According to our research, Tamm, Saar, and Mägi are the three most popular last names in Estonia.
They’re all beautiful names, but my favorite is Pikknurm, which in Estonian means “Long Lea” (thanks Andrus for translation).
Welcome to our family of last names, Estonia.
After me and Nils have tried to explain this more than one time to the rest of the Kindo troopers, I will here briefly tell you about how we in Sweden celebrate the summer solstice.
In Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve, is celebrated on the Friday between June 19-25, this year June 20, a bank holiday. Most Swedes would argue that this is one of the most important holidays of the year and we celebrate it in a unique way. People find their way out to the country side or the archipelago where they traditionally raise a huge maypole covered in green leaves and flowers. Summer dressed Swedes then perform ring-dances around the pole with singing and folk music in the background. Typical is the frog dance
Maybe even more important is the food: The year’s first potatoes, herring, maybe raw spiced salmon and strawberry cake is on the menu on many tables. Drinking songs together with this is popular. Maybe too popular.
Starting as a Pre-Christian ceremony to celebrate the longest day of the year, magic was believed to be extra strong. Still, many girls pick a bouquet of seven different flowers which they place under their pillow. The tradition say that they now will dream of their future husband to add to their Kindo tree 
This is it for me, now I’m off for the west-coast!
When Lukas Podolski scored two goals in Germany’s opening encounter against Poland his heart showed mixed emotions. He was happy for leading his german-team to a comfortable victory against Poland. But deep inside he was little sad for scoring goals against a country where he was born. Podolski, certainly, did not celebrate his two goals and this is what he had to say, “Of course I have mixed feelings. I have a large family in Poland. I have to respect the country”.
Infact, Germany is not the only country to have played from mixed nationalities. Portugal has relied on Brazilian’s Deco and Roger Guerreiro to take it across to them Euro 2008 semis this year.
Germany and Spain are the two countries who have selected Brazilian players Kevin Kuranyiand and Marcos Senna respectively. France has always looked upon it’s former colonies for football talent. Les Bleus have Patrice Evra (Senegal), Jean-Alain Boumsong (Cameroon), Patrick Vieira (Senegal) as some of their popular imports. If we look at the non-European-born players then they can be easily placed into one-squad with five substitutes and six reserves.
Purists say that its good for the game. Some also opine that it is a cause of worry when teams do not feel players from their own countries. What are your thoughts on the influx of players from different nationalities in this edition’s Euro 2008? What sort of emotion do these players go through while playing against their countries of origin/birth? What do their families feel about it? Do drop in your comments about that
Talking about football players don’t miss out the celebrity family trees of famous football players Zlatan Ibrahimović, David Beckham, Michael Ballack and Gianluigi Buffon. For family trees of other celebrities please visit our celebrity trees page.
Image via Wikipedia‘Finance + Family are going well’ thats the short and sweet message floating around the articles written by experts these days According to a latest article by Scott Burns modern parents can reduce their retirement worries if they raise their children. How does the cost of raising a family affect your retirement planning?
Scott uses an interesting mathematical derivation to arrive at the result. Parents, focus on their expenditures while raising kids (primarily their standard of living is affected) and this standard of living carries on once their job is over.
In mathematical terms for any household the cost of living is the square root of no. of people in the household.
The above derivations show that the cost of living is accounted for by 30% when parents have 2 children. So husband and wife contribute to 70% cost of living.
Scott has used another elaboration to explain his logic. For more on the interesting piece visit dailybreeze.com website here.
It’s an interesting fact that something like mother’s day exists in almost all parts of the world (even in Arabic cultures), but has very different origins. Kids and the husband giving gifts like flowers to the “mother” is very common in lots of different places as well.
A whole lot of countries will celebrate mother’s day next Sunday (as always on the second Sunday in May), the 11th of May. That includes the United States, most of the countries in Central Europe, most of the countries in South America and many others from all over the globe, like China, India, Australia or Japan (find the full list of countries here). However, the UK and Ireland have had their mothers day already this year: it’s traditionally three weeks before easter.
The mother’s day tradition in the UK roots in the Christian tradition of visiting one’s “mother’s church” annualy. But people were worshipping mother’s even earlier, like with the Cybele festival in ancient Greece. The jews celebrate their mother’s day in the month of Shewat, the Arabs generally on vernal equinox, the day when the sun is exactly above the equator.
On Kindo you look up what your mum has written in the “personal” section of her profile! Then you can go to our gifts page and find find her the perfect present for mother’s day!
photo credit: houghtonabout
In ancient times no such thing existed and since we lived in tiny, closely knitted communities and we believe such information was passed on by word of mouth. Early scrolls provide scant information and as soon as they started showing up, we depended on the census records here. Once we learnt to write, we started recording everything!
Information was very difficult to find during the middle ages and it is only quite a while after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440 that accurate records start appearing because systems improved and because there were more Bibles printed – even though these were very few and far between. Remember that books were a rarity. The Catholic Church, that ruled Europe at the time with the assistance of the Canon Law, had their hands full with persecutions, stimulation of wars and a fervent need to cleanse everyone and everything. There was little time to educate the masses – much less a need for it and they had no time to have Bibles printed for the people. It must be remembered how prominently the Catholic Church featured in the lives of our ancestors living in Europe.
Now for today and our need to record our own family trees! To start, you will need birth records or death certificates. Usually the latter records the date of birth, the cause, exact date and time of death. However, death certificates may not always have been issued in the more recently developed nations. In Australia, America and South Africa where pioneers were responsible for the birth and development of a modern nation, the Family Bibles are the most important source because very often these were the only records ever kept. Life in a wagon on a wagon trail was hard and once the pioneers arrived at their destinations, they still had to develop communities and only then built towns. The Family Bible was the only viable vehicle in which to record such vital information.
In most families, the family Bibles will contain extremely accurate information of a family tree – as well as information about where that first relative came from – and researching then becomes much easier. In Europe reasonable records were kept, often without the aid of the Family Bible – with the exception of countries where natural disasters occurred, of course – like in Holland where some of my own family records were lost when an entire town was flooded!
Nowadays we have the web and a massive amount of information can be found online. Online information does save time and endless trips to libraries, archives and government departments but more often than not one will be unable to find the detailed information contained in a Family Bible. There are millions of family Bibles all over the world and numerous American websites devoted entirely to them – but even those cannot function without the Bibles themselves.
Most Family Bibles contain more than one surname because when marriages were recorded, the full names of both bride and groom were entered, thus introducing completely new families to the family tree. In this way, one finds long forgotten links to maiden names, names of Godparents and all the baptismal records for that family. Here the birth dates will be recorded very accurately. I have even found Bibles where someone recorded the census records – a good tip for trying to locate that elusive relative is to search through census records. But to save yourself a lot of frustration, do try and find your old Family Bibles.
More than 500 readers have voted already! We never expected this kind of response. Just in case you havent answered yet, this is the last chance to express yourself about these questions:
Just tick the respective bubble in the sidebar on the right and click on “vote”. The votes are anonymous! Just as you are used to, your privacy is very important for us at Kindo.
And very soon we will analyse the results and share the interesting bits of it with all of you.
I am already looking forward to that.
Thirteen days after many countries in the world have celebrated Christmas, on January 7th, it comes the time for Russia to observe this great holiday. I am sure some of you wonder why Russian Christmas is in January. The reason is that Russian Orthodox Church still uses the old Julian calendar.
After the 1917 Revolution and during the reign of communism, Russian people were forced to stop celebrating Christmas. Only in 1992 the holiday was openly observed. Therefore a lot of traditions, which existed many years ago, were lost. Nowadays, on Christmas eve family member get together for a “Holy meatless supper” which include 12 different foods symbolic of the 12 Apostles: borsch (soup made of beets), Lenten bread, garlic, honey, cod, oranges, apricots, nuts, kidney beans, pears, parsley potatoes and red wine. The main course of the dinner is porridge called kutja. It is made of berries, wheat or other grains that symbolize hope and immortality, and honey and poppy seeds that ensure happiness, success, and untroubled rest.
After dinner people go to the church for the service, which lasts till 2 or 3 in the morning.
Since the celebration of Christmas was banned for many years, such traditions as presents’ giving, Ded Moroz (Russian Santa Claus) and decorating of the tree became the traditions of the New Year’s Eve. Therefore, even though Christmas is back and nowadays people freely celebrate it, New Year’s is the biggest winter event in Russia!
Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!!! May this year bring all of us joy, happiness and health!
My Mom promised a while ago to do a guest blog on Kindo… so here it is in full:
Here is your Ma’s blog for Kindo as promised …
“This is the real value of Kindo as I see it … At a certain level Kindo is providing an invaluable vehicle for families to connect, chart their growth through different generations and subsequently keep in touch. Being fresh and fun it is completely in step with contemporary sensibilities which perhaps accounts for its growing international success, however, at a far deeper less mundane level, by activating the “glue” that keeps families and hence societies together, Kindo is helping to counter the disruption of our culture which is in the throes of a great Change. By reinforcing our personal identities within the bulwark provided by our families, Kindo is helping each of us to withstand the effects of the human dissension and societal disintegration that mark a global community in transition. This is important work!”
Carole Knight - www.caroleknight.com / www.miraclesofhope.org
Mother of Uncle Saffa
Lots of love and love you lots,
Mom
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