Ancient Origins

 

Being of Germanic linguistic origin and yet from an area heavily influenced by Rome and Latin culture, means that the name Ravignat was “imported” in the region of Wallonia during the Germanic migrations. These migrations are often referred to as the “Barbarian Invasions.” As the Roman Empire weakened in the 5th century, Germanic tribes, long the enemies of Rome, ceased their chances and conquered parts of Gaul or France. One such confederation of Western Germanic tribes was the Franks.

 

The name of the Franks can be related to several etymologies. In Latin the term may refer to “free.” Or to the verb Frangere which means, kill, break or destroy. Whereas, in Germanic Frank may refer to a javelin. The javelin was an early weapon used by the Franks and they may have adopted this name because of their warlike nature. Franck may also be simply related to Francus which means soldier or warrior. Both etymologies were used to refer to the Franks themselves.

The Franks enter history around 260. They are first mentioned on the Tabula Peutingeriana as the Chamavi qui et Pranci (probably an error for Franci, "Chamavi, who are Franks"). Over the next century other Frankish tribes besides the Chamavi surface in the records. The major primary sources for this are: Panegyrici, Latini, Ammianus Marcellinus, Claudian, Zosimus, Sidonius Apollinaris and Gregory of Tours.

According to Gregory of Tours these Franks would have come from ancient Pannonia (Southern Austria) and marched through Thuringia (Central Germany) to eventually conquer and settle Northern Roman Gaul.

As early as 357 a Frankish Chief Chlodio from a subgroup of the Franks called the Salians entered Roman soil with his war bands. These Salian Franks were strong enough to invade large parts of the Roman Empire and were accepted as Foederati by Julian the apostate in 358. By the end of the fifth century, they extended their footprint on Roman soil to a territory including the Netherlands south of the Rhine, Belgium and Northern France in which they received other peoples, mainly of the Frankish ethnicity. Gregory of Tours reports that “the Franks…set up in each country district and each city long-haired kings chosen from the foremost and most noble family of their race.”

Under the Merovingian dynasty, they founded one of the longest standing monarchies which replaced the Western Roman Empire after the 5th century, that of France. It is through the first Frankish chief to make himself “King of all the Franks” (Rex Francorum) was Clovis I in 509 that the Frankish state consolidated its hold over large parts of modern day France.

The orange area on the map below indicates the heartland of the Salian Franks corresponding roughly to modern day Belgium and the Netherlands. The yellow shows the extension of their power under Clovis.

 

 

Though the Salian Franks were the founders of the monarchy of France it is important to remember that their actual ethnic heartland has always been in Belgium and the Netherlands and the earliest Frankish kings were born just kilometers away from the villages where the Ravignat family comes from.

Genetics

 

This ancient Belgian and Germanic origin can be confirmed by modern genetics. Men, unlike women, all possess a Y chromosome inherited from father to son. They also receive a X chromosome from their mothers. However, contrary to other pairs of  chromosomes the X-Y pair do not recombine themselves, which explains why the Y chromosome stays practically unchanged from generation to generation and therefore is common to all men with a common distant ancestor (sometimes thousands of years old).

 

Since the end of the Middle Ages, when family names began to be inherited from the father, all the men from the same region with the same family name usually have the same Y chromosome.

A Y chromosome DNA test determines the number of mutations that the Y chromosome has acquired in relation to the original Y chromosome that all human males share. This allows researchers to track Y chromosome evolution and to identify groups and sub groups of common individuals.

 

The Canadian Ravignats, which emigrated directly from Belgium and have a verifiable genealogical tree back to at least 1690, revealed that the Ravignat Y chromosome is of the R1b1 group and of the R1b1c9 sub group.

 

Current research has estimated the following percentages of Y-Chromosome groups in Belgium:

 

R1b : 50%
I1a : 35%
R1a : 6%
J2 : 4%
E3b : 4%
K : 1%
G : 1%
Q : negligible
N : negligible
C : negligible

 

R1b is the  haplogroup with the highest frequency in Western Europe. It corresponds to the Cro-Magnons which were the first modern human beings or Homo-Sapiens to settle in Europe over 30,000 years ago. This haplogroup therefore, has evolved into several subgroups. In Belgium the most frequent of these subgroups is the R1b1c9 which is of continental Germanic origin and more specifically from: The Netherlands, Northern Germany, and Danemark). This sub group is followed closely by the R1b1c10 which is of Celtic origin from the area know today as the Alps.

 

The Ravignats therefore, are descendants of the original “aboriginal” Europeans of the Germanic subgroup R1b1c9.