Interpreting Y-DNA matches

oceanclub

I did a Y-DNA test with myFTDNA and so far the results have been underwhelming. I'm not sure is that because I don't understand how to interpret the results or that there's only a limited set of people who have done the test so far (or both).

The following list are my nearest results:

*mod removed image re: data protection issues*

I was surprised to see absolutely none have the same surname as me; I expected to see some. As you can see, most have the surname Roberts and are from the US. Since the match is on the male line, does this mean a surname-change of a common ancestor at some point??

P.

pinkypinky

Oceanclub,

I've removed that image from your post.
You need to cover people's names.

PP

pinkypinky

I did a Y DNA on my uncle and had similarly unhelpful results. I did to Y67 and have no one at all on any level who matches our surname.

What level of markers did you do to?

The most likely thing is a non-paternal event - i.e. somewhere along the line, the expected father was not actually the father, but since Y DNA changes so slowly, it could be centuries before records could help.

Tombom1

I has been doing some research on this even though I have not got my y-111 DNA test back yet.

From what I've learned is that at y-37 you will have high levels of convergence meaning that you will match a lot of people you are not genetically related , usually an upgrade to y-67 and you can tell if a few common surnames are appearing but for some haplotypes ,for example M-222 you will still have huge levels of convergence so some have to upgrade to y-111.

How many strs are you matching with them? It could be that the surname split off a few hundred years ago and their may not have been a non paternal event at all.Some people of your surname may have not tested aswell if its uncommon?

I know for a few big Irish surname groups they typically find there's a 50% chance of a non paternal event happening.It could be more if you're surname is English I'm not sure.
If there is one, join your surname group on Ftdna and see if they can help you.

oceanclub

pinkypinky wrote: »

I did a Y DNA on my uncle and had similarly unhelpful results. I did to Y67 and have no one at all on any level who matches our surname.

What level of markers did you do to?

The most likely thing is a non-paternal event - i.e. somewhere along the line, the expected father was not actually the father, but since Y DNA changes so slowly, it could be centuries before records could help.

I did the Y-DNA37 test; expensive enough so I wouldn't be tempted to go any further for the near future anyway - hopefully in the next decade or so more people will have done the test.

P.

pinkypinky

Yeah, I originally did a Y-12, which was a waste of money. I am waiting for these tests to come down in price to convert an autosomal to a Y for one paternal cousin, whose line is a brick wall.

Ipso

Out of interest what haplogroup do you fall under? I am one of the I-M223 subgroups and some of my matches have surnames that are more ot leas the Scottish Gaelic equivalant of mine.
I only have five or six matches as it’s not too commin.

srmf5

It is true that that only 50% of individuals with a particular Irish surname will be related to the surnames founding ancestor. Among the group of 30 who have done Big Y in my surname group, there are 10 who have a different surname and are presumed NPEs. That's a 33% NPE in our group. It is possible though that relatives with your surname just haven't tested yet.

At Y-111, my dad's 16 matches are all people connected to his surname. At Y-67, all 46 matches are connected to our surname except for five people who we share a common ancestor with from around 300 AD so a long time before the introduction of surnames. However, at Y-37 only about 49 out of 120 matches are connected to my surname (I didn't count all them at Y-37 but instead filtered by matches who were in the surname project so there could be a few extra of my surname who never joined the project). If you only tested to Y-37, there could be matches who aren't actually closely connected and could be from before the introduction of surnames. At Y-67, you mostly get good matches from my experience but my dad does have a few from long ago so they may not all be relevant either.

As Tombom1 suggested, it would be a good idea to join some FTDNA projects since the administrators may be able help in interpreting your results or suggest your next step. There are surname projects, the R1b project (if you're R-M269) and the Ireland project.

dubhthach

First off it's remembering that many surnames have multiple independent occurrences. This is particulary a case given that certain surnames are based on firstnames that were extremely popular in Early Medieval Ireland.

One only has to look at Murphy (Ó Murchaidh/Ó Murchadha/Ó Murchú vs. Mac Murchadha/Mac Murchaidh etc.) which has at least 10 distinct origins each family been descended from a different man who happened to bear the name Murchadha which was a popular firstname right up to mid 17th century.

If ye have done STR testing with FamilytreeDNA please consider joining the Ireland yDNA Project (I'm one of two admins):
https://familytreedna.com/groups/ireland-heritage

I can run a genetic distance report comparing your results with the 7k other members of the project. If for example you belong to a large haplogroup such as R-M222 you will probably have a large number of matches who predate surname formation when it comes to last common ancestor.

dubhthach

Just for reference here are some stats from the Ireland project.


Y-DNA12 8903
Y-DNA25 8146
Y-DNA37 7913
Y-DNA67 5884
Y-DNA111 3347
Big Y 1736

What this basically means is that we have a total of 8903 members who have done at least 12 STR's. The numbers above are 'subsets' of one before, eg all men tested to 111STR's would be seen in Y-DNA12, Y-DNA37, Y-DNA67 subgroups:

Of this number the key stats are:
88.8% of members have at least Y-DNA37 (8146 out of 8903)
66.09% have tested to at least Y-DNA67 (5884 out of 8903)
37.59% have tested to at least Y-DNA111 (3347 out of 8903)

19.5% have BigY tests (basically nearly half of those tested to 111 STR's have gone and done BiGY in addition).

There are currently an additional 105 members who are awaiting results of BigY-700 (the new upgrade version of BigY) from recent sale.