What's my heritage? My last names for a few generations are Mason, Pendarvis, Kay, McKenzie and Summerlin.

Question

I've never really known my whole family's heritage. I know I'm english, irish, french, german and cherokee indian on my mother's side and I have irish and english on my dad's but I don't know anything else. These are my family's last names for a few generations. Please tell me if you know. Summerlin, Mason, Pendarvis, Kay and McKenzie on my mother's side and Mason is on my father's side. I need to know if their is more ethnic background there. Please post any information. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hey Jamie Lynn,

You have a better start than most, you list 4 surnames! So many people only list their Surname.

The truth is with those 4 names, back one generation from that, you will add 4 additional surnames. For a total of 8. One more generation back, 8 more surnames, and so on each generation back. So, if you are English Irish, French, German - it is likely that there will be many more mixed in.

You should buy Family Tree Maker software, and start tracking your Genealogy yourself using that amazing software. See the first site.

The Summerlin family search is complicated because there is a community selling homes called Summerlin, but there are many of them out there.

Answer 2

It sounds extensively Irish based on the names you gave so far, but there is some Scottish on your mother's side in McKenzie. That so far is the only one that I can see that you've left out in the heritage list.

Answer 3

There were some Masons from Cork--involved in the shipping industry--they produced generations of boat builders, Irish, Gaelic--Norse.

Boaz.

Answer 4

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/default.aspx?ln=

will help, but - to take an extreme example, if your McKenzie was 3/4th Chinese (The result of a male McKinzie who was half Chinese himself marrying a lady from China, then having a son who became your Great grandfather) then your "Scots" heritage from him would not be exactly Scots. For every great grandparents of one surname you have 3 great great grandparents who didn't have that surname, usually. (Most of us have less than 64 GGGG grandparents because people used to marry their cousins.)

A less extreme example - someone named Maison comes to the US of A from France and changes his surname to "Mason"; or a German "Mueller" becomes an English-sounding "Miller".

Tracing your ancestors is the only way to find out where they came from.

Answer 5

Pendarvis is probably Welsh in origin. I think that you've covered the rest of them.