GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2002-12 > 1038870809


From: "John A Hansen" <>
Subject: RE: [DNA] Re DNA Stuff
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 15:13:29 -0800
In-Reply-To: <OF6E6097DF.B6DA10CF-ON85256C83.007818F6@downstate.edu>


Dear Nick:

Someone once said "No generalization is worth
a tinkers *** including this one" :-)

I do think some surname projects ( I named two in
my email) are on point. Yours is obviously another
one. I was replying to Bill Hayes who was lamenting
at the lack of results that he was seeing.
But the underlying issue is the tenous nature
of the surnames themselves ( yours excepted of course).

But consider these points:
A: The use of soundex in genealogy is well known and
following the formula leads you in some strange
directions
B: Some huge percentage of entries through Ellis Island
had changed surnames ( some by the immigrants and
some by the authorities).
C: The only relationship between some of the people with
the same surnames from the Nordic and Scotland areas
was that their ancestors lived on the same farm name.
Usually 2-3 generations apart but they wound up with
the same surname. Others in these Areas are only related
surnames because of the first name of their fathers
and or grandfathers.
D: Surnames in the last 150 years have solidified to a great
extent but before that it is a pretty big guess. I haven't seen
statistics on how many people signed with a X and therefore
had no idea of their correct surname except how it was
pronounced.

I didn't say that I objected to the surname projects because
obviously results are being achieved. My point was that
Clans ( where most people in a given area took the clan name)
and geographic ( again Clans and Families ) studies may
wind up with more DNA matches , especially if you are looking
for ancestry lines in that period say before 1700 or so.

There is lots of time and miles to go before the trends are
clear and the smoke clears on all of these theories :-)

Best Regards
John A Hansen


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nicholas Penington [mailto:]
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 2:04 PM
> To:
> Subject: [DNA] Re DNA Stuff
>
>
> John wrote:
> >I'm not a big fan of Surname projects.
> >The use of Surnames is so recent and so arbitrary that
> >it makes any long term study ( 250-600 years) almost invalid.
> >There is about 10,000 test results out there so far from the
> >various labs. At a average cost of $200.00, that's about
> >2 million dollars.
>
> >If we assume about 250 surname projects as listed on Chris
> >Pomeroy's web site then we are
> >getting about 40 test results per surname project. The ones
> >that I've looked at so far are not showing much in the
> >way of MRCA matches within the surname grouping.
>
> I disagree John one should not generalize too much.
> We in the Pennington study, list the results of 24 participants with 8
> more in the pipeline. At this early stage an amazing 70% of participants
> match someone in the study and so one has a good chance of using DNA to
> make a genealogical connection. This fairly high rate of
> matching confirms that Pennington is not like a surname associated with
> some trade or occupation but it is a name with some link to a specific
> locality or family. Even those who do not know which family tree they
> belong to are matching established genealogy's in our study. There are
> however 5-10 different Pennington families and several lines have been
> called Pennington since the 12C!
> Nick Penington
> DNA Study coordinator.


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