Wednesday, October 07, 2020
Goldfoot as a Surname
Nadene Goldfoot
( "Nokhim Avram"Abraham" of Abram Goldfus)
Telsiai, Telsiai, Kaunas, Lithuania -Portland, Oregon, USA
Our surname of Goldfoot was originally Goldus, which I figure came from Germany originally. This is the Yiddish spelling. Other Germans spelled it as Goldfuss. We were Jews, so Yiddish was our language. Ashkenazi Jews came from those who had migrated, most likely from Jerusalem after 70 CE when the city and Temple fell to the Romans and had been taken to Rome, and from there wound up in Germany. Yiddish is a combination of German and Hebrew. I thought we in Portland, Oregon were the only Goldfoot family in the world and after taking up genealogy as a hobby found out much more. I had been stymied since our paternal grandfather died in 1912 from a horse and wagon accident and my father was only born in 1908, so was 4 years old at the time. His mother only spoke Yiddish all her life, as he did until he entered 1st grade. Our family history was lost, I thought.
Then I discovered in my searches that our family originated in Telsiai, Lithuania on the grandfather's sidea and Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania but taken over by Poland on our grandmother's side. Those in Lithuania had the surname of Goldfus. We have DNA that goes back to RASHI who goes back to King David, and so belong to the Halpern and Branches Group on FTDNA through Andi Zigelman and Sandy Aaronson. My brother's Y haplogroup is QBZ67. I thought at one time to be part of the Ashina Royal Dynasty but do not think this is viable anymore.
What usually happened, at least in the more eastern European countries, is that we Jews of course were not named with surnames but with our father's name such as David, son of Moses. The countries they resided in finally came to the point of needing surnames to run their government duties, so they were required, but being Jews, had to buy their surnames from a given list of choices. Gold was a very popular prefix on a lot of surnames, and would have cost more money to buy.
I tested first with 23&Me, then later transferred my results to Family Tree DNA, so have the 2 companies to refer to and see results along with my new one, where I transferred my results to GEDMatchGenesis, which is used by serious researchers. Family Tree is my main go-to, and they have expanded as well. The company is run by Bennett Greenspan, who is also one of my family matches. Their building is in Houston, Texas. We're related!
Autosomal DNA testing[edit]
In May 2010, FamilyTreeDNA launched an autosomal microarray chip based DNA test. They called the new product Family Finder. The initial product used an Affymetrix microarray chip, but FamilyTreeDNA changed to the Illumina OmniExpress chip and retested all customers who had results from the Affymetrix chip for forward compatibility.[19]
Family Finder allows customers to match relatives as distant as about fifth cousins. Family Finder also includes a component called myOrigins. The results of this test provide percentages of a DNA associated with general regions or specific ethnic groups (e.g. Western Europe, Asia, Jewish, Native American, etc.). Notably, unlike other testing companies, they chose to strip out markers for mendelian medical issues,[20][21][22] mtDNA results, and Y-DNA SNP results.
Between 2007 and 2010, FamilyTreeDNA forged several new partnerships that allowed them to access additional international markets. IGENEA is one of them. The first of FamilyTreeDNA's new partnerships was with the Switzerland-based iGENEA company. It was formed alongside the closing of DNA-Fingerprint and Thomas Krahn's helping open the Genomic Research Center in Houston. Their website is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
I've just found out that our surname is a name studied by the IGENEA. This is what prompted my article.
»
The Goldfoot Surname Project
Surname projects » G of IGENEA
Members:
4
Description:
The Goldfoot surname project is attempting to find where the line originated from and what countries they have been living in. We have found two members who are Q1b haplogroup and two who are of the R1b1b2 haplogroup. They share the same surname but are not related. They both come from Germany and Bavaria. We have a 73.94% chance of having an ancestor about 600 years ago, in the 1400's. Both Q1b are related. We just found out the results of the two 67 allele tests. 4 generations ago we have a 22.83% chance of being related. 8 generations ago the percent is 67.49%. 12 generations ago is 90.53%, 16 generations ago is 97.77%, 20 generations ago is 99.54% and 24 generations ago the chance of being related goes up to 99.91%. We had a perfect match with 64 out of the 64 alleles. The mutations were in the first set of 25 alleles; one slow mutater and two fast mutaters. It is a theory that the Q1b's are both members of the Ashina Royal Dynasty. We have now found out how connected we are to other Q1b's. We had two people only match a Goldfoot at the 12 allele level, and that hasn't changed. I surmise that Goldfoot (Goldfus/fuss) was a German name first, and later was adopted by Russian Jews when they had to take surnames. That these two Russian Goldfoots are a dna match tells me their surname makes them closer than I had showed on the tests, unless they both had roots in Germany first before going to Russia.
