While reviewing the science news for the day I came across an intriguing article (really!) describing a study by Professor Carla Almeida Santos and her graduate student Grace Yan entitled "Genealogical Tourism: A Phenomenological Examination" (Journal of Travel Research 2010; 49; 56 originally published online 24 February 2009; DOI: 10.1177/0047287509332308). While the article itself is quite learned (and a bit inaccessible for the uninitiated) I found some of the interpretations of their work by the authors themselves to be quite insightful and in good agreement with my own existential experiences and feelings as an amateur genealogist.
A few worthwhile quotes from the authors press release describing their work:
"Genealogical tourism provides an irreplaceable dimension of material reality that's missing from our postmodern society," Santos said.
"Traveling to the old church where one's great grandparents used to worship in rural Ireland, or buying a loaf of bread from a tiny grocery store in the village where one's grandmother was from in Greece create a critical space to imagine and feel life as a form of continuation," says co-author and U. of I. graduate student Grace Yan.
"Genealogical tourism capitalizes on this (a world where mediated, inauthentic experiences have become such an ingrained part of everyday life that we're almost unaware of it) by allowing individuals to experience the sensuous charms of antiquity, and provides a way of experiencing something eternal and authentic that transcends the present," Santos said.
"According to our research, the baby boomer generation now constitutes the primary profile of genealogical travelers," Yan said. "Aging plays an important role in defining a person's choice of tourism, and genealogical travel is contemporary society's way of attaining a more coherent and continuous, albeit imagined, view of ourselves in connection with the past."
"Diaspora definitely plays an important role in popularizing genealogical tourism," Santos said. "Individual cultural and ethnic identities exist in fragmented and discontinuous forms in the U.S. Traveling to identify with an unknown past seems to give existence to meanings and values that the individual then carries forward on into their present."
Since diaspora is a ubiquitous condition in our multicultural country, "our ancestors' past seems less retrievable and almost mythical," Yan said.
"A lot of us may feel that there's a tension between the need to feel connected and the need to be individualistic," Santos said. "Genealogical travel gives us a practical way to explore those feelings and move toward a deeper understanding of our identities."
"Not only does it help to mitigate the desires and anxieties about our age, genealogical tourism also encourages us to take a more humanistic approach toward issues of belonging, home, heritage and identity," she said.
Showing posts with label Terry Family History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terry Family History. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Terry Surname
“Terry” is a surname of pre 5th Century Gallic origin - derived from the personal name “Thierri”, in turn derived from the ancient Germanic “Theodoric”, a compound of “theudo” meaning “people or race” and “ric” meaning “of power”.
Before the Norman Conquest of Britain (1066) people in England did not use hereditary surnames. Within their small communities, they could easily be identified by a personal name or a nickname. However, as the size of communities increased it became necessary to differentiate between people with similar names, leading to names such as Henry the weaver, Joan of the meadow, Roger the short, Samuel son of Richard, and so on. After 1066 the Norman barons introduced surnames into England, and the practice gradually spread until by 1400 most English families had adopted their use. Initially surnames were changed or dropped at will, but eventually they became fixed and hereditary. The origin of most surnames is found in trades, locations of origin, and a father’s personal name or nickname (which is thought to be the case for Terry).
In the absence of definite rules of spelling, and under the combined influences of Latin, French, German, Celtic, and Old and Middle English the spelling variations of names were extreme. In the middle ages scribes generally spelled words by how they sounded, and it was the rule rather than the exception that the same person would be referred to by different spellings in different documents – and even occasionally within the same document! The “Terry” surname has been recorded in over one hundred variations in English, Irish, Scottish, French, and German. From the variant “Thierry” arising out of the Rhine Valley in France, in Britain the name has transitioned through Tedric, Tericus, Terrick, and Terye until finally becoming more or less standardized as Terry or Terrey by about 1700. English language variations which have been recorded in documents that have survived to the present day include Terry, Terrye, Terrey, Tarry, Torry, Tyrry, and of course all of their homonyms ending in both “i” and “ie”.
The name first entered England during the Norman Conquest of 1066. The variations Theodricus, Tedricus, and Teodericus appear as (Latinized) personal names (hereditary surnames not being in use at the time) in the Domesday Book of 1088. The name also makes an early appearance in Kent, where in 1138 Thierry, son of Deorman of London was granted lands by Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, and persisted in tenancy under Richard FitzGilbert of Clare. In 1166, a certain Terri Vsuarius is mentioned in the Pipe Roles of Norfolk, and the name is first recorded as a family surname in 1199 when Ralph Teri is entered into the “Register of the Freemen of the City of Leicester” in the final year of the reign of King Richard 1st of England. Other early examples include John Terry of Warwickshire (1221), Thomas Therry of Somerset (1243), and Hugo Tyry of Befordshire (1250). From military records we also have: William Terry, Man-at-Arms to Geoffrey Sterling (1374); Roger Terry, Esquire Man-at-Arms to Thomas de Mowbray Earl of Nottingham (1388); John Terry, Yeoman Archer under Michael de la Pole Earl of Suffolk (1399); Piers Terry, Archer under Sir Thomas Erpingham with Henry V in an expedition to France (1415). In 1408 Thomas Terry, Canon of Wells, made his will within which he names his brother John Terry together with his brothers wife and two daughters.
The name entered Ireland with the family Terri as a consequence of the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169-1170, and the families of Tyrry, Tirry, and Therry have been closely associated with the regions of Cork and Kilkenny from that time, while the families of Torrie and Torry have been associated with the region of Waterford. In Scotland, the first instance of the Terry surname occurs with a record regarding a Johannes Terry in the register of the abbey of Arbroath in 1475.
Before the Norman Conquest of Britain (1066) people in England did not use hereditary surnames. Within their small communities, they could easily be identified by a personal name or a nickname. However, as the size of communities increased it became necessary to differentiate between people with similar names, leading to names such as Henry the weaver, Joan of the meadow, Roger the short, Samuel son of Richard, and so on. After 1066 the Norman barons introduced surnames into England, and the practice gradually spread until by 1400 most English families had adopted their use. Initially surnames were changed or dropped at will, but eventually they became fixed and hereditary. The origin of most surnames is found in trades, locations of origin, and a father’s personal name or nickname (which is thought to be the case for Terry).
In the absence of definite rules of spelling, and under the combined influences of Latin, French, German, Celtic, and Old and Middle English the spelling variations of names were extreme. In the middle ages scribes generally spelled words by how they sounded, and it was the rule rather than the exception that the same person would be referred to by different spellings in different documents – and even occasionally within the same document! The “Terry” surname has been recorded in over one hundred variations in English, Irish, Scottish, French, and German. From the variant “Thierry” arising out of the Rhine Valley in France, in Britain the name has transitioned through Tedric, Tericus, Terrick, and Terye until finally becoming more or less standardized as Terry or Terrey by about 1700. English language variations which have been recorded in documents that have survived to the present day include Terry, Terrye, Terrey, Tarry, Torry, Tyrry, and of course all of their homonyms ending in both “i” and “ie”.
The name first entered England during the Norman Conquest of 1066. The variations Theodricus, Tedricus, and Teodericus appear as (Latinized) personal names (hereditary surnames not being in use at the time) in the Domesday Book of 1088. The name also makes an early appearance in Kent, where in 1138 Thierry, son of Deorman of London was granted lands by Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, and persisted in tenancy under Richard FitzGilbert of Clare. In 1166, a certain Terri Vsuarius is mentioned in the Pipe Roles of Norfolk, and the name is first recorded as a family surname in 1199 when Ralph Teri is entered into the “Register of the Freemen of the City of Leicester” in the final year of the reign of King Richard 1st of England. Other early examples include John Terry of Warwickshire (1221), Thomas Therry of Somerset (1243), and Hugo Tyry of Befordshire (1250). From military records we also have: William Terry, Man-at-Arms to Geoffrey Sterling (1374); Roger Terry, Esquire Man-at-Arms to Thomas de Mowbray Earl of Nottingham (1388); John Terry, Yeoman Archer under Michael de la Pole Earl of Suffolk (1399); Piers Terry, Archer under Sir Thomas Erpingham with Henry V in an expedition to France (1415). In 1408 Thomas Terry, Canon of Wells, made his will within which he names his brother John Terry together with his brothers wife and two daughters.
The name entered Ireland with the family Terri as a consequence of the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169-1170, and the families of Tyrry, Tirry, and Therry have been closely associated with the regions of Cork and Kilkenny from that time, while the families of Torrie and Torry have been associated with the region of Waterford. In Scotland, the first instance of the Terry surname occurs with a record regarding a Johannes Terry in the register of the abbey of Arbroath in 1475.
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