I was doing some family tree research recently, when I realized that I didn't know my grandmother's mother's name. I asked family members and no one else seemed to know exactly. This is one generation removed from people I've actually met, and she's already forgotten. I still don't know exactly...it's spelled different ways on the censuses. My most well-researched line goes back to britain. Most vanish about 3 generations back. It's like they never existed.

How long will your name last? Even if it does endure for a little while, does it matter? Hell, everyone probably pronounces Julius Ceasar's name wrong anyway.

12/6/2009 11:39:12 PM

after 5 billion years it won't matter how long anyone lasted

12/6/2009 11:42:13 PM

there are 6 name carrying men in my generation. one's a Marine, one's NYPD - neither of those two has spawned yet. the other 4 of us aren't in a line of work that presents imminent danger, but the we haven't spawned yet either.

12/7/2009 12:38:22 AM

I've wondered about that. I was at an antique store a few months back and they had an old muster list from a Civil War era army unit. I looked it over and then realized that this piece of paper was probably the last piece of evidence that those men ever existed.

12/7/2009 12:48:30 AM

My paternal grandfather was adopted, and though we know his dad's name we can't trace it much farther than that. However, his last name -- and mine -- is shared with a rather unpopular American. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to check from the other end, and no, I'm not related to John Wilkes Booth.

I actually know a fair bit about several of the lines, and have a bunch of shit written down at my parents' house. My no doubt illustrious ancestors seem to have been almost exclusively from Great Britain, and a lot of them got here before the revolution.

12/7/2009 1:06:26 AM

as long as you still parents and grandparents still alive, go to http://www.geni.com/ and start an online, collaborative family tree. You can invite other relatives to join and have them add any info you don't have, but you should definitely get it written down before people start dying off too fast.

12/7/2009 1:51:39 AM

My aunt in TN has traced my father's (her brother) side of the family clear back to before the Revolution. Honestly, I'd like to know more about my mother's side and discover more about my Native American heritage but I'm sure you white people have done a fair job wiping out a lot of those people/records.

12/7/2009 2:01:11 AM

i have found that it is really easy to find the names of most of the men in your family but the women in the family tree all seem to have questions marks by their names, only a first name, or no name all together.

12/7/2009 9:55:12 AM

My blog will last forever!

12/7/2009 10:00:27 AM

I can't even imagine being black and trying to do genealogy. I know the names of my ancestors' early slaves based on who they were willed to. But by the time of the civil war all that was written in the census was their age and sex. I've been to one of our slave cemeteries before, but I'd probably get nailed for trespassing if I went back. I guess I should report it to one of those find-a-grave clubs. I don't think there were any names on the headstones though.

12/7/2009 11:28:07 AM

I'm an only child and I don't have a strong desire to procreate. However, my cousins appear to be picking up the slack, for what it's worth.

12/7/2009 11:43:02 AM

Out of my six siblings and I, only two have had children. One did it deliberately and the other did it by accident, but the point still stands. I like kids, and were it not for the fact that I have no skills at all with the ladies, I'd have some of my own.

12/7/2009 12:49:50 PM

I'm like Vito Corleone, except it's submersible screen doors instead of olive oil.

12/7/2009 1:19:11 PM

My soap box posts will stand as my legacy.

12/7/2009 1:27:44 PM

Quote :

"However, his last name -- and mine -- is shared with a rather unpopular American. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to check from the other end, and no, I'm not related to John Wilkes Booth."

John Wilkes Booth was pretty popular. Like a George Clooney or a Brad Pitt of his day. Of course he would later change all that and lose popularity with about 1/2 of the nation.

12/7/2009 1:51:36 PM

I intend to live forever.

12/7/2009 1:57:46 PM

My name is listed in the family registry for my clan which is pretty meticulously kept given that the government uses it for citizenship and conscription purposes. So unless my entire clan is annihilated and/or its records are destroyed (which is highly unlikely given that it has about 3 million members) or my ancestral homeland is wiped out, I think the record of my old line is ensured. Now, whether or not I will register my children is another question, especially since I live in the United States, and I and the millions of other immigrant children would have no idea how to register our offspring (that, and if I have sons and register them, the government might conscript them when they go back to visit... laugh, but its happened before, even to people who are officially US citizens).

12/7/2009 4:22:50 PM

While I doubt I'll carry on the name, there are so many of us (ppl w/ my last name) in the NC/VA/TN mountains area, that I'm sure the name will survive there for a long time to come. My father's & mother's name both trace back in that same mountain region for a few generations, then the trail goes cold, but those ancestory/family tree type websites suggest both of their names are of English origin so there isn't a lot of special cultural heritage there to preserve.

11/19/2010 12:58:23 AM

My ancestors were russian jew spies.

11/19/2010 1:16:18 AM

My surname is the 26th most common in the US according to Census 2000, and it is derived from sources that vary according to ethnic origin (no I don't mean race, I mean like whether your ancestors were Jewish, Welsh, Irish, English, etc.); I figured out that the first person with my surname was a wealthy slaveowner...but that my own ancestors came to this country a couple centuries after that.

11/19/2010 1:42:27 AM

Quote :

"his last name -- and mine -- is shared with a rather unpopular American."

Quote :

"I'm not related to John Wilkes Booth."

What does John Wilkes Booth have to do with unpopular Americans?

Quote :

"How long will your name last?"

Not at all. Aside from a miniscule amount of people, who is really remembered? A few game-changing men and women like DaVinci, Einstein, Caesar, Alexander etc but who was the first head of the Federal Reserve? Who was Jimmy Carter's VP? Who was Roosevelt's Secretary of War?

These were all powerful people in their time but no one outside of scholarly circles studying that topic remember them. Hell, who was the last Emperor of China? Most populous nation in the world and probably no one on here knows this without looking it up.

11/19/2010 8:28:58 AM

Whole thread makes me think of this:

Quote :

"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."

11/19/2010 3:37:22 PM

Perhaps infamy is better than anonymity.

11/26/2010 11:27:20 PM

Dear OP

Caesar is a title, not a name. and you spelled it wrong. and we're pronouncing it just fine. and even if we didn't the fact that damn near every single thing he did, wrote and said is meticulously archived and studied 2000+ years later makes him more immortal than Jesus Christ.

12/1/2010 11:35:22 AM

Yes jeo_schmeo, but no one really cares about him. They're all just in it for the book money. You'll be forgotten by 2062.

12/1/2010 12:13:45 PM

I am pretty sure documentation and record retention will be better from our generation on since we have pretty much infinite data storage. (unless something catastrophic throws humans back in to the stone age)

I also think though once you get back before the people anyone you have known in your lifetime actually know it is not going to matter unless they did something really noteworthy.

For instance my grandmother (now deceased) used to tell me all kinds of stories about my great grandparents (also now deceased) and where they are buried that is all I have to know them by. If you want to research before them no one living remembers them at all and records are hard to find. I would not even know where to start, as people did not keep records like that then and all the hand me down stories have no doubt changed over the years.

12/1/2010 12:57:53 PM

I disagree. Records on media will just be lost faster. In 10 years no one will be able to read a CDROM. Hell, do you know anyone with a floppy drive now? Birth records might survive, but if you're counting on your family to preserve your baby photos, good luck.

12/1/2010 3:08:06 PM

Quote :

"I've been to one of our slave cemeteries before, but I'd probably get nailed for trespassing if I went back. I guess I should report it to one of those find-a-grave clubs. I don't think there were any names on the headstones though."

At my girlfriend's family farm the slave graves are just marked by a single rock, not much bigger than a person's fist, which is now flush with the ground and at threat of being grown over. Most of them can barely be seen. You'd never notice anything if they didn't keep the grass cut and someone didn't point it out to you. The nearly perfectly straight lines of rocks do make their way into the woods and nobody really knows how far they go.

Oh yeah, and they buried the slaves over the Indians as it was an Indian graveyard originally.

Talk about good mojo.

[Edited on December 2, 2010 at 3:15 PM. Reason : s]

12/2/2010 3:14:49 PM

Google will remember you forever

12/6/2010 12:42:20 AM

Not at all. I'm already old enough to see hundreds of my favorite websites disappear, except for maybe a screenshot on the waybackmachine.

12/6/2010 7:31:41 AM