The REAL Steve Levicoff???

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Steve Levicoff, Mar 10, 2017.

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  1. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I figured there might be an Orest hiding in this. I just picked the first two Ukrainian names I could think of. There was an Orest in my class when I wrote the Real Estate licensing exam around 1986 and I think there was another in my Ukrainian class in '87. And there's Orest Subtelny, The Canadian historian who wrote chiefly about Ukraine. Read some of him - in English, though. And I once had a landlord named Maxim who came from Ukraine. That Maxim was the guy who told me he went to Bohdan Khmelnitsky Primary School in Ukraine. I posted something about Khmelnitsky here at DI a while back. It comes to writing - I use what I got.

    I'm really sorry to hear of your bad Canadian experiences, Stanislav. The only thing I can do is shake my head and remark that there are a lot of people with degrees but no education in this country. I'm a foreigner of sorts myself. I'm still a Brit, as I might have told you, after 68 years here. I've talked like a Canadian since I was nine (I sometimes revert to my native accent if I'm around English people for too long) so most people don't know, unless I tell them. The Government knows, of course and it's all OK with them. I paid taxes - now I get the benefits. The only benefit I don't get is one I don't really want anyway - a chance to vote on Election Day.

    Now, when I was a kid, other kids would say things like "Limey" and "Chirper" but only the kids - and it never happened after my mid-teens. I found some Americans who tended not to like people (i.e. me) if they found out we were Brits though. Maybe that's historical - 1776 and all that. Old grudges die hard. I'll just stay here, I think, with my Canadian health care - which has kept me alive a couple of times now, at great expense to the State and none whatsoever to me. I could easily have been a goner years ago - a couple of times. Yes, easily.

    Canada is far from perfect. But still - if I had to live somewhere else, I'm not sure where I'd be as happy. Well, there's always the South of France --- no, full of English people nowadays -- Mongolia? Maybe, but Russia and China are too close - and there's still a yearly Plague Season, like the American Southwest. Yep. I'll just stay here -it's easiest - and again, my sympathy for the way you've been treated. It's not right. Not right at all.
     
  2. Filmmaker2Be

    Filmmaker2Be Active Member

    I haven't come across anyone from the houses of Golitzines or Gediminas yet and I don't know if I will. So far all my Russian connections are from the earlier Rurik dynasty of Kievan Rus during the Medieval period. The Tsar I'm connected to was Tsar Ivan Vladislav, Emperor of Bulgaria (977-1018).

    Here are some of the dynasties/royal houses I'm connected to so far: Arpad, Burgundy, Doukid, Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Komnenid, Oldenburg, Piast, Plantagenet, Premyslid, Rurik, Savoy, Stuart/Stewart, Tudor, Valois-Burgundy, Vukanovic, Wittlesbach, Luxembourg, York, Barcelona (Kingdom of Aragon), Castilian House of Ivrea/Burgundy (Kingdom of Castile and Leon). My most recent connection is the House of Stuart/Stewart.

    AncestryDNA didn't find any Eastern or Balkans/Southern European ancestry. MyHeritage said the bulk of my European ancestry was from the Balkans, which matches my family tree. The GEDmatch calculators back up MyHeritage and my family tree as well. I'm just stumped as to why GEDmatch calculators also found Asian Indian, Indo-Tibetan, Baloch, Parsia, Middle Eastern/West Asian, Malay, Anatolian, and Red Sea DNA for me, too. I'm a whole one percent Malay according to AncestryDNA. I have no idea how.

    The thing that tripped me out the most is that, apparently, I'm genetically Jewish. GEDmatch found DNA for Ashkenazi Jews, Morocco Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and the Lemba from Southern Africa, who are known to be Jews and who say they migrated from Israel by way of Yemen a very very long time ago. I got a lot of hits for Egypt, "plain" Morocco, and the Horn of Africa as well.

    I don't know what to think, but I know DNA doesn't lie. It can't find what's not there.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2020
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  3. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Well, it can find things occasionally, and later tell you they weren't really there. I know from personal experience. Ancestry told me originally I was <1% South Asian. I read up and found that low-percentage DNA readings like this could sometimes be "just noise" and might end up confirmed by further examination to be just that - noise. Sure enough, without any prompting from me, Ancestry contacted me recently and told me my DNA had been "revised" - I looked and the South Asian part was gone. I'm now more Southern English than ever - and the most distinguished relative I can find was a man who was the first in Somerset to own a bicycle, in the 19th century.

    I'm not trying to bust your impressive balloon here. Not at all. This is my experience, not necessarily yours.
     
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  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    That's wonderful! So, you're related to one of my favourite medieval women - Anna Komnene / Comnena, daughter of a Byzantine emperor. She was extremely well-educated and an author. Among her other accomplishments, she taught medicine at, and presided over a very large hospital and orphanage, said to house and care for 10,000 patients and orphans. Her story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Komnene
     
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  5. Filmmaker2Be

    Filmmaker2Be Active Member

    That is true. Malay showed up on my first AncestryDNA estimate as 1%, Sardinia as 1% and Sweden at 2%. A few months later it was revised: Malay stayed, Sardinia dropped off and Sweden was replaced by 1% Norway. The Norway region that lit up on the Ancestry map included a lot of Sweden, so Sweden didn't really go away as much as it was re-categorized. Sardinia dropped off, but the GEDmatch DNA calculators found statistically significant amounts of Eastern and Western Mediterranean DNA markers and I have an ancestral link to the House of Savoy, so I think they were on to something.

    The thing for me is that my family tree is supporting the more "esoteric" DNA markers that GEDmatch is finding. I have a 23andMe DNA test on my counter waiting for me to take it and send it in. I'm curious to see what they will come back with, because all of the ancestral DNA testing companies have different databases with some having less reference samples for certain populations than others. You really have to look at the totality of the information and see if it matches what you're finding in your family tree, and that's the case for me, so far.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2020
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  6. Filmmaker2Be

    Filmmaker2Be Active Member

    Yes, her brother Emperor Ioannes II Komnenos is my 27th great-grandfather.
     
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  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I was thinking about my now "vanished" South Asian DNA. No more possibility of Emperors or Moghuls/Moguls. No Maharajahs or just plain Rajahs. No Brahmin or Kshatriya - not even a lowly Sudra (servant / laborer). Nobody from any caste. Then I thought - one of the Sanskrit words for "caste" is varna - literally color. It's thought to have originated from the lighter color of the conquerors and the darker color of the subjugated aboriginal tribes.

    Not that it would have any bearing on me in Canada today - but perhaps I avoided something I wouldn't care for. This color-based system has survived 5,000 years in India and even in these (comparatively) enlightened times, affects lives there. I read recently of the standards for Government examinations there:

    "For scheduled (i.e. low-order) castes and other backward peoples, the standard is...."

    Holy Cow! This is 2020 CE, not BCE! Glad I've avoided that system!
     
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  8. Filmmaker2Be

    Filmmaker2Be Active Member

    I didn't. More than one GEDmatch calculator pegged me as Siddi from both Pakistan and India, which we know used to be the same country. And, get this, in 2017 I befriended some Indian women on campus at Clemson University. They introduced me to some of their friends. One of the guys actually thought I was also from India! I later went to the India Day festivities, in our city, with my Indian friend and her small family. When she introduced me to people, she made sure to work in that I was an American. I didn't think anything about it then, but now that I know about the Siddi I think she was signaling to them that I wasn't Siddi, even though I might look like one. I find the whole situation amusing. :D
     
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  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    In the southern England of my ancestors, I doubt skin color was much of a consideration - likely not enough of a variance to cause any trouble... but there WAS slavery. One usually got to that status by being a criminal, rather than being kidnapped from Africa. My Anglo-Saxon textbook features a fictional 10th-Century farmer named Leofwin. In his stories, Leofwin, somewhat unwillingly, acquires a slave, Spreculmuth. His name means "Chatterbox." Leofwin didn't want him, but he was a gift from his Thane, Godweard. A Thane is a minor noble, so Spreculmuth was an "offer Leofwin couldn't refuse."

    Spreculmuth was demoted to slave-status because he'd been convicted of stealing from the Church. He wasn't very bright or ambitious, but since Spreculmuth also had a wife and four kids to support, Leofwin let him live in a small house on his (Godweard-leased) land and learned not to expect much work from him.

    I don't know if any of my Saxon-day ancestors ended up in slavery - but I do know that some in later centuries worked in brutal conditions - in Somerset's now-shuttered coal mines - some likely starting at age 11 or 12. I think my maternal grandfather would have been the last coal miner in the 'tree.' In later life, he managed to quit mining and become custodian of the local branch of the Literary and Scientific Society. In 1943 I was born in his house - found out about it in 2018.

    Long ago, King Henry VIII personally owned a coal mine in the town where my grandfather was born in 1880, more than three centuries later. Now I know why I never liked King Henry! The Fat Man probably exploited some of my direct ancestors!
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2020
  10. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I do, too. I don't get mis-classified as Indian, but 'way more than once, Hungarians and Iranians have both erroneously claimed me as one of their own. Once, I told an Iranian he was mistaken, but I could understand his assumption. Then I showed him my 35-years-out-of date employee ID card - same picture I use here on the forum. Looks more like a picture from a 'no-fly' list, I know. The Iranian store-owner was even more surprised. :) (I once went to a Halloween party as Ayatollah Khomeini and it was pretty easy to prepare. No makeup needed. Just a turban and an old black graduation robe.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2020
  11. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    This doesn't get any more distinguished. Most current Royal families of Europe descent from the Oldenburgs, in part through King Christian IX of Denmark "the In-law of Europe".
    Russian title of Knyaz (Prince) means the holder descends from a sovereign of something, big or small. The most prominent Knyaz families descend from dynasties that reigned over all or parts of Rus': dynasties of Rurik, Gediminas, or Romanov (either before or after Romanovs merged into Oldenburg-Schleswig House). One Romanov Prince (Paul Romanovsky-Ilyinsky) was Mayor of Palm Beach, FL. His father was a Grand Prince (of the Royal family), but married an American commoner, losing the place in the line of succession.

    I, personally, have virtually no idea of my own ancestry. The only thing I saw evidence of is my great-great-grandfather listed as a "Cossack" on a birth certificate, and my great-grandmother' last name was Kotsybynska, and she was either a sister or a cousin of a prominent Ukrainian writer, Mykhailo Kotsyubynsky.
     
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  12. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    I used to have Orest Subtelny's "History of Ukraine" book. When I was graduation high school, all old history textbooks were virtually unusable for their blatant Communist manipulation. The only good textbooks were a 3-tome Mykhailo Hrushevsky work (he was a historian and the first President of Ukrainian People's Republic, a relatively short-lived post. He was usurped in a Perto Skoropadsky coup, who was deposed by Symon Petlyura coup, who was driven away by the Bolshevik invaders), and the Orest Subtelny book. It was quite sought-after.

    Oh, I did vote. Made a mistake believing it makes me a Canadian just like anyone else. Doesn't work that way.
    Universal healthcare is, indeed, a great thing, that I will miss.
     
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  13. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yes - I'm slightly familiar with Hrushevsky, as he was often quoted, at some length, in other works. And I think Stanislav is a great guy - and I would miss him if he ever decided to quit DI. I hope he doesn't.
     

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