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From: "Colin Ferguson" <>
Subject: Re: [R-M222] R-M222 with 390=24
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 08:24:58 -0800


Hi Pablo,
There is good reason to believe that not all Ferguson originate in
Scotland. Knox in his History of Mayo (Ireland) tells us that O'Fergus
held the parish of Burrishoole in 1303. In county Leitrim, Ireland the
Erenachs of Rossinver were the Fergusons or O'Fergusas. MacLysaght
says the name became Ferris in county Kerry. I am of the opinion that
the name sprung up all over the place though I am hard pressed to
substantiate that. Do you know now some people are naming their
newborn sons Barrack? I think there was a time when Fergus was a
popular name and with patronymics coming into play many independent
progenitors of the name came to be.

I have constructed phylograms in attempt to see how many genetic
Ferguson families there are in the project. A fundamental problem
arises with such an approach, i.e. at what point in time does one say
that independent genetic families begin? In the case of R-M222 if we
go back 1900 years then there is only one family, if we look a
clusters that appear to originate about 1200 years ago then there is
one family and four isolated individuals and finally at 700 years
there are three families and six isolated individuals.

Despite having 200 people in our project our sample size is small and
as it grows so too does the number of isolated individuals. I realize
that some of these are due to NPE but I don't dismiss them all as
such, rather I think some are the tip of an iceberg that has yet to be
sampled and others are representative of a line on the verge of
daughtering out.

Cheers,
Colin

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