Hi Tomas
My understanding regarding the Silveira surname in the Azores is that all
the lines except one on the island of Graciosa are believed to have
originated from the Flemish. The one line from Graciosa is believed to have
originated in the Alentejo region of mainland Portugal and traces from Old
Portuguese Nobility.
Antonio
On Tuesday, August 5, 2014 2:15:39 AM UTC-7, Tomas Leal wrote:
>
> I too was surprised that my Y-DNA results were simply "Celtic," which I've
> always associated with Ireland and the British Isles--my mother's side.
> What was more surprising is the long line of males on my paternal side--the
> Y chromosome sources--coming up Celtic, so I was a bit confused.
>
> I dug into some history and found there were TWO Celtic migrations, both
> from central Europe westward. The second one swept up through modern-day
> France and across the channel to Ireland and the British Isles, and the
> timing of this one covers the period of the Norman Invasion. What was news
> to me was the much earlier one that turned southward and went into the
> Iberian Peninsula and settled in the area of Galicia. Then I learned that
> the Portuguese language is derived from Galician, as is modern Spanish.
> Thus, "Celtic" made more sense for my Y-DNA line, making Portuguese a
> Celtic language. Even today, Galician folk songs and dances (viewable on
> YouTube) resemble what I've seen in both Ireland and in the Azores.
>
> Further, I found that the Celtic genes do appear in some people from
> Flanders, though not a majority. My paternal line is from Flamengos,
> Faial, which as many on this list know was settled by Flemish colonists, so
> it's possible the Celtic strain from Flanders into Galicia made it to Faial
> as well. Wilhelm van der Haagen was a leader of this colonization (at the
> invitation of the Portuguese king), and he adopted a Portuguese translation
> of his name: Guilermo Silveira. The Germanic "haag" is the equivalent of
> the Portguese "silveira," a name that appears in the middle of every male
> on my paternal side from my grandfather to the grandfather of my
> great-grandfather (as far back as I know names, so far). Further, three of
> van der Haagen's children (two daughters and one son) are known to have
> settled and died in Flamengos. Most of us know the Portuguese tradition of
> using the mother's family name as a "middle name" for many offspring, but
> Azoreans also seem to use family names to indicate connection with land as
> well. A woman might retain her family name after marriage if the couple
> remained on land her family had owned, for example.
>
> Thus, a supposition I'm trying to track down is that the males on my
> paternal line had some connection with a female some generations earlier
> who owned land in the "Valley of the Flemish" ("Vale dos Flamengos" is
> still used as a name for the area) and whose family name was Silveira,
> possibly one of van der Haagen's daughters. A Leal married a Silveira and
> moved to live on her family's land. The second part of my hypothesis is
> that even though Silveira is a fairly common Portuguese name (similar to
> "Smith" in the U.S. in occurence), the persistence of its use with males in
> my paternal line has something to do with a desire to indicate a connection
> to the "original" Silveiras--the children of van der Haagen. None of my
> Faialense relatives knows of any such distant connection, but there is
> little knowedge at all among them about previous generations. For people
> living in subsistence, focus was more on present-day survival than ancestry
> records, so it's not surprising so little is known further back than a
> generation or two.
>
> Tomás Leal
>
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