The Proto-Wymans

Most of those born with the name of Wyman in this country descend from John and Francis Wyman, who settled in Massachusetts in the 1630’s. Almost all 20,000 Puritans who settled Massachusetts arrived in the 1630’s, so no surprise there. The Pilgrims, who came earlier, were different, you unlearned fools. Some of those were also ancestors of this branch of bloggers, but they were not Wymans. They hoped to be, but failed in the attempt, getting only as far as being Whitneys.

A few other American Wymans have come in via name changes, such as anglicizing the Jewish names “Weiman” or “Weissman.” And we say Wylcome. An astute choice on your part. Your job is to upgrade the stock for beauty. Intelligence we’ve got. Find attractive mates. Please.

The Wymans came to America from West Mill, Hertfordshire, England. That’s in East Anglia, the flat area north of London that sticks out into the channel. Just about everyone who invaded in droves came through there – Danes, Saxons, Normans, Jutes, Vikings, plus the occasional Dutchman and just heaps of Angles. East Anglians never complain about having been invaded so much, because they are all, er, the culprits. A Wyman came in with the Angles, though he hadn’t yet learned how to spell Wyman properly.

The Wyman most likely came from the mouth of the Elbe River, near Hamburg, around 350 AD. We are now referring to an ancestor who has contributed approximately one-trillionth of our genetic material, at a generous estimate. This is a person who in all likelihood is an ancestor of all current Europeans as well. The odds that all 60-odd generations of ancestral women were being fully candid about who the father of their child was is quite remote. It may well be that we are the only Caucasian people not descended from this Wyman.

Nonetheless, we got his name and you didn’t, so we can claim him and you have to go pound sand. Or whatever. He was a member of the Harpstedt Culture, which means his tribe survived by fishing, hunting, herding, and growing cereals, unlike everyone else in the world, who survived by hunting, fishing, growing cereals, and herding. They were Germanic long before it was cool, and long before they were anywhere near Germany. (In fact, just as their language was being promoted from Proto-Germanic to Germanic, they left for Angland, so they got to be on the cutting edge of Anglish as well). Earlier, in the Pripet marshes in Eastern Europe, they didn’t know they were Germanic, because they had not yet traveled to the place we think they came from.

Surnames were not much in use, so the ancestral chain which leads from sons to fathers is lost this far back, and this proto-Wyman was likely wandering around the Pripet Marshes, not knowing his full name, before 1000 BC, speaking a Germanic dialect of Indo-European. Darn clever of him, seeing that there was no India, Europe, or Germany then. Alternatively, our ancestor may have merely been overrun by other people from the Pripet Marshes who also didn’t know their surnames. We all overan each other, raping and pillaging ourselves (Try it!) to create the elevated cultural and genetic mix that causes you and me to be the fine folks we are.

Before that we came from the Pontic-Caspian area. Through past-lives regression, I think that we came from the area around the Dneipr River, not the Dneistr River, though it’s hard to tell when you don’t speak the language of your earlier selves. The Don, Donets, and Danube rivers are also possible, as the root D-n just means “river.” Amazingly creative, our people. “We call it The River.” Great name, let’s use it again.