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Archiver > DNA-R1B1C7 > 2007-06 > 1180845854


From: "David Wilson" <>
Subject: [DNA-R1B1C7] Mapping Resources
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 21:44:14 -0700


I'm glad John mentioned the Surname Profiler in his thoughtful post. If list
subscribers don't know it, they should. The link is
http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/default.aspx

Entry to the search function is hard to spot if you haven't been there
before. Look to the right side of the horizontal green bar.

Like John, I have used this site to see where those surnames with an R1b1c7
component cluster in England and Scotland. Like John, I found them heavily
piled up in lowland and western Scotland, with some density in northwest
England. We need to bear in mind that the surname is not always a reliable
analog for the haplogroup, and in those few cases where elevated density for
a particular surname is found in the Highlands or in the east, we need to
recognize that the R1b1c7 component in the surname can be quite small.

A somewhat similar resource is available for Ireland at
http://www.ireland.com/ancestor/index.cfm This is a for-pay genealogical
site, but the surname search (middle of the screen) is free. Surname
searching won't give you density maps, but it will give you tabular data
including household counts for the relevant counties.

I haven't yet taken the next step in making Irish density maps, but there is
commercial software available that will convert tabular data to such
graphics.

One worry: the graphics produced by the Surname Profiler are not always in
good agreement with the maps produced by a commercial product call the
British 19th Century Surname Atlas. One would expect that mapping resources
that are based on the same 1881 census would produce mostly identical maps,
and I am troubled at what I perceive as inconsistency. I have not yet
systematically explored the differences to see how bad the disagreement is
or whether there are ways to bring the different representations into
alignment with one another.

I will mention in passing that the Surname Atlas (not the Surname Profiler)
shows Lanarkshire as a hotspot for surnames in which a higher R1b1c7
component is seen.

David Wilson






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