AIBU to ask what people mean by calling themselves an old family?

[Iwascupbearertotheking]

I don't understand what this means?

Biologically and historically, we have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents etc etc.

Our foremothers can all be traced back to pre-neolithic eras. This is the case for everyone, not an elite few. And people tend to use their family name rather than creating a new one (yes, yes, there are exceptions)

So what does "an old family" actually mean?

YANBU - I haven't got a clue
YABU - Ah ha, it means this......

I was delighted to see that the government has removed the last of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords . Now change the name from HOL to something more appropriate please…

That won’t happen until they do away with life peerages, which they can’t until political parties are funded by the taxpayer and donations to political parties are forbidden.

I used to hear it in the village I grew up in, and since we didn't have much in the way of rich aristocracy, it usually referred to farming families who had been farming in that area for generations. It wasn't that it was documented as such, more that there was traceability through family and community remembrance. In a small enough area where some people simply don't move often, it wasn't difficult to become an 'old family'. If you're not notorious for all the wrong reasons, which some were, there's a bit of cache applied to having a family that's been in one area for a long time. Never really understood why that is, but I do know, as one whose family wasn't 'from the village' that not being 'from' there was considered a negative.

It's tribalism, really.

Well established within the society in which they operate. A new family would be one that has recently joined that society

The irony, for me, about some of this is that I've noticed there seem to be a lot of ppl on MN, and generally, who take every opportunity to use any signifier they can muster to make others aware of their social status if it is of bwnefit to their circumatances, whilw.simultanwoialy asagging off anything that traces and documents and shows links to old money.

It's the ease with which you can trace your family lineage too. We've got family friends who come from an 'old' family in America and when DC were interested in family trees we were able to trace them back to the 1700s in about half an hour using google. That's because their ancestors were prominent members of society and records were kept of who they were and what they did (that have now been digitised so we could find most of them via wikipedia).

On the other hand, when we researched my family we could only get back to the late 1800s using online records (including paid ones). My aunt spent about a decade researching our family tree and didn't get back as far as 1800 because for people who worked down mines and in kitchens record keeping wasn't as fastidious.

The idea of an 'old' family is a class thing. It's about whether or not your ancestors were deemed important enough to be documented.

PS - I'm not saying it is right, I am just saying what it means!

Apologies for making you state the obvious. I misread your initial post and thought there was a single specific fire I had never heard about, reading it back it is completely clear what you meant. Sorry for coming off as a dunce and thank you for explaining patiently!

It just means they are a bit snobby

Grannie's father's line traces back to 1385. Yes they were well to do and originally Scottish. Her mother's to 1831 which was when her great grandad arrived from County Cork.

Grandad's, nope. Russian refugees who arrived in 1921 having come the Indo Chinese route.

My father's side, nope arrived in 1938, German Jewish refugee.

DH: all the way back to the twelfth century on his father's side. Very unusual name and recently we visited a number of northern churchyards and have seen many graves. Had money and land until the 1850's, then DH's branch were poorer than church mice.

I think it basically means it's easier to trace their family than it is yours because at one point in time, someone decided some one of them was important enough to start making records of their life.

I, too, can trace my family back several hundred years. I spent a lot of time, money and effort doing it but I did. For the fun of it.

I don't count as an "old family" though because pretty much every member of my family for those hundreds of years has been working class.

And now I think about it, it's actually bloody unfair that the people that don't have to put any effort in are the ones that get any credit 🤣

We've found Trump everyone!

Dont insult amoebas

Yes it is 😀.

I asked because I did think the answers here were probably what I was thinking, but wanted that hive mind.

And I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone in RL.

You're quite right.

I extend apologies to all amoeba, plankton, pond scum and so forth.

Good😂

I’m Irish and where we live we would definitely be considered an ‘old family’. We’re documented as having been here for more than 700 years and I’m a member of my Council of Chieftains. We have a clan gathering every year where hundreds attend from all over the world …

Did Neolithic people keep, birth marriage and death certificates? They are indeed a very old family of people.

🦖🦕🐪🦣🪦

WTF does that even mean? Everyone's ancestry is mixed.

I have to say, that sounds pretty cool...

It’s quite good fun. And good for my DDs to know their history. It’s very female centric. One of our ancestors en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_O'Malley

It means that their family was prominent. They’ve been KNOWN for a long time by a large number of people or by important people. Rather than just existing.

It is an upper class thing.

Depends on what you mean by "family", but if someone essentially kills every single person related to the previous king, that rather clobbers the "continuity of family" notion; and that was what Henry VII did about Richard III's relations including a bastard son who was executed for being sent a letter by an aunt in Ireland. (He didn't even get to read the letter.).

So, mixed as in a polite way of saying "non-existent". Henry's claim to the throne, apart from descent from King Arthur (presumably through Arthur's only son Mordred, who was a fairly dodgy citizen and a parricide), was that his father had sex with the widow of a previous king. Oh, and of course conquest and killing off everyone else with a claim. Not much of a relationship to the previous royals really.

Tilda Swinton comes from an 'old family', her first recorded ancestor lived in the 9th century. She said in an interview over twenty years ago when asked about it, "All families are old. It's just that mine have lived in the same place a long time and happened to write things down".

Old money

On DF side I got back to 1492 on ancestry because they were all listed in whose who. On DM it was impossible.

I always thought it meant that the parents were older when they had their first child. I obviously had that wrong!