Have you ever done a search of your family name and found something really fascinating?

Other. It wasn't something I, personally, found fascinating and it wasn't a complete shock. My ancestors were slave owners. Coming from a (once) well off white family in the south, that's really not uncommon. My great-grandmother used to tell stories about the slaves her father owned when she was a little girl. By the time I was old enough to understand, she had severe Alzheimer's so I never heard the stories first hand. I remember her calling us from the nursing home, wanting my mom to go find a woman that hadn't shown up for work. I was confused by this. I later found out she was looking for the house slave.

Not really. I have found that there are more people who spell it the way we do than I thought there would be.

I searched my name on facebook and found a clown.

Actually yes... just recently.

I found that my Grandmother's maiden name, Hakes, stems from a viking word for "crook". This was used to describe hunchbacks and.... you guessed it, crooks.

No. My father's name is far too common. There is a ton of history and cool stuff about the name, but who knows what really is ours. It's a fine old Irish name that goes way way back, but it means nothing in this time and age. My mothers side is most likely a bunch of German Russians like the millions out there. Their lives and history is fascinating because of the time they were in, but as far as important I highly doubt it. I'm guessing they were ordinary.

I would say there is a fairly good chance that someone else calling someone a crook would be possibly an opinion more than a fact. It's easy for victums to call someone a crook when in fact they are the thieves. Think of a loud mouthed crooked politician calling the good guy out to bust him a liar. Or Robin Hood was called a thief. Years later, looking at history labels seem to stick rather than facts.

I was thinking we were more likely the hunchbacks.

No i have not and there are many names like my last name

Some were Swiss Mercenaries in medieval times. Also distantly related to Sutter (the California Gold Rush guy).

Years ago, my father told me the "-ski" or "-sky" ending on Slavic names (like Prasky, my own family name) indicated descent from nobility. Years later, when I was working in a factory in Suffolk around the time the Soviet Union collapsed, we had a worker who had come over from Russia. He told me Prasky was a Russian name. I answered I had always been told it was Czech. He said, "Yes, well Prasky in Russian, means Prague." So I got curious and googled "prasky". I came up with this 14th century castle, located in Prague, the Czech Republic: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ems46/prague%20castle... I also found a lunch meat called Prasky sausage: http://www.bobak.com/?co=products&act=show&m1=1&m2... Among other stuff, there was a record of an insurance broker named Prasky in Long Beach, CA who had been convicted of several million dollars worth of fraud and a Canadian Prasky who had been convicted of murder. In this last instance, Prasky had been having an affair with a married woman, the husband surprised them and Prasky killed him and ran off into the woods. So, my family history runs the gamut from the magnificently sublime, to the merely mundane to the downright sordid.

*snort*

I found out I'm not the only criminal with my last name... and my offenses don't seem so bad in comparison.

I am related to the St. Clairs (I'm a Sinclair which is how the Scots pronounce it) who oversee the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and supposedly the Templar Knights that are from the DiVinci Code, though I knew of our connection before the book. I actually visited the chapel in 2007. Absolutely beautiful. 25 finnish girls came in and sang Gregorian Chants and afterwards there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

No.

Everything there is fascinating to know about my family I've learnt it from my grandfather.

No, but my granddad did.

!

Not my surname, but I've learned a lot of interesting things whilst researching my family tree. Brought a few skeletons out of the closet.