I am your newest subscriber. I have just read all the rules and I was delighted to see that we are here to have FUN! That's good because I have already found both of my JOHNSON ancestors. Dad was William Eugene Johnson born 5 August 1891 in Chicago. We all know that Chicago is in Illinois but, for Dad, Chicago was Chicago and Illinios was Illinois. Dad died in 1964. His dad was Chris, Christ, or Christian Philip Johnson born in 1853 in Denmark. I never knew Grandpa Johnson; he died in 1931, when I was a year old. We knew that he had taken the name JOHNSON when he came to America but there was much uncertainty in my generation as to what it had been in Denmark. Some said that it started with the letters "Bj-". In 1974 a cousin who lived in Illinois took me to see the family plot in Vernon Cemetery, near Half Day, Illinois. I was surprised to see a stone inscribed "Peter Johnson, b. 1815 d. 1889" on the one side and "Karen Johnson, b. 1820, d. 1893" on the other. I had never been told that my great-grandparents had come to America. In 1995, while researching in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I discovered Grandpa's hometown in Denmark. Knowing his birthday, I quickly found that he had been baptized Hans Philipsen Christian, that his father was Jørgen Pedersen, and that his mother was Karen Rasmusdatter. That made Grandpa "Hans Philipsen Christian Jørgensen". So he had shortened it. Jørgen Pedersen's father was Peder Jensen and Peder's father was Jens Neilsen. So much for surname research in Denmark. Jørgen Pedersen and his wife had come to America in 1874 after three of their sons, who had gone to sea, had already established themselves there as JOHNSONs. So it would seen that they were just taking the family name. It took me about three years to identify 90 direct ancestors born in Denmark. (Grandma Johnson was also Danish.) Never in that time did I see the name "John" in a Danish record. Conclusion? John is not a Danish name. I would go further to say that it is not a Scandinavian name. To the extent that it may be found in Scandinavia, I suspect that it had been transplanted from England. I guess that that is enough fun on that subject for now. Rock, Honolulu, DENMARK listowner at RootsWeb