Hello I offer here some odds and ends and thoughts for which I welcome comments and challenges. I notice on the Creed Ydna Project that there are at least two “established” lines which have the I1 Haplogroup and one line represented by one Creed Surnamed individual also being I1. “Different Y-DNA haplogroups identify genetic populations which are often intricately geographically oriented, reflecting the migrations of current individuals' direct patrilinal ancestors tens of thousands of years ago.” Another established lineage in the Creed Project is Haplogroup R1b1b2 – that is an older Haplogroup than I1 and it may as well lead to the same information I will present here, but I have not researched it. I do believe R1b1b2 to be compatible with my theory. I think most folks realize that surnames are only about 1200 years or so old. The thought comes as to how a surname is adopted – maybe genetically unrelated people adopted the same name – perhaps they were part of the same political, geographic or religious collection of individuals and started calling themselves something which evolved into what we now know as a surname. So it is not so surprising that people with the same surname may come from different ancestors. You would probably anticipate that some unifying factor of geography/politics/religion etc.would be found for most of those with the same surname. So there are those with the same surname traveling through the ages together and there are people with different names and genetics as well – I call these “Fellow Travelers”. Pilgrims on the haj of eternity. Anyhow, the I1 Haplogroup has a geographic relationship with the Scandinavian countries – Denmark and so forth – so it is not hard to picture those people being sort of Viking-like. Ultimately invading and/or colonizing all sorts of places- especially in the UK I have long suspected that the Creed name is generally from what is now the UK – there are a lot of reasons to think that – many representatives of the name in that area throughout history – and still there now. When you follow the I1 Haplogroup into the British Isles and seek some sort of indication of its geographic distribution – well actually if you go to the I1 Haplogroup Project page which you can reach through the Creed Project Creed Project : http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/creed/ And then the I1 Project: http://www.familytreedna.com/public/yDNA_I1/default.aspx At the bottom of the I1 Project there is an interesting link to “History of the Kingdoms of Mercia, England” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia Being an ignorant Redneck from rural South Carolina I cannot say that I am familiar with Mercia unless it had something to do with that stuff the hippies used to sing in the late sixties of the last century. Anyhow – we come to the information that the first king of Mercia of whom anything was known was Creoda. This from Wikipedia (my apologies to those who abstain from it) *“Creoda** (or ****Crida**) (c. 540) was the first monarch of Mercia Creoda is recorded as having been the son of Cynewald, the grandson of Cnebba, and the great-grandson of Icel; consequently, members of the Mercian royal line were known as Iclingas. Although this suggests that Creoda was only a fourth-generation descendant of the first Angles in England, the sources nevertheless record him as having been the first ruler of the Kingdom of Mercia. One explanation for this is that the Mercians had initially settled further east and only moved into the area of what became known as Mercia in the time of Creoda. Like most of the early Anglo-Saxon kings, very little is known about his life. The /Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records his death in the year 593.” Pronounce that “Creoda” out loud to get the feel of it. Interesting Back in the late sixties I remember reading (I think in Burke’s Peerage) that the Creed name was thought to have originated as Croeda – or maybe Creoda and that they listed 3 lines each with different heraldic devices. Now I do not plan to claim kin to any royalty or stuff like that – so do not misunderstand which way I am heading– but I am working toward origin of the Creed name. (and perhaps the initial point of the Creed Diaspora) If you look at the geographic distribution of the I1 Haplogroup in the UK – it is concentrated right there in Mercia . (I think that the one we are interested in is the I1 – M253 Haplogroup) I wanted to find some sort of geographic reference of the concentration of people in the UK with the Creed name – so far a quick search reveals at an Ancestry.com website (I am not a member) in 1891 the Creed Distribution http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Creed-family-history-uk.ashx and although it is not exactly in Mercia – it is not really that far off either. Now if you get to pondering that Creoda was supposedly Anglo-Saxon – don’t let that worry you too much because from somewhere else I find this: “In 2000 the BBC <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC> conducted a genetic survey of the British Isles for its program 'Blood of the Vikings <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Richards>'. It concluded that Norse invaders settled sporadically throughout the British Isles with a particular concentration in certain areas, such as Orkney <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkney> and Shetland <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland>[1] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1689955.stm>. This finding referred to Norwegian Vikings only, as descendants of Danish Vikings could not be distinguished from descendants of Anglo-Saxon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons> settlers.” SO here is a theory I wish to offer for discussion: The Creed name possibly has its origin in the name of the first king of Mercia: Creoda. This is not to say that the Creeds are necessarily descended from Creoda – but when it came time to identify themselves – or be identified- it was done by using the name Creoda. Quite possibly Creoda himself was named from a place or event or religious thing which was also shared with the people who later adopted that name. Oh – also – the people of Mercia later had big problems with the Vikings – but that is after the time period I have been referencing here – but that might possibly have been the cause for the apparent displacement of Creed surnamed people in the 1891 data. I came to this from a review of the Creed Ydna information – this is an hypothesis based upon the geographic information in that study and the happenstance of encountering what appears to be correlating information in some histories on-line with Creoda. And there sure hasn’t been a lot of time spent studying it – so feel free to find errors in it. Hopefully there are some Creed folk from the UK on this list who certainly would have a better handle on this information. Thank you Richard S. Creed South Carolina