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Donatello’s St. George, c. 1420
From the WSJ, a somewhat overstated headline:
The Wealthy in Florence Today Are the Same Families as 600 Years Ago
Researchers compared data on Florentine taxpayers in 1427 against tax data in 2011 and found about 900 surnames still present in Florence
By JOSH ZUMBRUN
May 19, 2016 8:53 am ET
New research from a pair of Italian economists documents an extraordinary fact: The wealthiest families in Florence today are descended from the wealthiest families of Florence nearly 600 years ago.
The two economists — Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti of the Bank of Italy — compared data on Florentine taxpayers in 1427 against tax data in 2011.
Keep in mind that Florence 1427 was the most advanced placed in the Western world. Its residents at the time included the three friends Donatello the sculptor, Brunelleschi the architect, and Masaccio the painter. It’s fairly likely that as part of designing the famous dome of the cathedral of Florence, the first dome built in the West since Roman times, Brunelleschi worked out the science of perspective and showed his friends how to apply it to bas-relief and painting, respectively. This was the mega-discovery that, more than anything else, set off the artistic Renaissance. (A generation later in Germany came the giga-invention, printing.)
Because Italian surnames are highly regional and distinctive, they could compare the income of families with a certain surname today, to those with the same surname in 1427. They found that the occupations, income and wealth of those distant ancestors with the same surname can help predict the occupation, income and wealth of their descendants today.
As they wrote for the economics commentary website VoxEU, “The top earners among the current taxpayers were found to have already been at the top of the socioeconomic ladder six centuries ago.”
Their research was made possible by a fiscal crisis. In 1427, Florence was near bankrupt from an ongoing war with Milan and so the Priors of the Republic conducted a tax census of about 10,000 citizens. They took stock of the name and surname of the head of household, their occupation and their wealth.
… They find strong evidence that socioeconomic status is incredibly persistent. The wealthiest surnames in Florence today belong to families that, in 1429, were members of the shoemakers’ guild — at the 97th percentile of income. Descendants of members of the silk guild and descendants of attorneys — both at the 93rd percentile in 1427 — are among the wealthiest families today.
Some of the wealthiest families in Florence today had ancestors who were prosperous shoemakers in the 1400s. Here, Salvatore Ferragamo–who died in 1960 and thus was not in the scope of this report–shows off his Florentine workshop where he made shoes for celebrities.
Florentine cobblers might still be the best in the world. When actor Daniel Day-Lewis felt burned out from movies, he disappeared for a couple of years from show biz to apprentice under a master cobbler in Florence. The break appears to have done him good: he returned to win his second and unprecedented third Best Actor Oscars.
The effect isn’t huge: the two economists write:
More rigorous empirical analysis confirms this evidence. When regressing the pseudo-descendant’s earnings on pseudo-ancestor’s earnings, the results are surprising: the long-run earnings elasticity is positive, statistically significant, and equals about 0.04. Stated differently, being the descendants of the Bernardi family (at the 90th percentile of earnings distribution in 1427) instead of the Grasso family (10th percentile of the same distribution) would entail a 5% increase in earnings among current taxpayers (after adjusting for age and gender). Intergenerational real wealth elasticity is significant too and the magnitude of its implied effect is even larger: the 10th-90th exercise entails more than a 10% difference today. Looking for non-linearities, we find, in particular, some evidence of the existence of a glass floor that protects the descendants of the upper class from falling down the economic ladder.
But 589 years is a long time for anything to persist.
One persistent worry about surname analysis is whether there’s a history of name-changing up the social ladder. Perhaps, say, it’s not unknown for the master cobbler’s best apprentice to marry the boss’s daughter and take his father in law’s surname?
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I (and probably numerous others) have hypothesized for a while that the Medici family, which hails from Florence, were of Jewish-convert stock.
Medici means “medical doctor” and the Medicis went on to become mega-powerful bankers and carefully married into European noble stock (Catherine de Medici became Queen of France). Medicine and banking were two of the few professions Jews did in large percentages in the Middle Ages, partly due to Jewish ethnic networking; partly due to higher IQ; partly due to Christian-religious bans on usury and desecration of corpses/bodies; and partly due to the fact that Jews were literate via their religious practices, allowing them access to texts on banking and medicine.
(Christians weren’t wholly illiterate, but it wasn’t required for Christians to know how to read, and most jobs of the time didn’t need literacy, so only wealthy Christians and Christians who had literacy-dependent jobs were literate).
And of course the careful marrying practices of the Medici’s is stereotypical of Jewish practice of marrying into the 1% of gentiles (e.g. Donald Trump’s daughter marrying a Jewish man).
The fact that little is known about the family before the banking rise of Giovanni always seemed a tip off to me. Jewish converts (known as conversos in Spain) still faced a lot of discrimination/suspicion despite the conversion, as Christian authorities recognized that many only converted in name only but kept Jewish practices at home (called crypto-Jews). A converso seeking to remove such discrimination would have tried to hide his family’s Semitic blood by various means: destroying/stealing documentation, paying government officials to keep quiet, moving to another region, etc. A rich banker or doctor would have had the means to cover up his past.
All idle speculation, I know, but the fact that Giovanni’s banking talents emerged out of nowhere makes me think they really didn’t. Unlike the Borgias, however, I haven’t noticed any history of enemies charging the Medicis of being conversos.
Also the family's rise predates the Inquisition. Sure Jews were more mobile than the gentile population but they usually moved to new countries/empires when forced.
As well as the Trump daughter lets remember that it is highly probable that ALL the descendants of two - maybe three -(gentile ) US Presidents ( JFK and Clinton ) are likely to consider themselves Jewish
As an aside it's nice to see a society where people with a respectable skilled trade -shoemaking - generally earn more than lawyers ( & I have a law degree )Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @Lot
The talent from that region blows away any other place on earth in the period Ancient Rome to Renaissance.
There is a weird syndrome evident on the alt-right where the afflicted assume all prominent gentiles are crypto Jews.
I'm not sure when Ashkenazi started practicing medicine for gentiles, but I think that is much later than the rise of the Medici family. Until the enlightenment they largely stuck to money lending and some exotic trade.Replies: @Anonymous
My maternal family was a modest Anglo-Norman baronial family with two manor villages named with our surname back into the mists of time in England and then Normandy. In the US various ancestors managed to attain political offices like Governor and Congressman, owned and ran plantations, managed several mega-construction projects, got a couple of mountains named after the family and a small university. I am a 6th generation college graduate and well inside the top 5% of family income for my age. I would call that persistence of family status over 1000 years. My paternal family cannot be traced as far, but in general they were prosperous and mobile independent German/Swiss farmers and mechanics and Protestant ministers and they continued as such in the US. My most distantly traced paternal ancestor hand built pipe organs in medieval Churches. But socio-economic status doesn’t come to each generation handed on a platter for free – it requires hard work and thrift and it is very easy to slip back down by just being a bit lazy.
If poor people stay poor because of poor decision making and a lack of self-denial, which I think is true, the contrary is true for well-off people and families. Good decisions and personal discipline and thrift go a long way to producing and maintaining wealth and status to be handed down to later generations.
However, I'm not sure if extroversion is correlated with maintaining wealth. I'd suspect high energy extroverts are better at building wealth and thriftier introverts are better at consolidating the gains of their more extroverted ancestors.
OT, but pretty interesting is the NY Times attempt at discrediting Trump’s proposals regarding The Wall and deportation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/politics/donald-trump-immigration.html
It’s pretty amazing to see the numbers trotted out to build The Wall, with the strong suggestion that it just couldn’t possibly be economically viable: Trump’s estimate is about $10B, and the Times scares someone up who claims it would be instead at least $25B. Meanwhile, of course, how much was spent on the idiot war in Iraq, which Trump opposed and Hillary supported? I’ve seen an estimate that, putting everything together, it comes to roughly 2 Trillion, give or take. Even if the Iraq war estimate is some greatly exaggerated spin job, how many fewer zeros could the true cost possibly have, realistically? And we got what for that expenditure? Greater insecurity, by any fair reckoning.
These people in the media just aren’t serious. Everything they write is moronic, including “and” and “the”.
If Mexico refuses to pay for it, perhaps he could always persuade some Italian bankers in Florence to help out.
So, smoothing out the ups and the downs of ~30 generations of regression toward the mean, each generation of these top families has displayed something like 90% of the economic prowess of the previous?
“Perhaps, say, it’s not unknown for the master cobbler’s best apprentice to marry the boss’s daughter and take his father in law’s surname?”
Common in Japan
From the article
“Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name – Zengoro Hoshi – have been passed down the family for 46 generations.
But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?
Well, there is a slight catch.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19505088
Swiss families in some towns have their local variation on preservation of family income. They own the best properties in a developed area, restrict further development and never sell. The unfortunate landless ones have the option of migrating or renting. Pick your parents well, and your grandparents, if you can!Replies: @Twinkie
His great-great-grandfather married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Thomas Cromwell. The family became wealthy taking over monastery property.
The men used "Cromwell" as an "alias" for "Williams" but even the alias part was dropped by Oliver's time.
It was simply a case of a more prestigious surname.Replies: @Steve Sailer
The Paisan Also Rises
0.9 ^ 30 = 0.04, so that would fit with ‘small but observable effect’.
“Trump Delegate Indicted On Child Pornography, Explosives, Machine Gun Charges”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-delegate-caleb-bailey-federal-charges_us_573dfc91e4b0aee7b8e951af
So a vote for Trump is a vote both for pedophilia and domestic terrorism.
I'm so glad Al Gore invented the Internet.Replies: @Anonymous
Common in Japan
From the article
"Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name - Zengoro Hoshi - have been passed down the family for 46 generations.
But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?
Well, there is a slight catch."Replies: @TK421, @Ivy, @Winthorp, @Frau Katze
Oops – forgot the link.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19505088
Common in Japan
From the article
"Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name - Zengoro Hoshi - have been passed down the family for 46 generations.
But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?
Well, there is a slight catch."Replies: @TK421, @Ivy, @Winthorp, @Frau Katze
Some Japanese breweries and sake firms have the same adopt-an-heir policy to demonstrate their 1300+ year histories.
Swiss families in some towns have their local variation on preservation of family income. They own the best properties in a developed area, restrict further development and never sell. The unfortunate landless ones have the option of migrating or renting. Pick your parents well, and your grandparents, if you can!
The study only found a 5% increase income. It’s not that big of a difference overall things considered.
Reading into this too much isn’t that meaningful.
Was Caddy Shack a prophetic foretelling of Trump’s takeover of the Republican party?
Rodney Dangerfield is a REAL ESTATE developer who takes over the stuffy country club headed by Ted Knight. The members are outraged by the uncouth, ORANGE-clad Dangerfield, who is rude to women and club members, and who ends up beating Ted Knight at his own game (golf).
Coincidence? Or eerily accurate prophetic prophecy? You decide!
Or is it?
Common in Japan
From the article
"Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name - Zengoro Hoshi - have been passed down the family for 46 generations.
But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?
Well, there is a slight catch."Replies: @TK421, @Ivy, @Winthorp, @Frau Katze
Marrying into the family name seems like less of a problem for the Clarkian model than strangers straight up adopting a classy name. With the former, there’s still an accounting for additive genetics by way of the biological daughter and for shared culture by way of the parents and uncles. The latter’s a more troublesome inheritance, but that’s one of the advantages of looking at a single city – presumably the incumbents (and local norms in general) would have made it hard for new entrants to trade on their name.
The "unnatural" preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives' surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy's grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.Replies: @reiner Tor, @PV van der Byl, @Winthorp, @Crawfurdmuir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Spencer-Churchill,_5th_Duke_of_MarlboroughAlas, this all probably has little relevance to Florentine practice.
Never! Northampton will always remain the world capital of fine dress shoes.
http://www.edwardgreen.com/
“uncles” – whoops, scratch that
http://www.edwardgreen.com/Replies: @Daniel H, @dearieme
I’m quite happy with my Johnston & Murphy’s. Best bang for the buck with footwear.
Most mass-manufactured shoes are complete rubbish (even most "brand" names). They are corrected-grain leather slapped together with glue.Replies: @kaganovitch
I thought the Barone family were like the Mexicans of Italy.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/barone-backsliding-into-bankruptcy
I have always thought of signing up for a class with these guys.
http://www.bootmaker.com/dwswb.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-delegate-caleb-bailey-federal-charges_us_573dfc91e4b0aee7b8e951afReplies: @candid_observer
Wow.
So a vote for Trump is a vote both for pedophilia and domestic terrorism.
I’m so glad Al Gore invented the Internet.
Swiss families in some towns have their local variation on preservation of family income. They own the best properties in a developed area, restrict further development and never sell. The unfortunate landless ones have the option of migrating or renting. Pick your parents well, and your grandparents, if you can!Replies: @Twinkie
My paternal family history goes back 1400 years (7th Century AD), and I can trace my ancestry with exact specificity from the 13th Century – I am a direct father-to-son, father-to-son descendant of an East Asian military figure of that time.
My father was also a naval officer in his country, and a large majority of my ancestors were “men on horseback” (many died young in wars, thankfully with heirs alive at home). So it was not surprising at all to my parents that ever since I was a baby I was drawn to guns, swords, bows, and horses. I took to horse riding easily and I was picked to be on the (air) rifle team as a child. My own children all loved horses and guns since they were little kids. One of my kids, in particular, refused to ride a pony since age 4 and insisted on being on a big horse instead. Even for me it was a bit nerve-racking seeing that little thing on a horse, but the kid was a champ!
I know of at least 2 distinct cases where the husband took on (one fully – the other hyphenated) the wife’s hugely prestigious surname.
Well Rimini 1450, bet you didn’t know to catch this wonder when you were back packin, Steve:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempio_Malatestiano
So a vote for Trump is a vote both for pedophilia and domestic terrorism.
I'm so glad Al Gore invented the Internet.Replies: @Anonymous
All kidding aside, is anyone really surprised about this?
Surname persistence in Florence can be a bad thing if you cross Hannibal Lecter.
But what’s the mean they’re regressing to? Did cobblers select for IQ? Sense of style? Business acumen? Are the skills that made 15th century cobblers successful both genetic and useful in today’s world?
Maybe there's something about making shoes that destines one for greatness.Replies: @PV van der Byl, @Almost Missouri
OK OK, I'm working on it, I'm working on it, honey.
I wonder what happened to the other thousands of co-descended Ferragamos? Army and an early death, if my family are any guide.
Surname changes could easily be screened for by looking at Y-DNA of male Florentines with the same surnames. If there were say three unrelated Grassos in Florence in 1430 then today’s Grassos should be found in at most three different Y-DNA clusters. A Grasso whose DNA is well outside any of the clusters is not a biological descendant of the medieval Grassos and can be excluded from the study.
this study proves nothing. women regularly change surname after marriage.
A Jew married Donald Trump’s daughter and Hillary Clinton’s daughter.
Yup. That same method was used to establish that historic cuckoldry rates in the West were low, and would also detect this phenomenon. Hence, it’s not really an issue.
What is interesting is that since Trump is now the presumptive GOP nominee, the NY Times feels compelled to at least take his proposal of building the Wall more seriously. There’s always a chance that he could win this thing and starting next year, decide that he really meant what he campaigned on and decide to go ahead and build it.
If Mexico refuses to pay for it, perhaps he could always persuade some Italian bankers in Florence to help out.
He must be really busy.
Why don’t you say what you mean instead of asking that question? That kind of question is about on par with “Trump is Hitler”–it let’s you imply all sorts of things without referencing anything. Are you suggesting that there is a correlation between pedophilia and support for Trump?
Doubtful the family’s name predates its rise to prominence by about 200 years in Florence.
Also the family’s rise predates the Inquisition. Sure Jews were more mobile than the gentile population but they usually moved to new countries/empires when forced.
Prediction: in five years time we will know the genes for cobbling.
No, insofar as it’s genetic, I would guess it’s mostly selection for bourgeois virtues like prudence, diligence, cooperation, continence, with which intelligence is positively correlated to varying degrees. Basically an above-average ability to keep your head, resist temptation, not overextend yourself, but not withdraw into self-defeating miserliness either. Those are the kinds of traits it seems a line would need to propagate in order to not blow its socioeconomic advantage over centuries of life in a constantly commercial, periodically fractious city.
Maybe it's urban-loaded. Cobbling seems like a profession best done in towns or cities, and those are places where things are usually hopping. Smart people with high value-add labor are there. The cobblers sons are around the smart and clever daughters of the other urban professions. A slight positive IQ bump results.Replies: @Lot
Re The Jewish practise of marrying into the 1% of gentiles
As well as the Trump daughter lets remember that it is highly probable that ALL the descendants of two – maybe three -(gentile ) US Presidents ( JFK and Clinton ) are likely to consider themselves Jewish
As an aside it’s nice to see a society where people with a respectable skilled trade -shoemaking – generally earn more than lawyers ( & I have a law degree )
The IQ genes we skimmed away from the gentile pool benefited me, but the economic benefits go the other way, I've probably given my gentile working class relations $50,000 over the years, mostly to pay their college living expenses, but also any random car or medical issues that pop up.
I like the 7 Byzantine Rulers podcast theory that the Romans escaped to Byzantine at Rome’s destruction . Then at Byzantine’s destruction, those same people flooded west to fuel the renaissance.
That’s definitely a hand theory.
They did this with Norman vs Anglo-Saxon names in Britain and found the same thing.
I think there may be a problem with doing this at a city level if cities’ have an income distribution featuring a relatively small elite and a relatively large lower class (this would need to be checked). Middling children of elites would fall in the income distribution by moving to a small town or the suburbs (middling children of the plebs would also rise by leaving town). New plebs would be continually entering the population from the country-side.
Well, I guess you had to be patient, willing to learn, hardworking, working with focus and precision, not tolerating errors, have low time preference, etc. All of which requires, or at least correlates well with, among other things, high IQ.
HBD'ers tend to focus on IQ because that's pretty much the only measuring stick we have for psychometrics, and one should always be alert for the looking-under-the-streetlight-because-the-light-is-better-there effect. Steve has speculated in the past about Northern Italian excellence in visual design, for example.
Since there are no streetlights other than IQ on offer maybe it's the best that can be done.
Common in Japan
From the article
"Since then, for nearly 1,300 years, the hotel and the name - Zengoro Hoshi - have been passed down the family for 46 generations.
But in a country where a son usually inherits a family name, how have they always managed to have a boy?
Well, there is a slight catch."Replies: @TK421, @Ivy, @Winthorp, @Frau Katze
A fanous case is Oliver Cromwell, who by rights should have been Oliver Williams, a nondescript name from which one could only deduce that the male ancestor was a Welshman,
His great-great-grandfather married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Thomas Cromwell. The family became wealthy taking over monastery property.
The men used “Cromwell” as an “alias” for “Williams” but even the alias part was dropped by Oliver’s time.
It was simply a case of a more prestigious surname.
“Second, we find evidence of dynasties in certain (elite) professions – the probability of belonging to such professions (lawyers, bankers, medical doctor or pharmacist, goldsmiths) today is higher the more intensely the pseudo-ancestors were employed in the same professions.”
OK, but what’s the comparable probability of someone in elite profession X in the 15th century winding up in elite professions W, Y, and Z in the 21st century? That would be an interesting way to partially untangle the family business element.
My hypothesis is that high IQ people do well in elite professions, so the descendants of smart 15th century bankers would tend to wind up in 21st century law and medicine in larger numbers, too, not just banking. I think the authors went looking for same-profession outcomes, but not for mobility within elite professions. So maybe the 15th century lawyer surnames are not just more prevalent in law offices, but also medical and banking offices.
Of course this analysis could be undermined by the social entree provided by being in an elite profession to begin with. Maybe the goldsmith son gets hired at the law firm because his family introduced him.
Busy guy. And they said gay marriage wouldn’t lead to polygamy…
A part of me - a small, non-Catholic part - would like to see just what would happen if polygamy were legalized ("consenting adults" is all that matters, right- why hatefully prevent "big love"?).
It's the same part that wants to see it all crashing down. Then I remember that I've seen a society crumble somewhere else in the world and that destruction is not always "creative."Replies: @dearieme, @Charles Erwin Wilson
Could be. Maybe bourgeois values (correlated with IQ) are what’s really driving it.
HBD’ers tend to focus on IQ because that’s pretty much the only measuring stick we have for psychometrics, and one should always be alert for the looking-under-the-streetlight-because-the-light-is-better-there effect. Steve has speculated in the past about Northern Italian excellence in visual design, for example.
Since there are no streetlights other than IQ on offer maybe it’s the best that can be done.
Hey, the opposition candidate this year was once First Lady. Which never would have happened had the top of the ticket been properly vetted.
These two guys are at the bottom, and were caught. So things have improved in the last 24 years.
Whorefinder: the place we call Italy has produced so many giants of history why assume the local gene pool couldn’t produce great doctors or bankers without them being crypto-Jewish?
The talent from that region blows away any other place on earth in the period Ancient Rome to Renaissance.
There is a weird syndrome evident on the alt-right where the afflicted assume all prominent gentiles are crypto Jews.
Some people are also happy with Skechers.
Most mass-manufactured shoes are complete rubbish (even most “brand” names). They are corrected-grain leather slapped together with glue.
Mormons are not victims. Can’t be. Much too blonde and pale for that.
A part of me – a small, non-Catholic part – would like to see just what would happen if polygamy were legalized (“consenting adults” is all that matters, right- why hatefully prevent “big love”?).
It’s the same part that wants to see it all crashing down. Then I remember that I’ve seen a society crumble somewhere else in the world and that destruction is not always “creative.”
Beware the heralds of destruction. They sing a siren song, sonorous but sinister. And they profit from the suffering of others.Replies: @Twinkie
There was no prescription against christians practicing medicine. Most famous doctors of the Middle Ages were venetians. Most medieval universities had medicine schools besides law and theology.
I’m not sure when Ashkenazi started practicing medicine for gentiles, but I think that is much later than the rise of the Medici family. Until the enlightenment they largely stuck to money lending and some exotic trade.
It matters depending on your method. Clarke defined his old elite based on over-representation in list of elites versus list of commoners, and then looked a modern elite lists to see how the old elites were doing percentage-wise.
The “unnatural” preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives’ surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy’s grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.
The "unnatural" preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives' surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy's grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.Replies: @reiner Tor, @PV van der Byl, @Winthorp, @Crawfurdmuir
Yeah, but it will create an artificial over-representation for elite surnames that wouldn’t otherwise exist. For example there will be one Smith less and also one Granville more in the sample.
Dear Steve,
Don’t forget Brunelleschi’s friend, Pier Paolo Toscanelli, considered by some to be Europe’s finest mathematician at that time. He showed the largely self –taught Brunelleschi how to build the Duomo with geometric rope guides leading to the floor ‘Rose’ rather than erect 160 ft wooden scaffolding .
Toscanelli ‘s family were spice merchants. He made a map
(http://cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/252_Toscanellis_World_Map.html)
after talking with a Portuguese sailor who had returned after sailed round Japan. The sailor told him there appeared to be a large ocean to the East of Japan. Toscanelli theorized that his family could bypass the heavy tariffs from the Islamic countries of the East and get spices by sailing to the West to find the Spice islands.
His map was given to Christopher Columbus. Columbus failed to find the Spice islands. Something got in the way….
Ironically, Toscanelli’s genius led to Italy becoming eclipsed by the massive gold and silver profits flowing to Spain from the New World.
Most mass-manufactured shoes are complete rubbish (even most "brand" names). They are corrected-grain leather slapped together with glue.Replies: @kaganovitch
Until relatively recently J & M Aristocraft was an excellent USA made,goodyear welted shoe comparable to Allen Edmonds or Alden. Then they moved manufacturing to Mexico etc. etc. I have a pair I’ve worn weekly for almost 30 years and they still in good shape.
It would be interesting to see the same study done for England. I think one was sort of done similar, and the result was something about Norman names dominating. Could have been a fairly recent post of yours but I forget now.
Btw, it’s the 4th anniversary of Robin Gibb’s death:
Scaggs is an odd sort of name. Can’t find it in Surnamedb. First hit says it’s Saxon.
One hit-album wonders, and what a hit it was!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnowrxj_cbQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFvAvsHC_YReplies: @Pat Hannagan
Similar effects – but hailing from more than 300 years earlier – are observed in the UK today with Norman aristocratic names; a legacy of the Norman conquest of 1066.
Read the whole thing.
One hit-album wonders, and what a hit it was!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnowrxj_cbQ&feature=youtu.beReplies: @Pat Hannagan, @PiltdownMan
Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary cover Donovan for possibly the greatest song ever (Anglo-Welsh-Irish convergence?)?:
Nah, too Jewish.
Or is it?
The family tree of the Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes clan shows a lot of surname-collecting, though it seems to have been about keeping the names of illustrious forebears. IIRC they mostly married in their own class, excepting a Twisleton who married his parlourmaid.
Similarly the Spencer family (descended from Marlborough’s daughter) added the name Churchill when inheriting Blenheim Palace and the dukedom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes_family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Spencer-Churchill,_5th_Duke_of_Marlborough
Alas, this all probably has little relevance to Florentine practice.
My vote for top ten album of the 1990s. Surnames: Jourgensen with guitarist Scaccia:
Isn’t this just the the surnames are prestigious so even if men join the family they’d rather adopt the bride’s?
So ambitious people all end up marrying into rich families and keeping the surname rich. But the original genes don’t remain any more than in any other family.
“The effect isn’t huge”: allow me to commend you for your positively British level of understatement.
A part of me - a small, non-Catholic part - would like to see just what would happen if polygamy were legalized ("consenting adults" is all that matters, right- why hatefully prevent "big love"?).
It's the same part that wants to see it all crashing down. Then I remember that I've seen a society crumble somewhere else in the world and that destruction is not always "creative."Replies: @dearieme, @Charles Erwin Wilson
“if polygamy were legalised”: I understood the modern American system to be sequential polygamy?
http://www.edwardgreen.com/Replies: @Daniel H, @dearieme
“Northampton will always remain the world capital of fine dress shoes.” Perhaps so, but I must say they make fine leather handbags in Florence.
Was cobbler a high paying profession in the 1400s?
I guess so, though I feel like that’s new information that I didn’t know,
In Game of Thrones this past week the High Sparrow, who’s sort of an ascetic religious leader, went into his back story, apparently he was a cobbler, apparently it provided for a pretty luxurious life before he gave it up for his religion
Bigamy!
That’s an interesting thought in light of the hypothesis about Ashkenazim. The ‘Genetic evidence’ section of the Wiki page on Etruscans is intriguing, if inconclusive – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_origins
Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, was a cobbler. But he was an apprentice to one. His family was full of peasants, not tradesmen. I don’t know if his shoes were any good, because he started his political activity with the Communists right around the time he started to make shoes.
Maybe there’s something about making shoes that destines one for greatness.
Jakob Böhme (Jacob Boehme to Anglophones)
The "unnatural" preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives' surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy's grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.Replies: @reiner Tor, @PV van der Byl, @Winthorp, @Crawfurdmuir
Did those men marrying up simply adopt their wives’ surnames or did they hyphenated the names? To create, for example, double-barreled names like Granville-Smith and Fitzroy-Johnson?
When Sir Hugh Smithson had the incredibly good luck to marry the heiress of the vast estates of the Percys of Northumberland in 1740, he simply (but legally) changed his name to Percy. Upon inheriting the Percy lands and castles, he was created Duke of Northumberland, and his descendants flourish impressively to this day.
A Smith was even bolder. The son of a rich banker who was created Lord Carrington in 1797, he, upon succeeding to the title in 1838, changed his name within a year from Smith to ... Carrington.
A descendant rose to the dizzy heights of a marquessate, another, still alive at nearly 97, was Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Minister at the outbreak of the Falklands War (he felt obliged to resign).
Maybe there's something about making shoes that destines one for greatness.Replies: @PV van der Byl, @Almost Missouri
I don’t know if Germans with the name Schumacher, or Dutchmen named Schoonmaker, are relatively accomplished people but it would seem to be an interesting question for a researcher.
“Maybe there’s something about making shoes that destines one for greatness.”
You may be on to something; My namesake , the late mass murderer layzer kaganovitch also got his start in a shoe factory.
Apprentices taking on the name of the master, while not as common as Japan, is not unheard of in the West either. In Philadelphia there was a famous (now closed) 100 year old butcher shop in Reading Terminal Market run by one Harry Ochs, Jr. Except that Harry Ochs Jr.’s birth name was Harry Finocchio – he adopted the name of the previous owner, whom he had started working for as a teenager. I think what happened was that since he really was named Harry like the previous owner, all of the customers just assumed he was Harry Jr. and eventually he went with it – it was good business anyway.
Of course the most common instance of a servant taking on a master’s surname is the case of the American black slaves.
Presumably Thomas Hardy’s example of the Stoke-d’Urbervilles in Tess of the d’Urbervilles represents a real world name-changing-up-the-social-ladder pattern.
OT: At the risk of setting off a Jew-alarm-fire, I’ve always wondered if in some of these details (the possible money-lender Simon obscuring his “smart tradesman” past) Hardy was implying that the Stokes, and therefore Tess’s (symbol of Olde England) seducer/destroyer, were Jewish.
Maybe there's something about making shoes that destines one for greatness.Replies: @PV van der Byl, @Almost Missouri
Another name from the rolls of Cobblers Destined for Greatness:
Jakob Böhme (Jacob Boehme to Anglophones)
Lol. The word you’re looking for is “patrilineal.”
Obviously but status and wealth historically have tended to be handed down to sons. And even daughters tend to marry in a similar social class. So even after centuries it can be useful to compare data by surname.
Or like in the Hardy novel ‘Tess of the Durbevilles’, where Tess discovers that Alec Durbeville is from a family that has only recently come into their wealth, and has bought the titles and name of an old aristocratic family.
But…for Israel!
Yes, and now both Chelsea and Ivanka have father-in-law who have been to prison for fraud.
I suspect that being selected for “owning outright a great big eff-off shop and apartments in the middle of a Yugely expensive and fashionista European city, and not paying the local rents like even those who manage to worm their way in as burghers later” is a corker of an inherited characteristic.
OK OK, I’m working on it, I’m working on it, honey.
I wonder what happened to the other thousands of co-descended Ferragamos? Army and an early death, if my family are any guide.
Our family in Sicily has reverted back to the mean over the last five generations. They went from landed gentry in in the early Twentieth century with income producing vineyards, live stock and a large hillside estate in a central province into teachers, lawyers and cheese/olive oil producers. Remaining vestiges of our Norman ancestry have been amalgamated into a Sicilian Heinz 57. After my first visit I had a new appreciation for the underlying friction between the Capuleti and Montecchi clans when their crazy kids decided to flout convention.
I suspect that part of these multi-century persistences is that the name itself becomes a good. Companies want big-name people on their boards to show off to potential investors; women looking for husbands probably prefer famously-named men, too. So the names can be used to get higher salaries and better mates over time.
One way to test this would be to compare whether people who happen by chance to have last names associated with wealthy families (but are not actually related to them,) do better than demographically-matched peers with ordinary last names.
One way to test this would be to compare whether people who happen by chance to have last names associated with wealthy families (but are not actually related to them,) do better than demographically-matched peers with ordinary last names.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Ferragamo, for example, is an old Florentine cobbler’s name that is now a global brand name for expensive shoes.
The "unnatural" preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives' surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy's grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.Replies: @reiner Tor, @PV van der Byl, @Winthorp, @Crawfurdmuir
The surname analysis method is just a convenient way to track the reproduction of social competence in every successive generation through choices and aptitudes shaped by some combination of genetic and environmental endowment. Unless there are crucial genes specific to the family Y chromosome, I don’t see why occasionally recruiting a well vetted male would necessarily derail the underlying process that this method is trying to capture. Roughly all the same elements are there in the same proportion. It could introduce a subtly different dynamic for good or ill, but there are pitfalls inherent in female recruitment too. In contrast, unrelated emulators are definitely exogenous to the model and would compromise it.
Spelling the name “Sailer” instead of the old “Seiler” (ropemaker) was an innovation by a social climbing ancestor who had become mayor of his little village in Switzerland. It’s like Smythe versus Smith.
Right, and it’s not clear to me how one figures out how many mayors of Sailertown there were in history so this approach can adjust accordingly. These kind of findings are mounting up, but without getting a handle on this kind of contingency, how do we know it’s not robust because it’s tautological: successful people are successful and advertise themselves accordingly, because that’s what successful people do. As I stated above thread, I think focusing on smaller localities rather than countries adds more confidence because incumbents presumably guard against unrelated emulators. In your case, one would want to keep the focus on that canton. The name change was an expression of making it – now let’s see how slowly or quickly the Sailer prestige dwindles. Though obviously there are limitations to that approach, not least because it brackets out you yourself. You end up measuring transgenerational skill at hanging on, rather than capturing adventurous daring or really really successful climbing. Which I guess suggests that it’s better to look at major metropolises.
Gregory Clark did a few checks on the name-changing issue, but I’m still concerned about it.
The laws of perspective were discovered in Flanders sometime before Jan van Eyck, most modern historians would agree. Masaccio, van Eyck’s contemporary, paints largely in a mediaeval manner. Van Eyck is entirely Renaissance.
The Italocentric view of the Renaissance originated with Vasari and was developed by 18th and 19th Century writers. In many instances, it does not accord with the facts.
If poor people stay poor because of poor decision making and a lack of self-denial, which I think is true, the contrary is true for well-off people and families. Good decisions and personal discipline and thrift go a long way to producing and maintaining wealth and status to be handed down to later generations.Replies: @Michelle, @unpc downunder
Yes, but with a few bad apples, black sheep, lowlifes, ne’er-do-wells and out-and-out scoundrels thrown in to balance out the fine, upstanding citizens. There are good and bad people in all income classes. Holding on to wealth may be an entirely different kettle of fish than the actual generation of wealth from an original idea carried to fruition. I think it is. A less than stellar offspring may be able to maintain the integrity of a company founded by a patriarch based on the reputation and original ideas of the founder. Continuing success may have little to nothing to do with the savvy, intelligence or work ethic of the heir. I see quite a few Mexicans who roam around with small ice cream carts. No doubt they are hard working and frugal, but they are not likely to ever become wealthy.
Scorsese’s editrix is Theresa Schoonmaker. She doesn’t work much for anybody else, so it’s hard to divide up credit, but she probably belongs in the Hall of Fame of unassuming women who let great men be great.
If poor people stay poor because of poor decision making and a lack of self-denial, which I think is true, the contrary is true for well-off people and families. Good decisions and personal discipline and thrift go a long way to producing and maintaining wealth and status to be handed down to later generations.Replies: @Michelle, @unpc downunder
Wealth creation is positively correlated with conscientiousness and extroversion and negatively correlated with aggreableness and honesty-humility – which helps explain why people have such divided views about the wealthy.
However, I’m not sure if extroversion is correlated with maintaining wealth. I’d suspect high energy extroverts are better at building wealth and thriftier introverts are better at consolidating the gains of their more extroverted ancestors.
As was Cole Haan until Nike ruined the brand.
As well as the Trump daughter lets remember that it is highly probable that ALL the descendants of two - maybe three -(gentile ) US Presidents ( JFK and Clinton ) are likely to consider themselves Jewish
As an aside it's nice to see a society where people with a respectable skilled trade -shoemaking - generally earn more than lawyers ( & I have a law degree )Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @Lot
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (Except you, of course)
A part of me - a small, non-Catholic part - would like to see just what would happen if polygamy were legalized ("consenting adults" is all that matters, right- why hatefully prevent "big love"?).
It's the same part that wants to see it all crashing down. Then I remember that I've seen a society crumble somewhere else in the world and that destruction is not always "creative."Replies: @dearieme, @Charles Erwin Wilson
Yes, mostly it is just destructive. And the ‘creative destruction’ advocates never see their house, neighborhood, city, state or country as the destroyed. And certainly not their prospects, loved ones or lives.
Beware the heralds of destruction. They sing a siren song, sonorous but sinister. And they profit from the suffering of others.
His great-great-grandfather married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Thomas Cromwell. The family became wealthy taking over monastery property.
The men used "Cromwell" as an "alias" for "Williams" but even the alias part was dropped by Oliver's time.
It was simply a case of a more prestigious surname.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Thanks.
Thomas Cromwell was Henry VIII’s chief minister during the crucial years of the English Reformation. Mark Rylance plays him in the TV series “Wolf Hall.”
If you liked it too, don't rule out The Tudors just because it is also marketed towards women with hunky male leads and romance plot lines. It is really well written, produced, and acted, and the women are all very hot too. Here's Catherine Howard:
http://www.diariodocentrodomundo.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/376_0_0_c-2148_1024x512.jpg
Cromwell is portrayed as cool and evil and constantly reminds me of Paul Ryan.
And Leo McKern played Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons (thus anticipatorily playing the anti-Rumpole, a pretty clever way to round out his achievements).
One hit-album wonders, and what a hit it was!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnowrxj_cbQ&feature=youtu.beReplies: @Pat Hannagan, @PiltdownMan
But a wonder for more than one hit, surely. This collaborative effort by Boz Scaggs deserves more than an honorable mention.
I don’t know if cobbling is g-loaded or bourgeois value loaded. Maybe some of both.
Maybe it’s urban-loaded. Cobbling seems like a profession best done in towns or cities, and those are places where things are usually hopping. Smart people with high value-add labor are there. The cobblers sons are around the smart and clever daughters of the other urban professions. A slight positive IQ bump results.
Without assortative mating/arranged marriage, such pattern is not biological plausible. If mating is random across social class/wealth, regression to average is the outcome.
We human must arrange our mating according to social economical status( SES) in order to create this human breed for SES.
In domesticated animal breeding, for example dog, you only match the animal with similar trait in order to preserve the similar trait in next generation.
Like I said before, selective breeding is deliberate effort to reduce genetic variance to increase genetic odd for specific trait in next generations.
If SES persists over such long time, there must be deliberate mating effort to preserve such trait genetically. It is very likely that people of high SES are more selective on their mate’s SES than middle or lower classes.
“…much later than the rise of the Medici family…”
I believe if you look up their early history the Medici wealth was built on wool. They were in the wool and mohair business, which led naturally to being in the banking business as the industry grew. The wool&mohair and textile business was one of the first major industries of “the West” and was one of the first where “modernizing” paid off. For a long time it was one of the most important businesses in a nation’s economy.
Wool, history:
Arte della LanaArte della Lana:
As well as the Trump daughter lets remember that it is highly probable that ALL the descendants of two - maybe three -(gentile ) US Presidents ( JFK and Clinton ) are likely to consider themselves Jewish
As an aside it's nice to see a society where people with a respectable skilled trade -shoemaking - generally earn more than lawyers ( & I have a law degree )Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @Lot
Not just the money 1%. My gentile parent was working class and first to attend college in the family, but valedictorian of a high school graduating class of ~400.
The IQ genes we skimmed away from the gentile pool benefited me, but the economic benefits go the other way, I’ve probably given my gentile working class relations $50,000 over the years, mostly to pay their college living expenses, but also any random car or medical issues that pop up.
I just finished watching Wolf Hall last month, it was great.
If you liked it too, don’t rule out The Tudors just because it is also marketed towards women with hunky male leads and romance plot lines. It is really well written, produced, and acted, and the women are all very hot too. Here’s Catherine Howard:
Cromwell is portrayed as cool and evil and constantly reminds me of Paul Ryan.
It’s fairly likely that as part of designing the famous dome of the cathedral of Florence, the first dome built in the West since Roman times, Brunelleschi worked out the science of perspective and showed his friends how to apply it to bas-relief and painting, respectively.
That implies that the Romans understood perspective drawing/viewing to some extent.
Maybe it's urban-loaded. Cobbling seems like a profession best done in towns or cities, and those are places where things are usually hopping. Smart people with high value-add labor are there. The cobblers sons are around the smart and clever daughters of the other urban professions. A slight positive IQ bump results.Replies: @Lot
Professionally made shoes were a luxury good. The serfs made do with home-made shoes and hand-me-downs to the extent they did not just go barefoot.
Even if it were true that the Medici family started as conversos, by the time Catherine de Medici was born in 1519, 159 years after the birth and 90 years after the death of Giovanni de Bicci de Medici, she would have had very little Jewish ancestry, diluted mostly by the blood of great Italian non-Jewish families (among them Orsini, Tornabuoni, and Sanseverino in her case). Through her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, Catherine inherited the counties of Auvergne and Boulogne in her own right after her aunt Anne de la Tour d’Auvergne died in 1524.
Some did, some didn’t.
When Sir Hugh Smithson had the incredibly good luck to marry the heiress of the vast estates of the Percys of Northumberland in 1740, he simply (but legally) changed his name to Percy. Upon inheriting the Percy lands and castles, he was created Duke of Northumberland, and his descendants flourish impressively to this day.
A Smith was even bolder. The son of a rich banker who was created Lord Carrington in 1797, he, upon succeeding to the title in 1838, changed his name within a year from Smith to … Carrington.
A descendant rose to the dizzy heights of a marquessate, another, still alive at nearly 97, was Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Minister at the outbreak of the Falklands War (he felt obliged to resign).
I'm not sure when Ashkenazi started practicing medicine for gentiles, but I think that is much later than the rise of the Medici family. Until the enlightenment they largely stuck to money lending and some exotic trade.Replies: @Anonymous
The enlightenment didn’t begin to influence the European Jewish population until the late 1700’s. Long before then, the Jewish population had expanded beyond that niche out of necessity. The wealthier Jews were money lenders and managers of large estates, but there were large numbers of tradesmen, unskilled laborers, and even homeless luftmenschen who wandered from shtetl to shtetl.
Jewish practice of medicine, however, predates the European Jewish enlightenment, especially among the Sephardim. Maimonides, for instance, was a physician.
The "unnatural" preservation of elite surnames by men marrying up and taking their wives' surnames meant that a lot of upwardly mobile men named Smith and Johnson had sons named Granville and Fitzroy, distorting the results when looking at the percentage of modern elites with old elite surnames.
If you are just looking at the average income of old elite surnames, then this does not matter so much because Mr. Fitzroy's grandson through his daughter has just as much of his genes as his grandson through his son.Replies: @reiner Tor, @PV van der Byl, @Winthorp, @Crawfurdmuir
There were (and still are) rather specific rules about this practice – it is not just done willy-nilly, as might be assumed from the suggestion that men marry up and take their wives’ surnames.
The “double-barreled” names common amongst the British gentry originate from the marriages of heraldic heiresses, i.e., the only daughters of armigerous parents who have no sons. Women who are not heraldic heiresses normally take the names of their husbands, but in order to perpetuate the name of an heiress’s family (since there are no sons to do so), her surname is added with a hyphen to that of her husband. The husband may bear her arms “impaled” with his, and the children of the union quarter their parents’ arms.
In some situations when a childless person left lands or other possessions of value to a cousin or nephew, he might make a requirement that the heir take the decedent’s name by deed poll. Also, in cases where a peerage has passed by remainder to an heir not of the same surname, he usually takes the surname as well as the title. Such an example was Sir Hugh Smithson, Bt., the son-in-law of Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland. After that nobleman’ death in 1750, Smithson inherited the title and took the Percy name and arms. He was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766, and the present Duke is his descendant.
Special situations arise when both husband and wife bear titles in their own right. When Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, 11th Baronet, Chief of Clan Moncreiffe, and feudal baron of Easter Moncreiffe, married Diana Hay, 23rd Countess of Erroll, their first son, Merlin Sereld Victor Gilbert, took the surname Hay, and became the heir to both his father’s baronetcy and his mother’s earldom, as well as to the chiefship of Clan Hay. Their second son, Peregrine David Euan Malcolm, at birth surnamed Hay, inherited the barony of Easter Moncreiffe. After the death of his cousin Elizabeth Moncreiffe of that Ilk, he was recognized by the Court of the Lord Lyon as Chief of Clan Moncreiffe, and took the surname Moncreiffe of that Ilk.
That implies that the Romans understood perspective drawing/viewing to some extent.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I’m under the vague impression that the Romans probably understood perspective, but maybe more as a trade secret, so it got lost. Or something …
The invention of printing in the middle of the 15th Century meant that fewer and fewer innovations were ever lost. That’s a huge change in human history. Before Gutenberg, there was almost as much regress as progress. For example, libraries periodically burned down. Over enough time, that type of entropy could wipe out the last remaining written copy of an idea. After Gutenberg, there were too many copies here and there for that to happen very often.
And perhaps more frequently, libraries were burned down…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries#Human_action
We are dating ourselves here with this bit of trivia.
Even Aristocrafts were never the equals of the finest of Northampton though.
Yes, I thought about using “patrilineal” instead of “father to son, father to son,” but I thought the latter had more rhetorical flourish, like this:
Beware the heralds of destruction. They sing a siren song, sonorous but sinister. And they profit from the suffering of others.Replies: @Twinkie
Yes, sir, breaking a society is much easier than re-building one. I think even those who seek to profit from a society’s destruction don’t realize how damaging (to themselves) a societal disintegration can be. They seem much to giddy to unlease forces, which they will not be able to rein in later.
Great passage! The strategy is entirely plausible.
Henry Campbell-Bannerman (British PM 1905-1908) is a non-aristocratic, 20th century example of the same. Bannerman was the name of a childless uncle (mother’s brother) who bequeathed an English estate to his nephew Henry Campbell with the condition he change his surname to Campbell-Bannerman.
Quarterly, 1st and 4th, per pale Gules and Sable a Banner displayed bendways Argent thereon a Canton Azure charged with a Saltire of the Third (Bannerman); 2nd and 3rd, Gyronny of eight Or and Sable on a Chief engrailed Argent a Galley her oars in action between two Hunting Horns stringed all of the Second (Campbell of Belmont)
These are Scottish arms. Scots heraldic law regards all armigerous persons as belonging to the "noblesse of Scotland" - albeit untitled - and until recently Scottish grants contained verbiage to that effect.Replies: @PV van der Byl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTFvAvsHC_YReplies: @Pat Hannagan
Thank you. Excellent.
I suppose it depends upon how one defines aristocratic. He was an armiger, having borne a suitably differenced Campbell coat of arms until he took the additional name Bannerman on inheriting his Bannerman uncle’s estate in Kent, whereupon he quartered Campbell with Bannerman. The blason is:
Quarterly, 1st and 4th, per pale Gules and Sable a Banner displayed bendways Argent thereon a Canton Azure charged with a Saltire of the Third (Bannerman); 2nd and 3rd, Gyronny of eight Or and Sable on a Chief engrailed Argent a Galley her oars in action between two Hunting Horns stringed all of the Second (Campbell of Belmont)
These are Scottish arms. Scots heraldic law regards all armigerous persons as belonging to the “noblesse of Scotland” – albeit untitled – and until recently Scottish grants contained verbiage to that effect.
2. Burke's Landed Gentry
3. Debrett's (similar to #1)And I understand that any number of Scottish Lairds and armigerous families would not be listed in the above.
Quarterly, 1st and 4th, per pale Gules and Sable a Banner displayed bendways Argent thereon a Canton Azure charged with a Saltire of the Third (Bannerman); 2nd and 3rd, Gyronny of eight Or and Sable on a Chief engrailed Argent a Galley her oars in action between two Hunting Horns stringed all of the Second (Campbell of Belmont)
These are Scottish arms. Scots heraldic law regards all armigerous persons as belonging to the "noblesse of Scotland" - albeit untitled - and until recently Scottish grants contained verbiage to that effect.Replies: @PV van der Byl
My definition of aristocratic or, at least, “upper class”, may not agree with Scottish criteria but I would say that someone listed in any of the following would qualify:
1. Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage
2. Burke’s Landed Gentry
3. Debrett’s (similar to #1)
And I understand that any number of Scottish Lairds and armigerous families would not be listed in the above.