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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-03 > 1143394240


From: "Tim Desmond" <>
Subject: RE: R1b Varieties - "South Irish" (O'Sullivan and McGillycuddy)
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 12:34:27 -0500


Folks -

A few weeks ago I did a count of the "South Irish" haplotype in the
Trinity College study of Irish patrilineal DNA.
(original post:
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2006-03/1141603889)

Further review of the data has led me to believe that I was being stingy
in regard to the allowed value for 385b, which is normally 15 for "South
Irish" (and 14 for the "AMH").
If the definition is expanded to also include 385b=16 (which supposedly
only appears in 1% of R1b), the counts become even more interesting.

From the 1125 entries in the study, I removed the following:
entries that aren't 391=10 (leaving 317)
entries that aren't 385b=15 or 16 (leaving 169)
entries that aren't 439=11 (leaving 112)
entries that aren't 390=24 (leaving 104)

The 30 additional matches to the "South Irish" cluster beyond my original
analysis are these:
O'Sullivan 17 (revised total is 28)
McGillycuddy 10 (revised total is 14)
Murphy 2 (revised total is 6)
Kelly 1 (revised total is 2)

So it is clear that only 2 surnames had largely increased matches to the
"South Irish" cluster when 385b=16 was allowed: O'Sullivan and
McGillycuddy.

This fact is quite significant, as the Irish genealogies attach these two
surnames about 500 years ago:
"The surname MacGillycuddy is not old: in fact it only dates from the
sixteenth century. Previous to that they were O'Sullivans, a branch of
O'Sullivan Mor, which at that comparatively late date became established
as a sept distinct from the parent stem. At first the name MacGillycuddy
was only used by the chief's family, the others still calling themselves
O'Sullivan; for a while they were often described as O'Sullivan alias
MacGillycuddy, but eventually the later was adopted by the whole branch."
(p. 160, "Irish Families", Edward MacLysaght, 1972 edition).

To sum up, my revised counts show that the 4 surnames (out of 43) in the
Trinity study with the highest number of matches (64 out of 104) to the
"South Irish" haplotype are these:
O'Sullivan 28
McGillycuddy 14
Donohoe 13
McCarthy 9

My belief that there is a "historical" explanation for the "South Irish"
cluster is strengthened by this revision, but I will talk about that
another day...

Tim Desmond

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