One of my friends had a professor who expected students to stand when he entered the room because he was the non-landed prince of somethingorother.

That is hysterical.

If family legend is to be believed, my ancestors were very minor Austrian nobility, back when, for a while, the Emperor had the power to make anybody a noble whenever he felt like it. All the supporting facts of the story check out -- the Emperor did in fact have that power during the period in question, he did visit the right part of the Empire at the right time, and the ancestors in the story were innkeepers, which was a pretty popular occupation for Jews at the time and I know that, about two or three generations later, most of the family were innkeepers -- but I seriously doubt that it's true. My best guess is that there's some bit of truth somewhere in the story, but somewhere along the retelling, something like "The Emperor ate at our inn and said he liked it" became "The Emperor liked our inn so much that he made us nobility."

Wow, South Carolina has a wackaloon for a senator in that Joe Wilson.

One of my ancestors was knighted by Henry VIII at his wedding to Anne Boleyn, apparently because the vinegar said ancestor brought was so good. I suspect Henry may have been drunk.

If family legend is to be believed,

I love family legend. According to family legend on my dad's side, we're descended from Vlad the Impaler. Yes, I'm so goth I'm distantly related to Dracula. Wheee!

Family legend says we get to go up to at least the doors of the Clan MacFarlane with open arms to find our long lost kin. One day I want to do that, but I think this is the year, what with Homecoming Scotland 2009.

Family legend says the Gordon branch of Gram's mother's family was related to one George Gordon, which would mean that family can lay claim to a good poet alongside the one who wrote the Worst Poem in the English Language. And, of course Ava Lovelace.

Family tree/legend notes Hollinshed the Historian in there a ways back, too.

(Family Tree Research had me briefly thinking that I might be distantly related to Rik Mayall, but alas, we merely have a mutual 5th cousin through differing branches of said cousin's tree.)

I have my genealogy somewhere, but I don't think we're related to anyone special in particular. The family name/title/whatever does go back a good 450 years or so, and was bestowed by whichever king or nobleman was in charge in that part of Spain at the time.

::waits for sparky to post on the family legend thread and bites my tongue::

in other news: picspam from a little under five years ago. and first day of school, today. please send more tissues, i'm out.

eta: tags are good when they close.

My maternal grandfather's family is from County Cork, and family legend has it that there were McCarthys in Cork who were royalty...and McCarthys who were horse thieves.

We're pretty sure we ain't royalty.

Family legend has it that we're related to President Polk. I'm unclear on the details.