I agree that the Portuguese have a substantial amount of Celtic ancestry
evidenced by the frequency of Y-Dna R1b and MtDna H. But there hasn't been
a significant amount of movement into Portugal from countries that are
traditionally considered Celtic in a very long time. Although after the
Siege of Lisbon in 1147 a few thousand English and Scottish settled in
Lisbon and the first Bishop of Lisbon was English his name was Gilbert of
Hastings.
But those events I think are too distant in my case to account for family
finder matches of 20-30CM and strands of 8-10CM with people of British
ancestry I think the Flemish are the more likely reason for that. They
arrived in the Azores between 1450-1470's and were also moving into
Scotland and England during that same period. Another thing I looked at is
my matches to people who are of Mexican ancestry are at that same level
20-30 CM the Portuguese immigrated to Mexico starting in the mid 1500's to
the early 1600's from the Azores and Mainland Portugal.
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
>
--
For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation)
mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right
that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Azores Genealogy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
