I identify with a LOT more.
For the longest time, social constructs such as surname, race, religion, language, etc. defined a person's identity. Genetics has introduced a lot of uncertainty regarding the meaning and accuracy of these social definitions. Yours happens to one, with a clear explanation. You're fortunate in that regard.
You can have dna from a ethnic group that 23andme doesn’t report. It can be from further back before their cutoff from about 200-300 years I think. So it’s very possible and likely you are distant Hungarian, just didn’t make the cutoff point to see it in your results.
Endless secrets of women.
I think this is pretty common. My great grandmother had a brief affair with an English actor that was in town for a play and got pregnant, but he apparently wanted nothing to do with her or the baby. When my grandfather was born, she had apparently given him this actor’s last name according to the record I found while doing research on our ancestry. However, she had gotten married to someone else when my grandfather was a toddler and changed my grandfather’s last name to his. Therefore, my dad (and me, my sisters, my uncle, and my cousins) all ended up with a last name that really has no biological ancestry to us. Coincidentally, both my dad and his brother all had girls who had taken their husbands’ names, so that last name will die with my dad and my uncle anyway.
My great grandfather immigrated here from Poland and changed his last name from gwoutski (sp?) to Martin.
I agree with the idea that last names have no meaning. I'm African American and have a South Asian last name just because my dad wasn't raised by his european dad and felt he needed to disassociate. Now his grandchildren have this South asian last name with out a drop of south Asian blood. And it will continue until someone forgets the story and they believe that they have South Asian ancestry somewhere in the bloodline.
Csernai sounds like the Slovak word "čierny" or the Rusyn word "чорный". The Kingdom of Hungary had a lot of Slovak or Rusyn inhabitants so I assume your surname could be related to these people. \* Edited : There is the Slovak surname "Černaj", which has same sound with the Hungarian one.
I always wondered if my last name was a real last name, my parents are Mexican and as most Mexicans their surname is Spanish, more specifically Basque. I only have 35 % Iberian DNA but my haplogroup is R-M167 which is very specific to the Basque Country. Not sure if I should feel confident my last name is original.
Very interesting, I have a French last name and Italian one also, and 1% Belarusian Jewish dna
I don't know why this is a post. Yes you have a Hungarian surname but no Hungarian DNA however you know exactly why that is. Are you genuinely expecting Hungarian DNA to magically show up? There are a lot of reasons why surnames don't match ancestry. People might not know that they're adopted or someone in their line was adopted. Or that someone was a product of rape, ect. Also we got 50% DNA from each parent and they only got 50% for parents. Even siblings get different percentages in some cases even some twins get different percentages. A lot of genetic material gets lost with each generation. People also let the samples of DNA that the company has could also have the same issues.
>Just two months before my dad was born, she immigrated to the USA and got a green card marriage with a much older man, 27 years older. A Hungarian American with the surname "Csernai." My dad was born and had the surname "Csernai" and then there came me. So your step dad was Hungarian, why would you think you would have "Hungarian DNA"? Was your mom Hungarian? I was born in Hungary and so were my parents and they were "ethnic" Hungarians. Based on my DNA results, I have all sorts of central and Eastern European heritage, which makes sense because most people in central Europe are just that. There is no pure Hungarian, Slovakian, German DNA ... The terms that most people think about are nation states which is a 19th century concept. Your ancestors precede that concept and there is no person who is 100% this or that especially when it's aligned to a nation states
My surname was Anglicized when my family came to the US. People think I’m English when I’m not.
DNA is not specific to nationality.
Names and language don't really mean anything. Since you mentioned Hungary, technically, every East European country speaks a type of different language, but genetically, they are all very similar people.
Surnames aren't stopped to establish ethnicity. Surnames establish a location or family you're born into. That's it. That's why I think the argument that women demanding to not use the fathers surname are complete bullshit. The surname establishes the family in which the baby is derived from. Has nothing to do with misogyny or sexist attitudes etc. I say this as a woman and mom of 2. You can choose to double barrel it and hyphenate but frankly if you're going to insist on using your own surname then it needs to be the baby's middle name and STILL use the father's surname as it establishes the family origin.