The Auvergne region of France.

[Rhonda Hatton]

Has anyone with heavy Auvergnat ancestry ever tested at FTDNA? What would the results be for an Auvergnat? (I'm not one, I just wondered).

[Biblioteque]

I really like your Joan of Arc icon/avatar! I wanted to use a Templar Cross for mine, but used a Virginia flag instead. Sorry, to be off-point.

[John McCoy]

To reach any conclusions, I would think we would really need several dozen authentic Auvergnats with solid family trees. And for comparison, we would need the same sort of sampling for the other regions of France. If there has been any systematic sampling of this kind in France, I haven't heard of it.

[KATM]

I'm not sure if this recent (preprint, non-peer-reviewed) paper, "The Genetic History of France," might provide any information, but it might be worth a look for those with French ancestry. It is in English. There is a link on the page to download the .pdf of the paper. The paper has some genetic maps near the end. If you click on "Supplementary Material," it will download a 17 page .pdf with many charts and maps.

Most of it is over my head, though.

[PDHOTLEN]

For a little while I thought I had a direct line or branch going back to the Auvergne area. This was from a Huguenot connection. Well, that connection is now at a cousin level. Anyway, without actually calling up my big tree at Ancestry, I recall it going back to before the French Revolution. And boundaries were different back then. Languedoc was larger in area and extended further north. So what is now included in the Auvergne region was part of the old Languedoc. I may not be exactly right about this in detail, but what I mean is, look at the old pre-revolution boundaries for French provinces if your ancestry goes back that far.

[Rhonda Hatton]

For a little while I thought I had a direct line or branch going back to the Auvergne area. This was from a Huguenot connection. Well, that connection is now at a cousin level. Anyway, without actually calling up my big tree at Ancestry, I recall it going back to before the French Revolution. And boundaries were different back then. Languedoc was larger in area and extended further north. So what is now included in the Auvergne region was part of the old Languedoc. I may not be exactly right about this in detail, but what I mean is, look at the old pre-revolution boundaries for French provinces if your ancestry goes back that far.

Auvergne was once part of the region of Languedoc, the region of the Langue d'Oc or language of Occitan, because Auvergnat, now seldom spoken except by the older generation of inhabitants, is a dialect of Occitan. The region has had it's name since before the A.D. 1000s, being derived from the Civitas Arvernis ( now Clermont-Ferrand ) named after the Gaulish tribe of the Arverni ( in French Arvernes ). I think Auvergne passed to the crown of France after Catherine de Medicis, the last heir to Auvergne through her mother, married Henri the third of France. But modern day Auvergne encompasses a little more than the original medieval Comte, and also a little more than the Iron Age period territory of the Arverni!

[John McCoy]

The region around Clermont-Ferrand is gloriously picturesque, at least during the summer. Deep history back to Roman times and even earlier, and of course well-represented in the Wars of Religion, the exodus of the Huguenots, and the French Revolution. My Johannot ancestors, paper-makers, came from this area. Great fun to sample the two varieties of the liqueur Chartreuse, and the Saint-Nectaire cheese, but if you ever get roped into a performance of local folk dancing, be warned, it is nearly endless! The wild story and the even more wild statue of Vercingitorix, who lost to Julius Caesar, is not to be missed!

[Rhonda Hatton]

The region around Clermont-Ferrand is gloriously picturesque, at least during the summer. Deep history back to Roman times and even earlier, and of course well-represented in the Wars of Religion, the exodus of the Huguenots, and the French Revolution. My Johannot ancestors, paper-makers, came from this area. Great fun to sample the two varieties of the liqueur Chartreuse, and the Saint-Nectaire cheese, but if you ever get roped into a performance of local folk dancing, be warned, it is nearly endless! The wild story and the even more wild statue of Vercingitorix, who lost to Julius Caesar, is not to be missed!

I appreciate the warning about the folk dancing: didn't know the Auvergnat could be so wild! LOL But the Vercingetorix equestrian statue in the Place de Jaude certainly looks beautiful in photographs ( or even painted on cyclist Romain Bardet's bike of 2018 ) so I can't imagine how awe inspiring it must be in person. Poor Vercingetorix, his revolt ended so badly, but I admire the effort and am grateful for the entertaining book seven of the Gallic Wars that it produced! And the department of Puy de Dome is certainly alluring under a rich green blanket of summer grass.