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From:
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] R1b1c7 in England
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 05:49:29 EDT
In a message dated 6/3/2007 4:25:26 A.M. Central Standard Time,
writes:
John:
You pointed out that there are many very English surnames in the R1b1c7 data
bank. You also said that many (most?) are from the north near the Scottish
border. If R1b1c7 originated thousands of years before surnames were adopted
among a people that occupied northwest Ireland AND southwest Scotland, it
seems logical to me that descendants could have spread south in Britain and
later, when surnames came along, adopted those English names.
I personally suspect that's about what happened. The DNA experts (which I'm
not) are so insistent the NW Irish DNA originated in Ireland I have to go
along with that. Maybe the Irish monasteries did draw in a lot of Irish
settlers from the NW of Ireland. I do know they came and went for hundreds of
years. There are even late entries in the Irish annals of Somerled coming to
Derry to ask an O'Brollahan to take over the monastery in the 12th century.
Columcille lived long before the advent of surnames (ca. 850 AD). I don't know
how they might have gone from the western isles into central and lowland
Scotland but maybe they did.
One thing I was struck by with Scottish DNA matches to the NW Irish DNA. In
Ireland we find the DNA heavily concentrated in certain clans and
geographical areas, from NW Ireland (Donegal, L'Derry, Tryone) to counties in Connacht.
Almost all of the Dohertys and McLaughins tested so far from Donegal are NW
irish. So are the O'Gallaghers, O'Boyles and O'Donnells. But in Scotland
the DNA doesn't so much run in formal clans but seems spread across the
countryside in scattered families with different surnames. I'm not sure what this
might mean except they might have been indigenous to Scotland or settled
there long in the past and were overun by other tribes and dynasties, their
original clan structure destroyed by conquest and the survivors melded in with
other tribes and peoples or were absorbed into new social and political
structures.
Your guess is as good as mine, maybe better. But I have yet to see a single
Scottish clan of any size that is composed primarily of NW Irish. Some
claim the Robertsons are - but there are lots of non-matching Robertsons in their
surname project. Instead the Scottish matches seem scattered here and there
among different Scottish clans under different surnames.
That's just my impression, for what it's worth.
John
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