What is the History of my family's Japanese Clan?

Question

My Great grandma's maiden name is Mead, but I think the last name Mead came from the Japanese last name Maeda. I want to know the history of our Japanese Clan. Give me details about the clan and family. And I would like to know how the name changed from Maeda to Maed. Please Help!!

Answer 1

Well I cannot find the surname spelled Maeda.  I can give you a possible reason it was changed to Mead though.

During the census taking there are people that could not read nor write English.  The census takers would have to spell it as best they could.  The person giving the information would sound out their names and the census taker would spell it as best they could.  My Dooley surname can be found as Dooley, Doley, Duley, Dolley...  It all depends on the accent the persons giving the information has ie Bronx, Southern draw etc.

Your Great Grandmother's family might have taken on the English pronunciation of the name.

Answer 2

Honestly, that name is way too common. I know there are a lot of generic sites out there for European ancestry but for those, they usually take one person and talk about it and that might not even be your roots. The same goes with Japanese names. You could have the same name and even the same kanji, but not related at all. If you could track down specific relatives, they could tell you. Japanese are very good about genealogy but this is very difficult to research outside Japan and especially if you don't know Japanese. The male heirs keep genealogy books so you could find out a lot from one of these (except details on the females of course). On one side of my family, it was lost so my mom has contacted various relatives to help piece the puzzle. On the other side, we struck gold because a relative still has the book and it has 500 years of genealogy plus the guy who had it knew some family stuff that I'm not sure was in the book or not (I didn't read the book). These books are called 劉姓家譜 (risei? or ryusei kafu). Another resource, but again Japanese required, is once you find out where in Japan the family came from, you could do some research at a large library, such as in the prefecture's capital.

Answer 3

Here is a link to the history of the Maeda Family in Kanazawa: http://www.tsuji.ac.jp/hp/jpn/jp_e/kanaz...

Maeda is usually spelt 前田, which would translate at the rice field in front. It is important to remember that many surnames emerge in different parts of Japan with families who actually have no relation to each other. It would be helpful to find out where exactly your family came from in Japan. Good luck with your search!