Star Wars Pop-Up Challenge May 2023 Featuring Christopher Sean!

Question

To celebrate the upcoming Star Wars Week at the beginning of May, please help expand the genealogical lines of one of the voice actors in the Star Wars franchise, Christopher Sean! Christopher was the voice of the lead character Kazuda Xiono in Star Wars: Resistance (2018-2020) and the voice of Asu in Star Wars: Visions (2021). He has graciously accepted this request to work on his ancestry and wanted to highlight "the importance of being multiethnic and the importance of supporting all cultures and backgrounds. Through learning about your history you will have a deeper connection and love for those who've paved the path for us all." Thank you, Christopher!

Christopher’s ancestry that we know of so far is Irish (paternal), German (paternal), and Japanese (maternal). Christopher is really hoping to expand on his Japanese lines so any help there is highly appreciated. On WikiTree, we will be launching out from profiles one generation after living person profiles that have been created for this event.

While this pop-up challenge won’t start on May the Fourth per se (for reasons), I’ve pushed it to start on the next day which is still plenty Star Wars-y. This challenge will START at 12 pm noon Eastern on Friday, 5 May 2023 (There’s Always a Bigger Fifth), will carry through Revenge of the Sixth and I Am The Seventh, and will END at 12 pm noon Eastern on Monday, 8 May 2023 (I Find Your Lack of Eighth Disturbing). After the event is over, we hope to have a reveal video for Christopher that the community can watch afterward. :)

This challenge is not nearly as large as the primary WikiTree Challenges, so there won’t be things like bounties or points (sorry). The goal is to help Christopher understand more of his family history all the while expanding WikiTree, especially with Japanese profiles. Anything like newspaper articles or documents identified would be exciting to uncover for him (please consider copyright or contract law). Anything considered an Interesting Find™ should also be noted.

Please indicate below if you wish to participate and feel free to share any information you find on our space page for the Pop-Up Event. You can also communicate with participants in the newly created Discord channel titled #popup-challenge.

May the Force Be With You All!

Comments

Steven, you did a good job finding an interesting personality willing to help. I will spend the next few days finding out whether my niece is free to help from Tokyo. May the Fourth be with You!

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Thank you Steve! Signed --- Steven.

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It's awesome that you're leading this, Steven!

Next week's Featured Connections will be from Star Wars.

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Oh yes. I hope we can have Christopher connected for this as one of the profiles.

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This is awesome and I’d love to help if I can!

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Thank you, Colin!

Answer 1

Me me me me me!!

Comments

YAAAAYYY!!

Answer 2

I will help when I can

Comments

Thank you, Kathy!

Answer 3

In honor of my Star Wars Loving children, I want to join this popup-challenge.

Comments

That's awesome, Margaret!

Answer 4

I'll try to help out.

Comments

Thank you, Lucy!

Answer 5

I will see what I can find.

Comments

Thank you Donna!

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I am adding some info to the Irish lines today!

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Yay!! Thanks again for all of your help!

Answer 6

I will help just on the strength of the puns, well done!

Comments

Are you say the Pun is strong with us? :P

Answer 7

I will do what I can. I hope we are able to find some cool stuff for him!

Comments

Thanks Erin! Me too!

Answer 8

I think I'll watch some Star Wars episodes while I'm working on this.

Comments

This is the way.

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David, I am sure your advice will be valuable. When you first look for a profile in a new country, what are the first questions that spring into your mind?

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When learning to research in a new country, one of the first things I look into are the naming constructs. For example, not all countries pass down "family names" from generation to generation (such as the Scandinavian patronymic system, which is similarly used in many Muslim countries.) In many Hispanic cultures women do not adopt their husband's surnames and children often take on hyphenated names from both parents. In China the family name comes first (Actress Michelle Yeoh, for example, was born Yeoh Chu-Kheng. her father was Yeoh Kian Teik). The message here is: Don't always assume a person's "last name" is their family name. 

It is also my understanding that many German families follow a tradition of baptizing a boy child as Johan (Girls get Anna or Maria). Some families will thus have several sons all named Johan. But most likely all went by their second names and never as Johan. Similarly, many Catholic records will record names in Latin, even though their members would never have actually used the Latin form of their names.

Currently, I'm researching a Malaysian woman named Tengku Ampuan Hajah Afzan Rahimahallah binti Almarhum Tengku Panglima Perang Tengku Muhammad. It turns out that Tengku Ampuan is a title which translates roughly to "Wife of the Crown Prince". Hajjah is a religious honorific given to Muslim women who have successfully completed the Hajj to Mecca. Afzan Rahimahallah is her actual given name. She has no last name. Binti means "daughter of" and the remainder is her father's name including his titles. 

Fortunately, we have a global WikiTree community from which to pull knowledge. When I get stuck, a simple G2G post combined with a Google search usually does the trick. 

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The second thing I do is visit the Family Search Wiki to see what they have to say about researching in the country. I'll follow this with a simple Google search of "country name genealogy."  And finally, I Google "country name national archives" and "country name national library". It's amazing what sorts of information is out there if you just Google it!

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Thankyou

Answer 9

I'm helping out!

Comments

Thank you again!

Answer 10

There appears to be lots of conflicting evidence on Christopher's Irish Friel ancestors on various other websites and even in marriage and death records.  I've added research notes to a few of the relevant profiles.  The Friel ancestors should be easy to find in Irish records, but I've drawn a blank, unless Whelan and O'Hara in various records mentioning [[O'Hara-2283]] are both variants of Hanan/Harren/Harran/Canan/Harriss, or the estimated ages in the U.S. records are way off.  See

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.fatherGivenName=james&q.fatherSurname=friel&q.motherGivenName=eleanor&f.collectionId=1584963

where there are a few possible matches, but they appear to be over the border in County Tyrone rather than in County Donegal, where Eleanor O'Hara's son was born according to his death certificate.

I haven't checked the online copies of the various Irish birth records, but the spelling variations in the FamilySearch extracts suggest that we will be dealing with a registrar with particularly bad handwriting!

Comments

Thanks for clarifying that. If you are not currently on Discord server or in the #popup-challenge channel there, I would recommend using this to communicate more efficiently with others working on this right now. :)

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I keep forgetting that WikiTree's website for discussions between members (G2G) is not the website for discussions between WikiTree members (which appears to be Discord)!