Surnames??? (Last name)?

Question:Is it 100% accurate to find your roots from your surname?
in my case.. i'm native/black. or so i was told. my family are confused there also. i saw a pic of my grandpa, and he looks native. but when i search my surname (Gillespie) it ALWAYS comes up of an irish scott background. could i really be of a irish, scott decent?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Is it 100% accurate to find your roots from your surname?
in my case.. i'm native/black. or so i was told. my family are confused there also. i saw a pic of my grandpa, and he looks native. but when i search my surname (Gillespie) it ALWAYS comes up of an irish scott background. could i really be of a irish, scott decent?

It isn't accurate even for white people. You could be 15/16ths Cherokee, Chinese or Norwegian and still have an English / German / Irish surname.

For Blacks it is even worse. When the slaves were freed, a lot of them took their owners' names. When they were still slaves, some people would refer to them as "John Smith", where "Smith" was John's owner, to distinguish that John from other slaves named John inthe area - John Jones, John Miller, etc. Taking the owner's last name was just easy.

If they detested the owner, after 30 years of spitting (or worse) into his soup, they might take an occupational surname - Cook, Baker, Cooper, Smith . . .. Since the US stopped importing slaves about 1816 or so, and speaking your African language could get you whipped, very few slaves in 1865 knew their ancestral tongue or even what tribe their ancestors had been stolen from. Almost all of them took European surnames, and the vast majority English ones.

You could still have an Irish or English or Scottish great great great grandfather. One of the dirty little secrets of slavery is that the owners trifled with the help. It was sometimes out and out rape, sometimes an extreme form of harassment (sex in return for an indoor assignment instead of being a field hand) and once in a while (not very darned often) love.

If you read enough old southern wills you run across the phrase "treat with exceptional kindness", when someone wills his slave to an heir. I strongly suspect it was code for "He's your half-brother, stupid. Don't sell him down the river."

yes

Over the centuries there has been a lot of intermarriage between various races so its very possible that you have irish or scottish roots.

Your ( possible) ethnic background is one of the most common explanations of why it is NOT reliable to use surnames to find your background.
It is a common genealogical fact, for African American families (who descend from persons who were slaves), that they did not have a surname before emancipation. After emancipation, these families adopted surnames from various sources. Sometimes they took the name of the family that they were associated with. Other times, they selected a name at random.
And yes, there are also intermarriages between Native, Black and Caucasian. A native family may descend from a male with European background, who married a native woman. At the same time, that man may have a brother, who married a woman of French (insert any background) heritage. Descendants from this family will have different heritages, even with the same surname.
Most people starting research, think in terms of surnames. You will find that surnames are a small factor. What you need to do is find your specific ANCESTORS, using documentation. Start with you, and work backwards, to insure that you are not getting sidetracked by people who may or may not be related.
Stay objective and open minded, as to what you might find. History includes some emotional realities.. but your focus is using facts, to find your specific ancestry.

Surnames can, at best, give only clues to origins of ancestors. My own surname is found in more than 30 countries, every continent (well, excepting Antarctica!).
As to your origins, you will either have to do research (get all the information you can from your family, head to the library, go to the genealogy department, ask for help if needed, search what they have on hand, then try the net. Our library has both www.ancestry.com and www.heritagequest.com).
T0 BE 100% CERTAIN of your ancestry background, go for a DNA test. While it will not provide names and dates, it WILL tell you for certain where your ancestors came from. I used www.familytreedna.com, but there are others of note.

Not really. You cannot do genealogy by last names or tell what your family history is by last names. There are many reasons people end up with the last name they have and often it has nothing to do with the origins of the name. Perfect example is the slaves. They did not have surnames when they came here, and many times adopted the surnames of their owners........so now there are tens of thousands of slave descendants carrying around last names that have nothing to do with their heritage or where any of there ancestors came from. Other things, like occupation, is a source of last names as well. Smith came from someone who was a blacksmith......but was he a blacksmith in England, Germany, or Ireland? And many last names have multiple sources.........came from different countries at different times for different reasons. And, many names changed as people immigrated around the world. AND, that is only ONE line of your family tree (your father, his father, then his father, then his father.....) It does not take into account all the other lines of your family tree that do not share your name but ARE a part of who you are and where all your family came from.

No, using a surname is not a 100% accurate way of tracing your roots. The same name can often be found in more than one national origin. Also not everyone with the same surname is necessarily related even those of the same national origin.

People trace their roots by starting with themselves and working back one generation at a time, documenting as they do.

Slaves that were sold to planters did not have surnames. They frequently took the surnames of the person who owned them, or the overseer.

well my last name is crutcher from what i hear it's a basque or white,but good ol uncle sam gave me a tribal card and HE say's im 4/4 paiute ,so that' where i stand but it's all gooooooooooood lol all the way to the bank!!!!!!! (and then some!!!!)

ANYTHING is possible
unfortunately many people have been given ANY surname that would claim the person...so, that does NOT mean that you are of any lineage associated with that given name...
the best way to find out is to look for your mother's parents and your father's parents or have some dna done...the most accurate way is dna and even it is not 100%!
see ted pack's answer...the guy knows what he's talking about