The Furnari Family by Nick Furnari

          Where does my family come from? What is our nationality? When did we immigrate to the United States? These questions have always intrigued me. I assumed the only way to find answers is through my parents and grandparents, but they didn't know much about our family history either. With both my grandfathers proudly claiming to be 100% Italian, I didn't find out too much. Until I heard about Ancestry and 23 & Me DNA tests.

          When I first heard about this idea, I was a little bit skeptical. Well, a "little bit" is an understatement. Being interested in biochemistry, I know DNA is who you are. It codes for every cell in your body, your height, intelligence, and even your personality, it could also tell your family history and if you are likely to develop a disease, or if you possess an eventually fatal mutation. Oh, and if that's not crazy enough, you could even grow an identical copy of yourself with your DNA. It's scary to think just how much your DNA can tell about you, and it made me think that sending it away wouldn't be the best idea. I already found out that if you send your DNA to Ancestry or 23 & Me, samples of your DNA are put in federal databases corresponding to your own personal file. In order to keep tabs on you. For example, if they discover that your DNA created mutations in your brain, they could monitor you on the internet, access your phone camera and more. I know I sound extremely paranoid but, this stuff is real. As you could probably tell, I obviously wouldn't want to send my own DNA away, even if I could find out my family history. So I didn't. My aunt did. I know, her DNA is linked to mine, but they still won't have my exact DNA, so it's alright, I think.

          Anyway, back to the important part, about 6 weeks later she got the results back, and shared the findings with our family. (Be mindful since, she is my mom's sister, her DNA is half of what's in me,  and as of right now, I still don't entirely know my father's side of the family). After endlessly being told by my grandfather that we were all 100% Italian for a fact, I was shocked to find we were only 65% Southern European, (Mostly Italian), we didn't tell my grandfather, not that he would believe us anyway.              The next most shocking thing to me was that she was almost 20% Asian. Now, Asia is a big continent, and "Asian" could mean a lot of things, including anything from Turkish, Russian, and possibly even east Asian, like Chinese, or Japanese. We suspect most of our roots from Asia are probably mostly in Turkey, since it's along the Mediterranean, and was Catholic before being conquered by the Seljuk Turks. Thus after being conquered, some of our ancestors might have fled west, further down the Mediterranean, to places like Italy. Where most of our modern ancestors derived. There is not much more percentage to go around, and most of our remaining nationality was European, either West Europe, like the British Isles, Central Europe, like France, or Germany, and even a little bit North Europe like Scandinavia.

Although the results may not be totally accurate, I presume my family to be all of the stated nationalities, in some way, shape, or form. Most notably, Italian. I have always known my family to be Italian, and I didn't need our DNA tested to prove that. My last name, Furnari, is an Italian name, loosely tied to the translation "furnace" but as a name, I assume it means "baker" probably a the  profession of my early ancestors. Also, Furnari is the name of an actual town in northern Sicily, Italy. A city that my ancestors might have founded long ago, or maybe were named after. Overall, I don't entirely know my family's history and backstory, but I know enough to be satisfied, and the rest I just leave up to interpretation. It's better not to know everything sometimes.

                                                                      Furnari, Sicily