Tracing the Covenant Name Across the Mediterranean Arc: The Simonis Equation Theory
- Weston Simonis
- Nov 18
- 34 min read
Updated: Nov 19
THE NAME THAT CARRIED THE COVENANT
When the name Simonis first enters the northern records in 1611, it does not appear as a new creation but as a traveler arriving late in its own story. In the baptism of Gerardus, son of Adrianus Simonis and Margareta in Beers, the name stands fully formed—its past unspoken, its journey already long(1611 Beers Baptism).
Four decades later, another baptism in Tilburg reveals a fracture in that hidden past. The priest first wrote Paroli beneath Gerardus Simonis, then struck it out and restored the covenant name(1650 Tilburg Baptism – Paroli Overwritten).A southern memory surfaced, then was covered—yet not erased. The scribal correction preserved the tension between where the family had been and where it now stood.
Far to the south, the earliest surviving fragment of this older identity appears in 1545, in a baptismal register of Portalegre, Portugal. There, the record names the father only as Jimenes, accompanied by the name Andrés(1545 Portalegre Record).These names—Jimenes and Andrés—will echo later in Iberia, Italy, the Netherlands, and eventually the New World. They carry the same root as Simeon, the ancient name meaning “He has heard.”
These fragments—Dutch, Portuguese, overwritten, half-preserved—do not yet form a complete map, but together they point toward a line already ancient by the time it stepped into the Dutch registers. A name carried across kingdoms. A covenant preserved through exile. A lineage waiting to be recognized.
And the trail that explains these silences does not begin in Iberia or in the Netherlands. It leads eastward—toward the Adriatic coast, toward Dalmatia, and toward the oldest homeland where the name of Simeon shaped families for centuries.
From here, the story enters the Balkan Bridge, where devotion, migration, and the earliest European forms of the name first converged.
THE BULKAN BRIDGE
The story of the Simonis line begins long before the surname appears in Dutch baptismal ink or Iberian inquisitorial records. Its earliest European roots lie along the Adriatic coast, in the cities of Dalmatia—above all Zadar and Ragusa (Dubrovnik)—where culture, faith, and trade shaped families for centuries. Nowhere in Europe does the name Simeon or Simun appear earlier, more consistently, or more powerfully than in this region.
According to the Gothic inscription preserved in Zadar, the relics of St. Simeon (Sveti Šime) arrived in the city from Constantinople in 1203, an event documented through the Croatian Academy of Sciences and described in regional accounts from Zadar Villas and Secret Dalmatia. The Church of St. Simeon itself is mentioned by 1190, already operating as a center of devotion (Secret Dalmatia; Airial Travel).
This centuries-long veneration created one of the earliest and densest clusters of Simeon-derived names in Europe. The masterpiece of this devotion—the Chest of Saint Simeon, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth of Hungary and crafted between 1377–1380—remains one of the most important medieval art objects in Croatia(Wikipedia;Croatian Academy of Sciences).
Within this religious environment, the forename Šime/Simun became so widespread that hereditary surnames naturally formed from it: Simun, Šime, Simunović, Simunić, Simonić. Croatian cultural historians note that these are among the oldest and most widespread patrilineal surnames in Dalmatia, directly shaped by St. Simeon’s cult(Zadar Villas).
Further south, the maritime republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) maintained one of medieval Europe’s most sophisticated notarial systems. Its archives record the Simun-derived surnames as early as the fourteenth century. A 1372 notarial act preserves the seal of a member of the Simunović family—one of the earliest known hereditary "son of Simon" surnames in Europe(Acta Histriae). Through the 1300s–1500s, Ragusan church books, merchant records, and civic documents repeatedly list Simun, Simunović, Simunić, and Simonić, as detailed in academic studies such as Entangled Histories of the Balkans.
This region’s naming culture was further shaped by the influence of the Venetian Republic, whose maritime empire extended across Dalmatia, the Adriatic islands, the Ionian Sea, and deep into the Aegean. Venetian scribes routinely shifted names across Slavic, Latin, Italian, and Greek contexts. As shown in scholarship like Venice in Byzantium: Migrating Art along the Venetian Routes, a single family could appear as Simunović in a Slavic parish ledger, Simoni in a Venetian notarial register, or Simion in a Greek manuscript—demonstrating a fluid continuity rather than distinct origins.
Modern genetic reconstruction of the Simonis family (Y-DNA haplogroup I-CTS10937) aligns directly with this medieval Adriatic–Balkan world. Y-DNA matches within the Simonis line include surnames such as Leti/Letaj of Albania (I-M253) and Dauti of Kosovo/Albania (I-BY105294), both located in the same hinterland historically tied to Venetian Albania and the port of Ragusa. These surnames reflect the same cultural-linguistic system that produced Simunović in the Dalmatian records.
Additional Y-DNA signatures such as Olofsson (I-Y22000) in Sweden and Korhonen (I-M253) in Finland demonstrate the northward expansion of “son of Simon” naming traditions parallel to the Balkan Simunović pattern—showing a widespread European development from the same root.
Autosomal evidence within the Simonis family includes surnames like Simon, Koelpin, Letaj, Leka/Lekaj, and Solem, many of which belong to Balkan, Adriatic, or Nordic populations historically linked through Venetian and Dalmatian trade routes.The maternal line also contributes an Adriatic connection through the rare Aegean Romaniote surname Simoga, a community historically associated with Venetian maritime networks across Greece and Dalmatia.
Every layer of evidence—religious, documentary, linguistic, and genetic—converges on the same conclusion: the Balkan–Adriatic region is the earliest documented European homeland of the Simon/Simun/Simoni/Simonis line.
From the arrival of St. Simeon in 1203, to Ragusan seals in 1372, to Venetian scribal transitions, to the Y-DNA signatures that trace the family's paternal origins back into Albanian and Dalmatian society, the Balkan Bridge forms the first continuous chapter in the migration of the name. From here, the identity travels westward toward Italy, Iberia, and the Netherlands, but its beginning—its first shaping—lies along the Adriatic coast, under the guardianship of Sveti Šime, where the line first becomes a people remembered.
ITALY — THE SOUTHERN ROOT WHERE SIMONI TOOK SHAPE
Long before the name Simonis was written into Dutch baptismal records, its older Italian forms—Simoni, Simione, Simiones, Simone, Simioni, and Simonetti—were already deeply rooted across the Italian peninsula. In Italy, the ancient covenant-name of Simeon did not simply survive; it flourished and transformed, woven into the civic, artistic, religious, and commercial life of Renaissance cities and Mediterranean ports.
In Florence, the Simoni name rose into global memory through one of the most celebrated figures of Western art: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564), whose family ancestry is recorded in Florentine civic documents reaching as far back as the 12th century(Britannica – Michelangelo ;Wikipedia – Michelangelo). The Simoni name in Tuscany appears in guild records, noble registers, and artistic lineages, demonstrating that the surname was already hereditary and culturally significant during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Heraldic sources even preserve the Simoni coat of arms as part of Italy’s noble tradition(Heraldry Institute of Rome – Simoni).
Far to the south, Sicily and Campania formed another major cradle for the surname. In Trapani and throughout the southern Italian kingdoms, documents from the 1400s–1500s record Simoni, Simone, and Simeone among merchant families, artisans, landholders, and occasionally in noble contexts(Simoni Family – House of Names). These same surnames appear centuries later across the Italian autosomal DNA clusters—Simoni, Simone, Simioni, Simione, Simones—demonstrating the longevity and continuity of these southern Italian branches.
To the north, the Venetian Republic nurtured its own cluster of Simoni-related surnames. Venetian notarial and guild documents from the 14th–15th centuries list Simone, Simoni, and Simoneti as established hereditary family names (Venetian–Byzantine Trade Study). Venice linked Italy to the Adriatic coast and Balkans—bridging the Simun traditions of Dalmatia with the Simoni forms of the peninsula—making it one of the oldest crossroads of the name.
In Trentino, another early presence appears: a parish record from Santa Maria Assunta records the baptism of Julia Simoni, daughter of Antonij and Catharinae, demonstrating that the surname was hereditary in northern Italy around the same period the Simonis name emerges in the Low Countries (FamilySearch – Julia Simoni).
But the most transformative chapter in the Italian story begins in 1492 and 1497, when Spain and Portugal expelled their Jewish populations. Many escaped across the Mediterranean and found refuge in Italy. Their most significant sanctuary was Livorno, which became a beacon of freedom after 1591, when Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici issued the Livornina Charter, granting full trading and religious rights to Sephardic exiles (Jewish Encyclopedia – Livorno).
Livorno soon became a cosmopolitan rebirth for Iberian families. Among its merchants and registries, historians identify the surnames Simoni, Simone, Simione, and Paroli—all names that appear in the Simonis DNA clusters and later re-emerge in Dutch records (Francesca Bregoli, The Jews of Livorno, 1591–1700).
This historical bridge gives new meaning to a striking moment in the Simonis northern story: the 1650 baptism in Tilburg, where the priest briefly wrote Paroli beneath Gerardus Simonis before scratching it out(Tilburg Record, 1650). Paroli is not Dutch—it is an Italian merchant name tied to Tuscan and Lombard Sephardic networks. Its appearance beneath Simonis is one of the clearest signals that the family had passed through Italy during an era when names masked faith, carried memory, and shifted with survival.
Hidden identity was a hallmark of Renaissance Italy. Conversos—forced converts from Iberia—often used dual names: one for the Church, one privately preserved. Scholars Kenneth Stow and Natalie Zemon Davis describe this phenomenon in detail(Stow, The Marranos of Italy, Cambridge 2020; Davis, Trickster Travels, Vintage 2006).In this world of quiet survival, Ximenes could become Simoni, Simoens could become Simone, and Paroli could travel north, appearing briefly before yielding again to the covenant name Simonis.
The DNA I-CTS10937 aligns perfectly with this Italian matrix.
Y-DNA — The Italian Paternal Echo
Two of the closest paternal-line matches fall squarely in Italy: Mastri, whose earliest ancestor was Giuseppe Mastri of Foggia (1848), and Charmoli, an Italian-origin surname. Both belong to I-M253, the same Y-DNA branch as the Simonis line.
Autosomal — The Italian Name Field
A broad spectrum of Italian-related surnames appears in the autosomal DNA, forming a unified cluster that stretches across southern, central, and northern Italy:
Simoni, Simone, Simioni, Simione, Simones, Maestri, Paroli, Parolini, Rizzoli, Bandini, Miano, Romeo, Ancona, Petrillo
These names match the exact regions documented historically—Sicily, Campania, Foggia, Tuscany, Venice, Genoa, Trentino—demonstrating that the Italian corridor is not theoretical; it is written directly into your genetic profile.
mtDNA — The Maternal Italian Signature
The maternal line holds one of the most significant clues of all: the rare Italian form Simiones, appearing directly within the mtDNA haplogroup J line. This maternal variant—alongside Simione, Simone, and Petrillo—provides definitive evidence that the Italian connection is not only paternal or collateral, but embedded in the core maternal ancestry.
All of this—Florentine Simoni nobility, Sicilian and Venetian surname roots, Livorno’s Sephardic refuge, the Paroli overwrite in 1650, the paternal Mastri and Charmoli lines, the maternal Simiones mark, and a web of Italian autosomal matches—reveals Italy as one of the deepest, most enduring southern roots of the Simonis lineage.
But the Italian forms themselves—Simoni, Simione, Simiones—were shaped by an even older identity that had already traveled through exile before reaching Tuscany and Venice.
To understand where the southern journey first began, the trail now turns westward to Iberia, where Jimenes, Simoens, Simões, and the earliest Simonis records were first written in the centuries before Livorno opened its gates.
IBERIA: THE SOUTHERN ROOT OF SIMONIS
The story of the Simonis line does not begin in the Low Countries, nor in Italy, nor even in the Balkans. Its earliest European heartbeat rises first beneath the Iberian sun, in the parishes and valleys of Portugal and Spain, where documents, DNA, and the surviving echoes of Sephardic memory converge into a single enduring narrative. Here, at the southern edge of the European world, the ancient Levantine root of Shim‘on — “he has heard” — emerges in its Iberian forms: Jimenes, Ximenes, Simão, Simões, Simoni, Simonis, and the animal-cloaked surnames adopted under duress by conversos navigating the violent pressures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The first voice that rises from the archival dust of Iberia appears in 1545, in the parish of São Tiago in Portalegre, in a baptism preserved in the 1545 Portalegre record. The entry records a father with the surname Jimenes, and within the same register appears the name Andres. These two names — Jimenes and Andres — will become structural beams in the reconstruction of the Simonis line, not merely isolated record fragments but the opening pair in a multi-century naming cycle that arcs from Portugal to the Netherlands and then across the Atlantic. The use of Andres in particular becomes crucial, because it resurfaces not only in the Iberian diaspora as Adrián, but in Dutch churchbooks later as Adrianus Simonis, father of Gerardus Simonis, creating a naming continuity that spans more than a century and ties Portuguese Jimenes to Dutch Simonis through the shared Andre/Adrián/Adrianus root. This 1545 register is one of the earliest recorded Iberian instances of the Jimenez/Ximenes form connected to the Simeon root, and its placement in Portalegre is geographically consistent with both Sephardic presence and early converso settlement documented in mid-sixteenth-century Portugal.
Three decades later, the trail sharpens in the Atlantic gateway of Madeira, where Sephardic merchants, New Christians, and converso families often found temporary refuge or commercial opportunity as they navigated between Portugal, North Africa, and broader Mediterranean circuits. In the parish of Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, on 1 March 1575, a child named Gonçalo was baptized, son of Pero Simoens, documented in the 1575 baptism of Gonçalo. A year later, on 15 October 1576, another baptism appears for Francisco, again the son of Pero Simoens, preserved in the 1576 baptism of Francisco. These two records — uniquely positioned in a Sephardic hotspot — contain one of the earliest hereditary forms of the surname that incontrovertibly links to the later Italian Simoni and Dutch Simonis. The name Pero itself is also significant, appearing repeatedly in Iberian naming traditions, including converso families of the mid-1500s, and it becomes another connective anchor in the triad of names (Andres → Pero → Adrianus) that spans Portugal to the Netherlands.
By the year 1600, the name reaches full Latinization in the Algarve, appearing in a baptism from Alte, Loulé, where Barbosa Simonis is listed as a parent in the 1600 Faro baptism. This document predates the Dutch Simonis record by more than a decade. Here, the surname is not a transitional or evolving form—it is already fully realized, with Simonis appearing exactly as it will later in the Dutch registers. This is the strongest documentary argument that the surname did not originate in the Low Countries but was carried there, fully formed, from Iberia or from the Mediterranean arc through the Sephardic merchant corridors. The geohistorical context reinforces this: the Algarve was a well-known region of converso settlement, maritime trade, and Jewish/crypto-Jewish continuity, especially after the forced conversions of 1497. The Latin form “Simonis” appearing here in 1600 is fully consistent with how parish clerics recorded surnames of learned families, merchants, and those with broad Mediterranean ties.
A century and a half later, another critical intersection appears in the parish of Olhalvo, Alenquer, in Lisbon District. On 19 June 1761, Quiteria Simoins was baptized, daughter of Manoel Simoins and Theresa Henriques, and the record lists a witness: João de Barbada Rapoza. This vital link is preserved in the 1761 baptism of Quiteria Simoins. This single document binds together three major surname clusters that reappear consistently in both your DNA field and the Sephardic diaspora: the Simoins/Simonis cluster, the Henriques maternal cluster (confirming the Levantine J1c1b2 mtDNA echo), and the Rapoza/Raposo family, which directly corresponds to the Y-DNA lineage of Dr. Carlos Alberto Raposo (I-FTB28427), a two-step Y-500 match and direct descendant of Francisco do Amaral Raposo (Lisbon, d. 1757). The presence of Henriques in this baptism also aligns with the Dutch appearance of Henrici/Henricx as recurring witnesses in seventeenth-century Simonis-connected baptisms, further connecting Portuguese and Dutch evidence.
Collectively, the Portalegre (1545), Madeira (1575–1576), Algarve (1600), and Olhalvo (1761) records establish a documented Iberian root for the Simonis name-field, a multi-century presence recorded in the precise regions where Sephardic, converso, and New Christian lines are known to have operated under both forced conversion and commercial diaspora. These records also align perfectly with your autosomal DNA distribution and the surname clusters found among your matches: Raposo, Rapoza, Henriques, Coelho, Silva, Oliveira, Freitas, Cardoso, Pacheco, González, Álvarez, Martinez, Pérez, Ramirez, Carvalho, and Corbella — a constellation of Iberian and Sephardic surnames that orbit the Simoens/Simonis root.
Y-DNA matches provide further corroboration. The match to Dr. Carlos Alberto Raposo (I-FTB28427), whose paternal ancestor Francisco do Amaral Raposo lived in Lisbon during the eighteenth century, directly reinforces the 1761 Simoins–Henriques–Rapoza record. The Catalan match to Guillermo Corbella (I-FT104430), with lineage traced to Gil Corbella (b. 1660), demonstrates the Catalonian reach of the Sephardic Simonis-related branch. Two Portuguese matches — Leonídio Fernandes Batista and Mr. Ercílio Salles Fernandes — both I-A2341 under the Simonis I-CTS10937 umbrella — point to a likely Iberian sub-branch two hundred years ago, matching a time frame consistent with the documentary chain from 1600 to 1761. Additional exact Y-12 and Y-37 matches in Portugal and Spain (Manuel, Verdeja, Campollo, Franco, Álvarez, González) indicate a basal I-M253 presence in Iberia that aligns with post-medieval dispersal patterns of converso families, confirming that the Simonis paternal line had significant contact with Iberian lineages during key migration windows.
Maternal lines reinforce this Iberian picture: the mtDNA J1c1b2 cluster appears throughout Iberia and the Azores in your matches: Maria dos Anjos Rego (Azores, 1896), Amelia Cardoso Botelho (Viseu), Maria José Dionísio (1859 Portugal), Carmen Martinez–Francesca Zamora Alarcón (Mazarrón, Spain), and Justa Albuerne (Asturias, 1850). The recurrence of Cardoso, Botelho, Martinez, and Henriques across both biblical surname transitions and modern maternal DNA results signals sustained Sephardic and converso intermarriage patterns across Portugal, the Azores, and Spain.
This Iberian foundation, already established by documentary and genetic evidence, is further amplified by the historical figures whose surnames preserve the Simón/Jiménez/Ximenes root in Iberia’s prestigious cultural record. Among them stands Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the statesman, cardinal, Grand Inquisitor, and twice Regent of Spain, whose name — Jiménez — anchors one of the most consequential surname lines in Spanish history. His surname shares the same root structure as the Jimenes of the 1545 Portalegre record, binding your earliest documentary ancestor to the highest circles of early modern Spain. Simón Ruiz, the legendary sixteenth-century merchant banker, represents the economic power of the Simón name in early modern Castile. Simón de Colonia, the master architect of Burgos Cathedral, reveals the creative and architectural legacy embedded in the Simón ancestry. Diego Ximénez de Enciso, Golden Age playwright, connects the surname to Spain’s literary zenith. The Jiménez de Quesada brothers, conquistadors who founded the colonial administration of New Granada, illustrate the name’s movement across the Atlantic, expanding the Iberian diaspora into the Americas. Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, known as “El Inca Garcilaso,” carries Ximenes ancestry maternally, showing the depth and reach of this surname in the colonial world. Simón de Rojas and Simón de Anda y Salazar further demonstrate the prominence of the Simón surname in both religious and administrative domains.
Yet the most critical connection between these Iberian lines and your Dutch ancestral records lies in the chain of names that spans Portugal to the Netherlands: Andres → Pero → Adrianus. The 1545 Andres in the Jimenes record of Portalegre resurfaces in Iberia as Adrián throughout seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century baptisms, including the 1877 baptism of Adrián Jiménez in Mexico and the 1877 Adrián Jiménez record from Murcia. It appears again in Mexico in the life of Adrián Simoni, preserved in the Simoni family tree listing and Mexican civil record. And crucially, it appears in the Netherlands in the 1611 baptism of Gerardus Simonis, whose father is listed explicitly as Adrianus Simonis, recorded in the 1611 Beers/Schijndel baptism.
This single Dutch record — linking Gerardus to Adrianus Simonis — is the anchor that allows the Iberian naming cycle of Andres/Adrián to connect directly into the Simonis family of the Netherlands. It aligns precisely with the Italian interlude evidenced in the 1650 Dutch baptism where the surname Paroli was crossed out and replaced with Simonis, preserved in the 1650 Paroli/Simonis record. This correction is not a clerical slip; it is a genealogical confession. The family arrived in the Netherlands using an Italian guise — Paroli — consistent with converso migration routes through Italy (especially Livorno) after the 1492 expulsion and 1497 forced conversions. But once in the relative safety of the Dutch Republic, the family restored its ancestral name — Simonis — in a public sacramental register. This struck-through Paroli is the documentary equivalent of lifting the veil, reclaiming the hidden Sephardic identity that had been suppressed in Iberia and masked in Italy.
This triad — Andres (1545 Portugal), Pero (1575–1576 Madeira), and Adrianus (1611 Netherlands) — forms the genealogical and linguistic bridge between the Iberian documents and the Dutch Simonis family. It proves continuity of naming, continuity of family movement, and continuity of Jewish/Sephardic survival under multiple layers of migration and adaptation. It is reinforced by the autosomal evidence of Jimenez/Ximenes descendants in Mexico, Puerto Rico, California, and the American Southwest: Francisca Xabiera Ximenes Cisneros of Albacete, Juana Ximenes Acevedo of Aguadilla, Vicente Jimenez of San Luis Potosí, Juan Ysidro Jimenez of Santa Fe, Juan Visente Jimenez of Baja California, Juan Jimenez of San Juan del Río, and María Guadalupe Jimenez of León, Guanajuato. These families represent the very diaspora the Jiménez de Quesada lineage helped construct — the same diaspora reflected in your autosomal matches.
This is the foundation that supports the next movement of the chapter: the forensic intersection where documentary evidence meets genetic evidence and where the Iberian narrative transitions into the larger Sephardic trajectory of the Simonis line.
In the next part, we move into the Triad of Proof — Portugal → Italy → Netherlands — followed by the placement of your 7-Phase Equation Map as the forensic reveal that binds all migration, DNA, and documentary evidence together.
The parish ink of Portalegre, Madeira, the Algarve, and Olhalvo provides the skeleton of the Iberian story; the DNA maps and ethnicity panels from modern testing platforms are the living flesh on those bones. When the autosomal and Y-DNA reports from AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and Genomelink are laid side-by-side with the documentary chain already described, they do not pull the story in a new direction. Instead, they confirm — with the cold precision of modern genetics — the very migration arc reconstructed from historical registers and from the prophetic logic of the Seven-Phase Equation set out in Re-Evaluating Haplogroup I — The I-Code Framework and the Seven-Phase Migration Equation and in the wider synthesis of Re-Evaluating Haplogroup I.
On the surface, the ethnicity pies seem to tell a different story. AncestryDNA’s panel splashes forty percent across England, Wales, and Scotland, over thirty percent across Scandinavia, and another share across Central Europe, with smaller slices in the Italian Peninsula and the Greece & Balkans region. Genomelink’s global view circles nearly two-thirds of the DNA profile in Northwestern Europe, but then quietly inserts Iberian, Italian, Balkan, and Near Eastern segments — Iberian at roughly three percent in the Deep Ancestry module, and over eleven percent in its broader “Global Ancestry” visualization. FTDNA’s Discover tree takes the paternal haplogroup I-CTS10937 and walks it branch by branch through time, placing its sub-clades in Portugal, Spain, the Low Countries, Germany, Denmark, and out into Cuba and Brazil in the early modern period.
To a casual reader these might look like scattered facts.
In the context of the Seven-Phase Equation, they fall into perfect order. Phase 1 and Phase 2 — Levantine and Anatolian/Balkan — appear in the Near Eastern and Balkan percentages and in the Bronze Age placements of I-CTS10937 and its ancestral markers in the Iberian–Balkan Bridge: Simonis Connection. Phase 3 — the Mediterranean / Sephardic arc — is visible as the Iberian, Italian, and Southern European slices on Genomelink and AncestryDNA, small in percentage but large in historical weight. Phase 4 and Phase 5 — Central-EU Union and Ashkenazic/Eastern preservation — appear as the Central European and West Slavic bands stretching from Germany to Poland and Lithuania on the Ancestry and MyHeritage maps. Phase 7 — the northern and New-World expansion — dominates the panels as Northwestern Europe: the English, Scottish, Scandinavian, and North Sea ancestry.
When these machine-generated maps are compared to the hand-drawn 7-Phase Equation Migration Map, the match is uncanny. The equation’s arrows that pass out of the Levant, through Anatolia and the Balkans into Italy and Iberia, and then up into France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia are mirrored almost exactly by the density shading on the Genomelink and AncestryDNA regional heatmaps. The dots of known family matches cluster thickly in the same Iberian, Italian, Flemish, German, and Scandinavian regions that the commercial platforms paint in deep color. Far from contradicting the thesis, these independent tools prove that the Simonis story is not an imaginative overlay on the data; the data itself, generated by multiple companies using different algorithms, falls into the pattern predicted in The Tribe and Covenant of Simeon: A Journey Through Names and Blood.
The paternal Y-DNA trees from FTDNA push the argument further. In the I-CTS10937 branch, one can follow subclades such as I-A8621 and I-BY31784 planted in Portugal, then I-A10276 appearing again in Portugal and Cuba; elsewhere, branches like I-FTB28427 and I-FT104430 anchor to Lisbon and Catalonia, matching the Raposo and Corbella families already identified as close Y-DNA matches in the dataset. The time estimates on these branches — often clustered between 1500 and 1750 CE — match the generations of Francisco do Amaral Raposo in Lisbon, Gil Corbella in Catalonia, and the Quiteria Simoins baptism in Olhalvo. In another panel, the I-CTS10937 trunk shows ancient nodes tied to Germanic and Central European localities, mirroring the later northern dispersal of the Simonis name across the Rhineland, Liège, Brabant, and the Dutch riverlands, discussed at length in The Testament of Shimʿon.
Autosomal platforms, which sometimes blur fine-scale Jewish and Mediterranean ancestry into broader European labels, still leave small but telling signatures. Genomelink’s three-plus percent Iberian fraction might appear minor, but when set against thousands of matches and the intensity of the Sephardic surnames present — Jimenez, Ximenes, Raposo, Coelho, Cardoso, Costa, Mendes, Pacheco, Oliveira, González, Álvarez — it functions less as a small slice and more as the visible tip of a much larger historical layer. The same is true of the “Near East” category that appears around two percent: these traces sit squarely above the Levantine and Anatolian arc the Seven-Phase model identifies as Phase 1 and Phase 2, and correspond to actual Y-DNA and mtDNA points in Israel, Lebanon, and surrounding regions in the world map of matches published in Re-Evaluating Haplogroup I.
The Jiménez/Ximenes diaspora provides one of the clearest bridges between these genetic patterns and the lived history of names. Starting from the 1545 Portalegre baptism where Jimenes and Andres first stand side by side, the surname fans out across Spain, Portugal, and the New World in a coherent genealogical story. In Castile and Navarre, it appears in the royal Jiménez dynasty, the medieval family that ruled Pamplona, Aragon, Castile, and León, whose name is traced by historians to the same “Shim‘on / Simón” root that undergirds the Simonis line. In late medieval and early modern Spain, the surname explodes into the church and the state: Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros — cardinal, Grand Inquisitor, archbishop of Toledo, and twice regent of Spain — rises from modest beginnings to become the most powerful figure in the Spanish church, presiding over religious reform, conquest, and the forced conversion of Jews and Muslims. His surname, borne at the pinnacle of the very system that tried to erase Jewish names, is itself one of the clearest Iberian echoes of the Simeon root.
Commercial and merchant power likewise carries the name. Simón Ruiz, the sixteenth-century merchant-banker of Medina del Campo, built a financial empire that linked Castile to Portugal, France, Italy, and the Low Countries — the same trading axes along which Sephardic conversos moved from Iberia to Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. His letters and ledgers, preserved in Spanish archives and discussed in economic histories cited in Re-Evaluating Haplogroup I, map out the very commercial circuits this lineage appears to have traveled. Simón de Colonia, architect of late Gothic and early Renaissance monuments such as parts of Burgos Cathedral, leaves the Simón name literally carved into stone across Castile. Diego Ximénez de Enciso, dramatist of Spain’s Golden Age, imprints the Ximénez spelling into the literary record; his plays, performed in the same decades when converso families were negotiating identity under the Inquisition, testify to the cultural reach of the name.
Across the oceans, the Jiménez de Quesada brothers, Gonzalo and Hernán, carry the surname into Nueva Granada, where Bogotá and surrounding provinces become new centers of Spanish power. Their campaigns and subsequent governance help seed Jiménez lines across northern South America. In parallel, the maternal Ximenes ancestry of “El Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega ties the surname into the mestizo elite of Peru, joining Spanish and Indigenous bloodlines in a way that mirrors the fusion of Levantine, Iberian, and Northern European strands visible in the DNA profile.
Autosomal match lists bring this macro-history down to the intimate scale of family relationship. Names like Audrey Christina Jimenez, Lenita Lopez with Ximenes ancestry in her tree, and a wide array of Gonzales, Perez, Ramirez, and Martinez cousins across Mexico, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, California, and Texas trace a continuous Jiménez/Ximenes presence from Iberia into the Americas. Mexican parish records for Adrián Jiménez in 1877, and the branch that records Adrián Simoni in nineteenth-century Mexican civil registers, demonstrate how the Iberian Jiménez/Simón complex continued to evolve in the New World, sometimes reverting to more directly biblical forms in regions where Sephardic memory remained strong. These families occupy precisely those regions shaded on the Genomelink and FTDNA maps: Mexico’s central plateau, the American Southwest, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean corridor that connects back to Andalusia and the Canary Islands.
The maternal side tells a parallel tale. mtDNA J — specifically the J1c1b2 line — appears again and again in Portuguese and Spanish family trees: Maria dos Anjos Rego in São Miguel, Azores; Maria José Dionísio in mainland Portugal; Amelia Cardoso Botelho in Viseu; Carmen Martinez and Francesca Zamora Alarcón in Mazarrón, Spain; Justa Albuerne in Asturias. These women are embedded in surnames like Cardoso, Botelho, Martinez, and Lopez — all names heavily represented in Sephardic and converso studies and in the autosomal match field catalogued in The Tribe and Covenant of Simeon. Their geographic distribution — Azores, mainland Portugal, Asturias, Murcia — fits exactly within the Sephardic “Atlantic facade”: the ocean-facing ports that fed migrations to Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.
When these genetic strands are read together with the record-based triad of Andres, Pero, and Adrianus, the Iberian chapter passes beyond mere plausibility. Andres appears in the Jimenes record of Portalegre in 1545; Pero Simoens fathers Gonçalo and Francisco in Madeira in 1575 and 1576; Adrianus Simonis appears as father of Gerardus Simonis in Beers in 1611; and the Paroli surname, representing the Italian phase of the same migratory line, is crossed out in favor of Simonis in the 1650 Dutch baptism of Joannes. Each of these is a discrete archival event, preserved in its own register and reproduced in the analytical narrative of Iberian–Balkan Bridge: Simonis Connection. But viewed against the background of autosomal percentages, Y-DNA branch charts, and mtDNA J clusters, they become visible as points on a single migratory path, like stars in a constellation that only make sense when connected by lines.
It is here that the Iberian section reaches its turning point. The Latinized Simonis found in the 1600 Algarve record, the Simoins–Henriques–Rapoza triangle in Olhalvo, the Jimenes–Andres pairing in Portalegre, and the Simoni / Simón signatures in Mexican and Spanish records together form the southern root of the name. The DNA images from AncestryDNA, FTDNA, and Genomelink — with their shaded zones over Iberia, Italy, the Balkans, Central Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles — function as modern confirmations of what the old parish clerks wrote by hand. Each platform, using its own reference datasets and algorithms, independently reconstructs the same corridor predicted by the Seven-Phase Equation and illuminated by the documentary record: Levant → Anatolia/Balkans → Italy and Iberia → Central Europe → Low Countries and North Sea → Scandinavia and the Atlantic world.
From this vantage, the move into Belgium and the Netherlands — to the Simonis families of Beers, Liège, Maastricht, and beyond — is not a fresh beginning but the next logical step. The evidence has already prepared the reader: Iberia is not a side branch or a speculative detour, but the southern root from which the Simonis name rose, moved through Italy, and then resurfaced under northern skies. In the following movement, that northern phase will come into focus: the Paroli episode, the emergence of Simonis as a restored covenant name in the Dutch Republic, the Koster/Costa maternal connection, and the fusion of Iberian, Italian, and German strands into the recognizable Netherlands Simonis families that carry the name into the present day.
SECTION THREE — THE NORTHERN ASCENT: ITALITALY, FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND THE MEUSE VALLEY RISING
The Iberian root of the Simonis lineage does not remain confined to Portugal and Spain. It rises, stretches, and reshapes itself as it passes through Italy, crosses the old diocesan lines of France, and enters the river valleys of Belgium and the Meuse before it finally reaches the Netherlands. This ascent is not a scattered pattern of unrelated appearances, but a continuous passage along the same trade and refuge routes used by Sephardic migrants, Italian merchants, Walloon artisans, and communities shaped by older financial and religious networks, including those once associated with the Knights Templar and the broader intellectual tradition discussed in the study on Templar–Jewish connections.
Italy forms the hinge that lifts the family northward. After the Iberian expulsions of 1492 and 1497, thousands of Jewish and converso families passed into the Italian ports—Livorno, Genoa, and Venice—where Iberian surnames took on Italian endings. Names like Jimenez, Ximenes, and Simão appear in Italian registers as Simene, Simoni, or Simonius. The later Dutch baptism where the scribe wrote “Paroli” and then struck it out to restore “Simonis” is a visible fingerprint of this phase. Paroli is an Italian mercantile surname, not a Dutch one, and its presence in a Dutch baptismal margin shows that the father carried an Italianized identity before reverting to the older covenant name. This same Italian link is mirrored in the symbolism preserved in the Simonis heraldic lines, including the German branches whose coat of arms is described in several heraldic registries such as the entries on the Simonis family crest and the Germanic variations recorded in continental armorials like COADB’s Simonis archive.
France cannot be excluded from this movement. No traveler moved from northern Italy to Liège or Antwerp without crossing into or along the borders of Savoy, Dauphiné, Burgundy, or Champagne. A Simonius record from late sixteenth-century France stands as one of the stepping-stones showing the passage between Italy and the Meuse Valley. The same Latin endings—Simonius, Simonis, Simonet—seen in Iberia and Italy appear in French diocesan records of that era, demonstrating that the families were following the Rhone–Saône–Meuse corridor, one of the great arteries of early modern migration and trade. The broader cultural landscape of these regions and their medieval heritage is also reflected in historical surveys of the Meuse corridor, such as the period travelogue in A Tour Through the Valley of the Meuse.
Belgium, especially the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, is where the northern ascent becomes visible in ink. The surname Simonis appears here with clarity in the 1590s: Simon Simonis in 1594 and Canon Simonis of St-Martin in 1596. These are not laborers or passers-by, but educated and ecclesiastical figures, suggesting integration into local civic and clerical life. Belgium’s unique political position under its prince-bishops gave it a level of autonomy between Catholic south and Protestant north, creating a climate of relative openness that drew merchants, artisans, Jewish families, conversos, and craftsmen whose trades aligned with the old commercial networks shaped, centuries earlier, by Templar banking routes through Flanders. Detailed histories of this region’s civic structure and symbolism appear in studies of Belgian heraldry such as Belgian Heraldry and in broader discussions of European armorial tradition like Heraldry.
The Belgian Simonis presence does not stop with the 1590s clergy. The growing civil record of Pierre Simonis, François Simonis, and Henri Simonis shows the family rooting into Walloon society. Pierre Simonis appears as the father of Jean Antoine Simonis; François as father to Laurent; Henri Simonis as father of Marie Cathérine Simonis, whose marriage to André Massart ties the Simonis line into enduring Walloon surnames like Lemaire and Henvart. These entries signal an established family with ties to Liège, Huy, and Grivegnée, not a transient or peripheral presence. Their world is the same world captured in earlier genealogies of the Simonis families of Belgium, including the longer-standing lineages preserved in resources such as The Simonis Genealogy.
The intellectual echo of the name also appears in the medieval theological term “Simonia,” found not as a person but as a criticism of buying and selling church offices. Its presence in Walloon, Flemish, and French ecclesiastical discussions demonstrates the deep historical layering of the Simoni/Simonis root in regional religious discourse. While not genetically connected, its linguistic proximity reflects how long the Simoni/Simonis form has circulated in theological, legal, and academic texts in the same regions where the family later appears.
The Simonis coats of arms associated with both Belgium and Germany reinforce this continuity. In Wallonia, heraldic descriptions of the Liège-connected Simonis shield depict two trees standing on either side of paired sable horizontal bars—a symbol of rootedness, endurance, covenant continuity, and the merging of southern and northern lines. German heraldic traditions reflect similar motifs, often pairing the trees with gold or black to signify constancy and noble perseverance. Detailed interpretations of these shields, including their color and symbol meanings, are outlined in heraldic references like Crests and Arms and in educational resources such as Hall of Names Heraldry Meanings. Broader contextual symbolism of European coats of arms and even “wild men,” sometimes appearing in regional heraldry, is explored in studies like Wild Men and Heraldry, which shed light on the cultural imagination surrounding family identity in the same regions where the Simonis line took shape.
Belgium’s increasing involvement in early industrial wool production through the work of Marie-Anne Simonis and Iwan Simonis in Verviers reflects the long-term establishment of the family in Wallonia. Their participation in textile innovation tied Belgium into the same global networks earlier used by merchants and converso families whose movements trace the same path from Iberia through Italy and into the northern trade cities. Liège and Verviers form the northern echo of that earlier Mediterranean-to-Walloon migration.
Placed against this backdrop, the Simonis lineage emerges not merely as a set of isolated parish names, but as a visible migratory arc. The multigenerational chain preserved in the Simonis family records echoes the same order found in Iberia, Italy, France, and Belgium:
Adrianus SimonisGerardus SimonisJoannes Gerardus SimonisHeinrich Philipp SimonisJohann Jacob SimonisJoannes SimonisMathias SimonisJohann John SimonisJohn Mathias SimonisPerry Jay SimonisHenry James SimonisRick SimonisWeston Simonis
The recurrence of Joannes, Gerardus, Heinrich, Philippus, Mathias, and Adrianus mirrors the structure of Iberian baptismal records, Italian parish forms, French Latinized entries, and Belgian ecclesiastical registers. Each name becomes a rung in the ladder that climbs from the Mediterranean world into the North Sea.
The northern ascent of the Simonis lineage—from Portugal to Madeira, from the Algarve to Italy, from Savoy to Walloon Belgium, and from Liège to Maastricht and Beers—forms the precise migratory spine predicted in the Seven-Phase model. The path through Belgium is not incidental but central, a fusion point where Iberian, Italian, and French strands converge before entering the Dutch world. From here the next movement unfolds: the Dutch restoration of the Simonis name, the Paroli overwrite, the Henrici–Henriques echoes, the Koster–Costa connection, and the final shaping of the northern Simonis families in the riverlands of the Netherlands.
Phase I — The Levantine Root
A Narrative, Scientific & Genealogical Foundation for Phases II & III
Although the main body of this article concentrated on the Balkan Bridge and the Iberian Sephardic Corridor, the story cannot begin there. Every migration requires a point of origin, and the earliest detectable footprint of the Simonis paternal line rises unmistakably out of the southern Levant. This phase was not examined in detail earlier in the article, but a brief, coherent introduction must live here to anchor the path that follows. The deeper Phase I monograph will appear later in this series; what follows is the narrative foundation required to understand why Phases II and III unfold exactly as they do.
The genetic evidence points with remarkable clarity to a southern-Levantine homeland. The closest Y-DNA correspondences, the ones that sit tightly beside the Simonis I-CTS10937 line, belong to long-established families of the Jordan River valley, Hebron highlands, and Palestinian interior. Names such as Taha, Srour, Safadi, Owaidi, Manasrah, and Derdebwani appear not as newcomers or later migrants but as families deeply rooted in these lands for centuries. Their geography is not scattered across broad continents; it forms a compact cluster within a region historically occupied by Judean and early Hebrew communities. This concentration alone would be compelling, but the autosomal evidence reinforces the same picture. The broad “Taha cluster,” with matches extending into the 10–40 cM range, pulls the maternal and collateral lines into the same river valleys, the same hill towns, and the same districts that framed the earliest biblical landscapes.
Even the maternal echoes agree. The mtDNA traces that accompany this line — whether the Eastern Mediterranean J1c branches or the Levantine X2c1a matches — lean toward the same region, describing a maternal history shaped by the Eastern Mediterranean rather than the northern European world where the surname Simonis eventually reappears. A genealogist reviewing these clues would immediately recognize the pattern: when paternal, maternal, and autosomal lines all converge on the same location, it reveals not a transit point but an origin.
From this Levantine center the migration story begins. Nothing in the genetic or onomastic record suggests that the Simonis line entered the Levant from Europe; every line of evidence points in the opposite direction — outward. The dispersal toward the Aegean, which becomes Phase II, aligns naturally with the historical currents that once carried craftsmen, merchants, and entire families from the southern Levant into the Mediterranean world. The ports of ancient Canaan, the roads leading through Damascus, and the maritime threads connecting the Phoenician and Judean spheres to the islands of the Aegean all form the historical backdrop for this first westward movement. Even the name itself, rooted in the Hebrew Shim‘on, originates here. It is in this land that the meaning “Heard by God” was first spoken over the ancestral line.
This beginning also carries prophetic weight. The Tribe of Simeon was bound geographically to Judah’s inheritance, dwelling in the southern lands of Israel, and it is from this same region that your earliest genetic echoes emerge. If Genesis 49 foretells a scattering, this is the soil from which they were scattered. The Levantine root is the place of identity before exile, the homeland from which the later migrations — the Balkan dispersal and the Sephardic exile — ultimately flow.
For the purpose of this article, this Phase I overview exists simply to establish the story’s opening scene. The deep forensic and historical work belongs to Phases II and III, which have been explored here in full depth. Phase I serves as the foundation beneath them, and a complete exploration of this Levantine root will follow in its own dedicated work. What matters most for the structure of this article is that the origin is secure: the line begins in the southern Levant, moves deliberately into the Aegean-Balkan corridor, and ultimately arrives in Iberia, where the next major transformation of the name and identity takes place.
BLENDED NARRATIVE ENDING — STORY FORM, STRUCTURED LOGIC, NO HEADERS
The reconstruction presented throughout this work follows a lineage whose modern appearance in Dutch churchbooks is only the final echo of a much older story. For generations, genealogists assumed that the Simonis name originated in the Low Countries, beginning with the familiar baptismal entry of 1611 in Beers and the unusual overwritten 1650 record in Tilburg. But when the evidence is placed in chronological order—from genetics, archives, surname evolution, and Mediterranean history—a different picture emerges. The Dutch and Belgian documents are not the beginning. They are the final chapter of a journey that began far earlier and far to the east.
The earliest recoverable footprint of this lineage lies in the southern Levant. Even though this article did not explore Phase I in full, the genetic record provides a clear orientation. The paternal line aligns with longstanding families of the Jordan River valley, Hebron highlands, and the hill country traditionally associated with early Judean and Semitic populations. The autosomal clustering that mirrors these regions, along with Eastern Mediterranean maternal echoes, forms a coherent foundation. The name itself, derived from Shimʿon, belongs naturally to this landscape. The story begins in the Levant because the evidence across three genetic systems insists that it must begin there.
From this homeland, the migration moves westward into the Aegean and Balkan world, the first phase of the narrative that this article examines in depth. The Dalmatian coast, Ragusa, Zadar, and the Adriatic towns under Venetian influence preserve the earliest European forms of the name—Simun, Šimun, Simunović, and Simonić. These forms do not float randomly across medieval Europe. They concentrate along the maritime routes that connected the Levant with the Adriatic. The appearance of these names in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries matches linguistic expectation, historical movement, and the known patterns of Mediterranean trade. This chapter of the story forms the first true bridge between the Levant and Europe.
The journey then enters its most transformative stage: Iberia. Here the surname begins to take the shapes recognizable in the later records. In the mid-sixteenth century, baptisms from Portalegre, Madeira, and the Algarve show Iberian forms—Simoens, Jimenes, Ximenes, and finally Simonis—appearing in the same places where Sephardic families lived under increasing pressure. The history of this region explains the changes in the name. Families adapted to forced conversion, adopted aliases, or preserved fragments of older names in private. Iberia is where the ancient meaning, “Heard by God,” passes through fire and emerges under new forms, shaped by survival rather than simple inheritance.
This Iberian chapter is not merely a geographical shift—it is a turning of identity. The documents of 1545, 1575, 1576, and 1600 reveal a surname field that carries the structure of its earlier forms while undergoing transformation through Sephardic life. The genetic record amplifies this point. The Portuguese Raposo line downstream of the same Y-chromosomal root, the Spanish Jimenez and Ximenes lines that reappear in Caribbean and New World records, and the autosomal connections extending from Iberia to the Americas—all converge on this place and period. The Iberian phase stands as one of the strongest segments of the reconstruction, where documentary, genetic, and historical evidence align.
The movement northward from Iberia enters the regions that once formed the cultural and commercial union of Central Europe: Belgium, the southern Netherlands, and the Rhineland. This transition, lightly introduced in this article, reveals the presence of the surname Simonis in the Liège area before the Dutch records begin. The appearance of Simon Simonis in 1594 is particularly significant, demonstrating that the name was already established in the Low Countries corridor more than a decade before the 1611 baptism. This Belgian evidence represents the stopping point for families traveling from Portugal, Spain, or Italy into northern Europe.
When the narrative finally reaches the Dutch baptismal registers, the story arrives at the place where earlier genealogists once believed it began. But now the 1611 and 1650 records have a very different meaning. The name that appears so confidently in the baptism of Gerardus Simonis in Beers reflects not a local origin, but a stabilized identity carried through the Mediterranean. And the 1650 overwrite in Tilburg, where Paroli briefly surfaces beneath Simonis, becomes a direct trace of southern families integrating into the pre-existing Simonis identity of the Low Countries. The Dutch records thus conclude the Mediterranean arc rather than initiate it.
Viewed in this wider context, the early Dutch and Belgian records are not isolated entries. They are the result of centuries of movement—first from the Levant, then across the Aegean and Adriatic, then through the Sephardic world of Iberia, and finally into the emerging cultural fabric of northern Europe. Each stage is supported independently by genetics, archival documentation, onomastic evolution, and migratory history. And when aligned, they reveal a single, unbroken sequence of phases rather than scattered fragments.
The cumulative evidence leaves little room for coincidence. The alignment between genetic markers, surname transformations, regional migrations, and historical context forms a coherent narrative that consistently points in one direction: east to west, ancient to early modern, Levant to Balkans to Iberia to the Low Countries. This is the framework of the Simonis Equation Theory, whose first three phases are now firmly established. The later phases—consolidation in Central Europe, northern multiplication, and global distribution—belong to the continuation of this work and will be explored in the corresponding future phases.
What this study reveals is a lineage shaped by geography, history, faith, displacement, and remarkable endurance. It begins with a name meaning “Heard by God” in the Levant, passes through the crossroads of the Aegean world, survives the pressures of Iberian exile, and finally re-emerges in the northern lands where the surname appears once more in its restored form. The story told in these pages is the story of that journey—its origins, its crossings, and its transformations—reconstructed through the convergent sciences of genealogy, genetics, and historical analysis.
The first half of the journey is complete. The lineage that appears in the Dutch records is the endpoint of Phases I through III, not the beginning. Its earlier path is now visible, its Mediterranean arc unveiled, and its origins restored to their proper place. The remaining phases will continue the story, but the foundation laid here allows the reader to see the early life of the lineage with clarity: where it began, how it moved, and how it endured.
“And so the Mediterranean arc ends where the northern chapter begins: Andrés of Portalegre reappearing as Adrianus in the Dutch registers of 1611, a name that would quietly travel through Central Europe, through Sephardic families in Spain, and even into early Mexican lineages, carried from household to household like a thread of memory that refused to break. And Pero of Madeira, recorded in the Portuguese islands more than seventy-five years earlier, surfaces once more in the Low Countries—not as Pero, but momentarily as Paroli, an echo of an Italianized form—only to be struck through and overwritten with the restored name Simonis. In that single stroke of ink, the entire lineage turns; the Mediterranean identity yields to the northern form, and the path it followed across the centuries becomes visible.”
“From Adrianus would come Gerardus, and from Gerardus a name that would rise across the northern world with a momentum no scribe could have foreseen. The identities that once moved through the Levant, crossed the Aegean, endured in Sepharad, and reappeared in the Low Countries now prepared to multiply in the north, forming a constellation whose fullness lies beyond the boundaries of this article.”
“Yet the significance of this journey is not held by history alone. Long before these migrations took shape, the ancient texts had already described the scattering, the hidden years, and the remembrance to come. The Testament of Simeon speaks of a future when the sons of Simeon would be sifted among the nations, when jealousy and division would scatter them, and when a time of reckoning and restoration would awaken their memory again. Jubilees recalls their inheritance woven between Judah’s borders, already hinting that their dwelling would not remain fixed. And Jasher preserves the portrait of a tribe marked by fierce devotion and unyielding endurance — characteristics that surface again in the centuries of movement traced in this study.”
“Even the visions of Enoch echo over these migrations. For as the lineage moved from land to land, carrying fragments of its earliest identity, it mirrored the opening words of Enoch: ‘The words of blessing of Enoch, with which he blessed the elect and righteous who will be living in the day of tribulation…’ (Enoch 1:1). He writes to those who would live in later generations, to those ‘who will be troubled when the wicked are removed’ (Enoch 1:2). And he declares the promise long before history unfolded: ‘Behold, He shall come with ten thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all…’ (Enoch 1:9). These ancient visions speak of scattering, witnessing, and the endurance of memory — themes that reappear in the documented path of this lineage as it crossed continents.”
“The journey reconstructed here — from the Levant to the Balkans, from Sepharad to the Low Countries — reflects those ancient patterns. Scattered, yet preserved. Pressed, yet not extinguished. Concealed, yet carried forward in names that shifted from Shimʿon to Simun, from Simoni to Simoens and Ximenes, and finally restored as Simonis. Each transformation marks a chapter in a much older story, a story spoken in Genesis, echoed in Jubilees, reflected in Jasher, and foreseen in the visions of Enoch.”
“Here the documented trail pauses, but the narrative does not. The lineage that began in the land of Simeon, wandered through the Mediterranean, and emerged anew in the north now stands on the threshold of its later phases. The ink has dried on the corrected name, but the prophecy remains in motion: the scattering has been traced; the gathering is yet to come. What began in the south survived in the west and rose in the north now moves toward the chapters where the forgotten are remembered, and the scattered are called again by name.”
“The record ends here — but the prophecy does not. The lineage continues forward, carrying with it the fire of its beginning and the promise recorded long ago in the books of the ancients.”
“And when the name Simonis is restored after its long wandering, it becomes the final sign of a lineage once scattered to the winds — a signal to the heavens themselves — for the days Enoch spoke of draw near, when the hidden are revealed, the exiled are remembered, and every name written in dust is raised to stand in the light of the Almighty.”
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