matthewkappenman.net
VFX/MoGraph/Editorial : Life
Know your roots
December 13th, 2005 | Filed under Family
I love genealogy. Who doesn’t? There is something, on a gut level really, satisfying in tracing your roots back to their origins. In my case that most definitely means eastern europe.
Considering that “kappenman” isn’t exactly the most common name in the world, it makes searching ancestral databases like ancestry.com (and their free site rootweb) that much easier. I usually don’t bother with those sites as my dad’s family has kept a pretty accurate family tree (it’s around 6 feet x 4 feet) up until the 1960s. So I don’t really need the internet to tell me where my family comes from. However, today I was checking to see if the search engines had caught up with my domain change and I saw a google ad for ancestry.com that offered to explain the origins of your name.
I clicked the link (I click every link) and was more than surprised to see an actual explanation for my surname. The above picture says it all. Being that my favorite outfit is anything with a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, I’d say there would have to be some proof in inherited traits. Granted it isn’t made of “high quality material” but I think the concept has been carried on, as my dad, brother and I live in hooded sweatshirts.
A quick run down of other surnames in my family turned up some interesting results. My mother’s maiden name (hoffman) turned up either Dutch or German/Jewish heritage, while my grandmother’s (dad’s mom) maiden name (carroll) had obvious Irish/Galic roots. I especially like the part about “butcher” in that explanation. Who would have ever thought that I worked in a meat shop during high school? Also, in the 1880 the top two occupations for kappenmans were either farmer (no shock there, as I’m the first generation to born and raised in the city) or saloon keeper. Ah, the hits just keep on coming.
Feel free to check out your own various surnames and post the results in the comments!
December 13th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
At least my mom’s side is interesting:
Hartwig
German (also H‰rtwig), Dutch, and Danish (Hartvig): from a Germanic personal name composed of the elements hard ëhardyí, ëstrongí + wig ëbattleí, ëcombatí.
My dad’s is a bit too obscure to produce good results, but it does say
3% of the Vhams were “High Sherriff of Co” in 1880… whatever that means
December 13th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
Di Gioia
1. from the personal name Gioia, derived from gioa ëjewelí, ëprecious objectí. This is normally a feminine name, but there are occasional records of its use as a masculine personal name in the Middle Ages. It may also have been a nickname for someone who frequently used the expression mia gioia ëmy joyí. In the form Tzogias this is also found as a Greek family name.
2. habitational name from any of various places in southern Italy named with this word, including Gioia del Colle (Bari), Gioia Sannitica (Caserta), and Gioia Tauro (Calabria).”
I already knew this, because my grandfather was orphaned on the steps of an orfanage in the city of Gioia Tauro, Italy. “Di Gioia” was the name given to him at the orphanage, the “Di” meaning from. We don’t know who his biological parents are, and their names wouldn’t be Di Gioia, anyway, so we can start tracing our family tree from my grandfather on. :-)