Y chromosomes and surnames in Britain.

[Beorn]

Y chromosomes and surnames in Britain




From the paper:

Some haplogroups that are rare (less than 10%) or absent in the controls exist at high frequencies within particular surnames: examples are hgA1a in R., E1a in Bray, G in Wadsworth, J2 in Ketley, T in Feakes, Q* in Mallinson, R1* in Northam, and R1a in Swindlehurst (Figure 2a). Attenborough provides the clearest signal of coancestry, with 87% of chromosomes belonging to hgE1b1b1, which is present at only 1% in controls.

Of interest:

Direct analysis of Y-STR haplotypes in father-son pairs gives mutation rate estimates around 2.1 x 10-3 per STR per generation (Gusmão et al. 2005), while an
‘evolutionary’ rate based on diversity accumulated in specific lineages within
populations (Zhivotovsky et al. 2004) provides a rate some three times lower,
at 6.9 x 10-4.

...

We therefore chose to estimate a mutation rate by typing the 17 Y-STRs in a set of deep-rooting pedigrees totalling 274 transmissions of the Y chromosome, and with a mean pairwise separation within all pedigrees of 5.6 generations (Supplementary Figure 2). This gave a rate of 1.5 x 10-3 per STR per generation. Figure 5 shows
the mean and standard deviations of ages for a total of 74 clusters based on
these parameters.

One would need to look at the specific set of markers to derive a relationship between this "King & Jobling" (KJ) mutation rate, but it appears to be ~0.75 of the germline mutation rate. In the first post of my Y-STR series, I argued that Y-STR variance (not identical, but related to the ρ measure used here) accumulates at near the germline rate. The KJ estimate seems closer to the germline rate than to the ~0.3 (slow) Zhivotovsky et al. mutation rate. Note also that the age estimates for relatively young groups (first figure in this post) tend to be underestimates (1:1.17 for the youngest data point), which further supports the thesis that Y-STR diversity accumulates at near (but not exactly) the germline rate.

Note also that the time depth of British surnames is not too widely different from the populations used by Zhivotovsky et al. (Bulgarian Gypsies, Maori) for calibration of their evolutionary mutation rate. Therefore, it appears that the Zhivotovsky et al. rate is inconsistent with British surnames, and this underscores the difficulties with archaeological calibration of the mutation rate I talked about here.

Molecular Biology and Evolution doi:doi:10.1093/molbev/msp022

Founders, drift and infidelity: the relationship between Y chromosome
diversity and patrilineal surnames

Turi E. King and Mark A. Jobling

Abstract

Most heritable surnames, like Y chromosomes, are passed from father to son. These unique cultural markers of co-ancestry might therefore have a genetic correlate in shared Y chromosome types among men sharing surnames, although the link could be affected by mutation, multiple foundation for names, non paternity, and genetic drift. Here, we demonstrate through an analysis of 1678 Y-chromosomal haplotypes within 40 British surnames a remarkably high degree of co-ancestry that generally increases as
surnames become rarer. On average, the proportion of haplotypes lying within descent clusters is 62%, but ranges from zero to 87%. The shallow time depth of many descent clusters within names, the lack of a detectable effect of
surname derivation on diversity, and simulations of surname descent suggest that genetic drift through variation in reproductive success is important in structuring haplotype diversity. Modern patterns therefore provide little
reliable information about the original founders of surnames some 700 years
ago.
A comparative analysis of published data on Y diversity within Irish
surnames demonstrates a relative lack of surname frequency dependence of co-ancestry, a difference probably mediated through distinct Irish and British demographic histories including even more marked genetic drift in Ireland.

Link

Source

[Bloodeagle]

Most heritable surnames, like Y chromosomes, are passed from father to son. These unique cultural markers of co-ancestry might therefore have a genetic correlate in shared Y chromosome types among men sharing surnames, although the link could be affected by mutation, multiple foundation for names, non paternity, and genetic drift. Here, we demonstrate through an analysis of 1678 Y-chromosomal haplotypes within 40 British surnames a remarkably high degree of co-ancestry that generally increases as
surnames become rarer. On average, the proportion of haplotypes lying within descent clusters is 62%, but ranges from zero to 87%. The shallow time depth of many descent clusters within names, the lack of a detectable effect of
surname derivation on diversity, and simulations of surname descent suggest that genetic drift through variation in reproductive success is important in structuring haplotype diversity. Modern patterns therefore provide little
reliable information about the original founders of surnames some 700 years
ago.

I have one of those rare English surnames. It seems there are far more of us in America than left living in England.
Through my Familytreedna testing my closest match ended up being with an individual who has a variant spelling of my Surname. We have been able to trace our common ancestor to a planter in Virginia circa 1680's

I will have to wait until others of my surname have tested but I am sure the results will be similar.

Now I must have my Mtdna checked.

[Barreldriver]

I'm still waiting for my Y test to get here lol. My surname Reeder/Reader is very common in England, but in the region where my family came from Reader was a rare surname, the name being more common in the South East. Most Readers/Reeders have been I2b1 with a minority of R1b variants R1a(only one had this, a line from Ireland) and I1a(these being English Readers, I'm excluding the German American families that anglicized their names to Reader/Reeder, they have Y DNA results all over the board mostly R haplotypes)

[Susi]

My surname is dreadfully uncommon and I fear meeting another one of "us". ._.

[Albion]

My surname refers to a county where my paternal ancestors would have come from, its not all that common but then again isn't rare either.

[Logan]

Mine is a fairly uncommon surname of the South-West of England. It has tested positive for two Haplogroups R1b2a and I2a. To date, a slight majority in R.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Had some clients a few years back with one of those names. Freakin' weird, all of them. Facial features resembled comic book character stereotypes. One of them had sexual relations with cousins of both genders. Truly bizarre.

[johngaunt]

Some observations.

No wonder Herrick is predominantly I

"The surname of HERRICK was from the old personal name EIRIKE and simply denotes 'the son of Eric'. The name was brought into England from Denmark "

Pretty amazing, no wonder 'smith' was so close to the control though.

Surnames with son appear to be more I also.

The surname Starbuck looks exactly like a Danish y-chromosome population sample. Looked it up and its a locational name from Yorkshire.

Werret on the other end of the scale, nearly all R1b1, is a suraname mostly found in cornwall, devon sw england.

Very interesting stuff.

[Barreldriver]

Been keepin' eye on my surnames Y-DNA project page, R1b still dominates, my lineages clade of course R-S116/R-P312. There is only 2 R1a's, one I2b1, and one E1b1b1 so far.

I'm the only one in the project so far with lineage from the Yorkshire Reader/Reeder family that was seeded in Virginia that later wound up in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina prior to making way onto the most western extant of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee.

[snowathlete]

I have one of those rare English surnames. It seems there are far more of us in America than left living in England.
Through my Familytreedna testing my closest match ended up being with an individual who has a variant spelling of my Surname. We have been able to trace our common ancestor to a planter in Virginia circa 1680's

I will have to wait until others of my surname have tested but I am sure the results will be similar.

Geography and accent come into this. My name Langton has multiple origins, most of which are Langton villages in England that appear in the north.

When these northerners move south the name is assimilated by the name LangDon which has a southern origin.
There are many examples of this, and the same thing happens in the US, with Langton becoming Lanckton and Langdon while other branches in different locations remain as Langton.

check out the dna project on lostlangtons.co.uk if you are interested in this.

We have a surprisingly high number of the rarer haplogroups, which appears to be down to people coming over in the Norman conquest and being given land (Langton villages, from which they then took their name). This makes sense, but it was a surprise. We expected to get 75% of the common group R. I myself am J2a3d and as far as i know i am the only one in the UK (feeling lonely)....

We havent looked, but this pattern will probably occur in most all placename surnames from the UK.