DNA can change everything

[Pleater]

There are many possible reasons for someone being raised in a family with a different surname or affiliation to their birth parents - life was precarious, people could die from illness or accident, the father might have gone as a soldier or sailor and never returned, the wife might have returned to her mother's house, an older boy might have been sent to his aunt or grandmother's home if she was widowed and needed help with the heavier tasks and used her surname whilst under her roof.

A widow might have remarried and had a children who were known by the stepfather's surname, not out of any thought of deception, just to emphasis their acceptance as one of the family - I had an aunt who was half sister to my mother, and it was never mentioned by anyone in the family all the time I was growing up. It was not a secret just not relevant to anything considered important in everyday life.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[kiltedtom]

Sometimes even motherhood is not correct. My mother's cousin believed her mom to be her mother. Not until my mother was 34, and her cousin was 50, did they find out that mom's cousin was really her eldest sister. Born before grandma was married, my aunt was given to another sibling to be reared by him and his wife.

DNA is important for some things, but it will never replace real parenthood. In my aunt's case, she had two mothers, one who cared enough to give her away to someone who would take better care of her and one who cared enough to raise someone else's daughter. My aunt was loved equally by them both (and, by the way, by everyone else in the family too.)

Have a great day everyone.

Tom

[ljamieson]

I just ordered this. Its specific to my Clan but they may have others.

https://www.familytreedna.com/group-...roup=Gunn_Sept

[Guy III]

Well, a DNA test got me to this web community. From the family, I thought I was majorly German- almost all German surnames and known German immigrants. Turns out only 21%. 63% Scottish- English. And I have 19% Viking and 2% Italian. No Italians anywhere in the known past so I am guessing it is from Romans who were in Germany or Britain- just as the Viking in me came from those who came to Scotland or north Germany.

[O'Callaghan]

He appears to be just muddled but they are not synonymous.
The Welsh, Cornish, Bretons, Galicians are p-Celts, as were the Pictish/Cumbric peoples.
The Irish and Scottish q-Celts (i.e. Gaelic speakers) are Gaels.
Of course, many Europaeans would have a good deal of Celtic DNA but would not consider themselves to be Celts.
Alan

I believe the Manx (from the Isle of Man) are also Gaels. Musn't leave anyone out!

[O'Callaghan]

As to my own origins, my mum has clearly traced her father's family to Irish Gaels from Cork. That's not particularly difficult, as her maiden name is a variant of O'Callaghan, and that's where that family came from. As many may know, they are reputed to descend from a King of the Irish kingdom of Munster, going back about a thousand years.

OTOH, her mother's family is English, but going further back the name is not an English one originally, and is most likely Flemish, mostly based upon weavers from Flanders having settled in that part of England, although it could conceivably be Scottish, but also Dutch or German (the geography being such that the difference between Belgium, Holland or Germany can represent a vanishingly small move one way or another). If Scottish, it is not a clan name, but is a sept name in more than one, but then it likely isn't Scottish to begin with (Scotland actually being hundreds of miles further away)!

Then on my father's side, again they were English as far back as we know, but the name can be English, French, German, Spanish or Italian. Of those I would have guessed English, except for a plethora of Roman noses, that suggest either Italian or Jewish origins, and research suggests that not only were there Italians of a related surname, but also some Italians who were Jews forced to convert by the Spanish inquisition. No, that's not a typo, I did say the Spanish inquisition and I did say Italy, not Spain. That particular mystery could probably be solved by having my Y-DNA tested, but I am not keen on incurring the expense. It's even possible that Roman noses could indicate actual ancient Romans in the family tree, as they were in Britain for a while.

ETA: My father's mother's maiden name is one that can be English, Irish or Scottish, and if they are Scottish they have their own family tartan, but are not a clan. I would guess English purely based upon Occam's Razor (least unlikely) although the name is not native to the right part of England.

And so it goes. Once you go back beyond grandparents there are more and more names, and we even know what some of them were, but it just gets more complex!

[neloon]

I believe the Manx (from the Isle of Man) are also Gaels. Musn't leave anyone out!

Indeed. Original amended.
Alan

[Mike S]

Indeed. Original amended.
Alan

They are indeed. The Manx are classified as Q-Celtic Gaelic speakers as well (like the Scots and Irish). P-Celtic speakers include the Welsh and Cornish.

[Dughlas mor]

The island is named for Manannan Mac Lir, a God who figures prominently in Gaelic myth.

[jf42]

They are indeed. The Manx are classified as Q-Celtic Gaelic speakers as well (like the Scots and Irish). P-Celtic speakers include the Welsh and Cornish.

That is an interesting distinction to make. You can be a speaker of a P-Celtic or Q-Celtic language but that doesn't make you a 'P-Celt' or 'Q-Celt.' There is no such thing. Arguably, there is no such thing as 'a Celt,' only a person who chooses to be identified as such- an ethnicity that was only recognised in, some might say a Romantic invention of, the late C18th century. Arguably, there only two things that can be identified as Celtic: artefacts found in the ground- or sea- and identifed as such by archaeologists, and the languages listed in Alan's earlier post.


By that token, one can't really talk, for example, about 'Manx' being 'Gaels'. Who are the Manx? (what is a 'Gael'? ) It happens that the old Manx tongue was a Q-Celtic dialect with immediate origins in the time when groups with leaders of Scandinavian-Irish descent (as it would seem) held sway from Stornoway down to Waterford, and the Isle of Man, at a crossroads in the sea lanes of the Irish Sea, briefly became capital of a 'Norse-Gael' Kingdom of Man.

What the inhabitants of Man spoke before the period of Scandinavian migration is anybody's guess. Were they essentially of Irish origin; or British (geographically speaking); or a bit of both; did the question have any meaning? Which branch of the Celtic tongue came first anyway?

The name of Man certainly came across the water from the west but that doesn't mean the island was always, or universally, called that or that Man had always been inhabited by irish or by speakers of Gaelic; 'always' being a rather unreliable notion anyway.

I believe scholars are still debating whether Q-Celtic was an earlier version of the Celtic tongue from an earlier migration, which only survived in the west or whether it was an Insular form that derived from the main branch (an interesting question when considering what the Caledonians of the North East might have spoken in 'Pictland'). It gets confusing with Gaelic 'moving back' (arguably) onto the mainland with the Scotti of Dalriada to become the dominant tongue in Scotia, before the Norsemen brought even more dynamic change to the region.

It occurs to me that, as contributors have already said, there is an important distinction to be made here between culture and ethnicity; the one being identifiable through material objects down the ages, as well as inherited language and the other consisting of of physical characteristics that, until the advent of DNA analysis, could only be asserted through physical characteristics; a dangerous path to tread- and something very difficult to ascertain once you were under the sod.

Saying the Manx were Gaels, it seems to me, is a bit like someone in the future asserting that the inhabitants of Manhattan were English, or the inhabitants of New Delhi for that matter!

It is true, though, that the answer to the question 'what is 'a Gael?', when Gaels were Gaels and men were men, was always going to be in part someone who spoke the Gaelic, because that was what 'Gaels' knew they had in common. Heritage was always going to be something you could claim but could not prove beyond a couple of generations- and even then not definitely! That means that there were, of course, all sorts of Gaels. The comment regarding 'mother tongue' is very apposite because the blonde son of a black-eyed mother was always going to grow up speaking Gaedhlic at his mother's, or nurse's, knee and in that way the son of a Viking Gall became a Gaidheal, or Gaedheal. Perhaps he might grow up to be a Gallgaidhil, which was not always a good thing.

As an east coast Caledonian, I regard myself as entirely above the question; at least until my DNA tests come back....