Previous FAQ: Grains of Salt
The first bloodline I opted to build in ancestry.com was my purely paternal ancestors. After all, the “A son of B son of C son of D” was the only line that mattered through most of European history. (Klingon as well, which is entirely another issue). I built my tree, generation by generation. After encountering common ancestors between myself and my fellow ancestry.com-users, progress was made quickly.
Soon, I encountered Edmund Lewis and noticed that while he died in Massachusetts, he was born in Wales! (First family rumor confirmed) My first detected Immigrant to the United States. With a what-the-hell approach, I continued pushing the “son of” chain backwards through the accumulated records.
Soon again, I encountered the point where my paternal ancestors switched from “Firstname Familyname” format to the traditional “name AP father’s-name” arrangement. “Edward Lewis” was sired by “Lewis Ap Richard Gwyn”. “Lewis” as a paternal name had disappeared, and never made another appearance. That in itself alluded to the answer to another of the family rumors. If Lewis originated as a name in Wales, there was probably *not* an island named after Lewis in Scotland.
Pushing the paternal line still further (out 800 years), I encountered another paternal ancestor with an intriging name (and title) “Rhys Ap Griffith Lord of Ystrad Tywi Prince of South Wales”. Clearly, I had struck Welsh royalty via a pure paternal line. I was by blood a Prince of Wales.
Okay, more accurately, I was a Prince in Wales. 800 years into the past, Wales as a country didn’t even exist. Hey, it happens. In my own 55-year existence, some countries have merged – East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam. Other countries have broken apart – Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. Still others have merely changed names – Ceylon, Zaire.
A Prince none-the-less in the land of unpronounceable names where “W” is still considered a vowel.
Michael ap Arnold. Hereditary Lord of Ystrad Tywi. Prince of Gwynedd.
Janella… Sarah… Emily… Now it makes sense that I call you “Princess”
Next FAQ: What’s in a Name
Sang Roial 