Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
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- Ethnic group
- Italian
There's been a request for a thread for Diaspora Italians to share their ancestry, cultural experience etc.
I'll start by transferring a post from another thread.
"I was born in a town north of La Spezia (where most of the male members of my family have worked) in northwestern Toscana. Traditionally the area is called the Lunigiana. Control by Toscana dates to the Medici. Before that it was variously under the control of the Genovese, and for a while, of Lombardia and of Modena. My mother's mother's family has lived in the same area of the northern Lunigiana for hundreds of years. My mother's father's family has some ancestry from La Spezia itself. The surname seems to have come down from Lombardia, then to Piemonte, and then to Liguria.
My father's entire family has lived in the northern Apennines south of Parma and Reggio Emilia in Emilia from perhaps the 1400s. Fwiw, on most genetics tests I score approximately midway between the people of Bergamo and the people of Firenze. When more Italian samples are included, as in MDLP, my closest population is variously either Italy-Piedmont or the sample from Valle Borbera, labelled there as Italy_North. The fits are still not great, however, which is a testament to the extreme substructure in northern Italy, far more than exists in the south.
Lunigiana:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunigiana
http://www.turismoitalianews.it/images/stories/toscana/LunigianaMappa.jpg
I was born at the foot of this village, next to what is still labelled the Via Francigena, and overlooking the Magra River, but my mother's family all comes from further north in the Lunigiana. My parents had rented an apartment there.
I've posted quite a bit about it and the coastal areas in particular in the travel section. I've also posted extensively about Toscana.
In case you're not familiar with it, the Valle Borbera is a region between Piacenza, Alessandria, the hinterlands of Genova, and bordering on far western Emilia. It's hard to put a name on it...very Ligurian but also some Piemonte and Lombardia and Emilia. No wonder it scores so close to the Piemonte samples. Maybe just call it the Quattro Province?
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Borbera
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Province
I'll start by transferring a post from another thread.
"I was born in a town north of La Spezia (where most of the male members of my family have worked) in northwestern Toscana. Traditionally the area is called the Lunigiana. Control by Toscana dates to the Medici. Before that it was variously under the control of the Genovese, and for a while, of Lombardia and of Modena. My mother's mother's family has lived in the same area of the northern Lunigiana for hundreds of years. My mother's father's family has some ancestry from La Spezia itself. The surname seems to have come down from Lombardia, then to Piemonte, and then to Liguria.
My father's entire family has lived in the northern Apennines south of Parma and Reggio Emilia in Emilia from perhaps the 1400s. Fwiw, on most genetics tests I score approximately midway between the people of Bergamo and the people of Firenze. When more Italian samples are included, as in MDLP, my closest population is variously either Italy-Piedmont or the sample from Valle Borbera, labelled there as Italy_North. The fits are still not great, however, which is a testament to the extreme substructure in northern Italy, far more than exists in the south.
Lunigiana:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunigiana
http://www.turismoitalianews.it/images/stories/toscana/LunigianaMappa.jpg
I was born at the foot of this village, next to what is still labelled the Via Francigena, and overlooking the Magra River, but my mother's family all comes from further north in the Lunigiana. My parents had rented an apartment there.
I've posted quite a bit about it and the coastal areas in particular in the travel section. I've also posted extensively about Toscana.
In case you're not familiar with it, the Valle Borbera is a region between Piacenza, Alessandria, the hinterlands of Genova, and bordering on far western Emilia. It's hard to put a name on it...very Ligurian but also some Piemonte and Lombardia and Emilia. No wonder it scores so close to the Piemonte samples. Maybe just call it the Quattro Province?
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Borbera
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Province
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