Anderson Blood

[cessna152towser]

Thread crept off topic but very interesting nonetheless.

I think the jury has to be still out as to whether our ancestors with common surnames ran with clan Gunn. Going back in my ancestry I have Nielson who was a weaver in Paisley in the Scottish lowlands and also Wilson and Williamson both of whom came from Ireland. I've always assumed they were just shorthand for Niel's son; William's son, or even shortened further to Wil's son which any family with a pater by the name of Niel or William might have freely adopted without necessary being any relation of any other family which took the same name.

There are many common names in lowland Scotland which have no clan affiliation - Gardner for example of which I have two lines of ancestry and my wife also has one, was an occupational surname and there is nothing to suggest our three lines of Gardners were ever related to one another.

There is also the complication that families often changed their names - my wife's paternal line changes from McConnel to McConnell during the 1850's and another of her ancestry lines from Ayrshire changes from McIlmorrow to McIlmurray and then McMurray between 1780 and 1820.

[gilmore]

Haplogroup I may indicate Viking or Norse descent, some clan bloodlines are primarily I1a.

How many on the forum have taken Y DNA tests?

I did, and discovered a host of long-buried secrets.

[gilmore]

<<< Please note that have a match with another member doesn't necessarily mean you are related. Markers mutate over time and can present false matches as a result. >>>

I am not sure what the author of this is trying to get at.

Of course markers mutate over time. That is how we determine how closely related the descendants of a common ancestor are, by how closely their markers match.

As to false matches due to unrelated Y chromosome DNA mutating to match over the generations, that is called convergence. It is extremely rare.