From: "Janet Ogden" <janet@janetsfamilies.f2s.com> > Dave Sykes a very good friend of mine, needs help from > Direct > Male Line > Sykes in Yorkshire etc, . If you are search this Family, I will put > you in touch with him. I guarantee that it will not be disappointed, > and well worth your time. He say's:- > > DNA of Sykes descendants from the Huddersfield area. All ten are from > the R1b (Celtic) branch of the family. > > Our main thrust now is to locate where the R1a (Viking) branch of the > family settled in Yorkshire. This branch constitutes 40% of the > American Sykes that have donated DNA samples, yet I am the only one > who knows where his family lived in Yorkshire. I suspect that these > Vikings lived in the town of Almondbury, which was first settled by > Vikings, has a Viking name, and has a large present Sykes population, > none of whom have offered DNA samples as yet.> I am afraid this is where my cynicism about DNA testing comes in. I agree with George Redmonds that the very prolific surname SYKES (possibly the most common name in the Huddersfield and Colne Valley area - if not, certainly one of them) must have multiple origins, since it derives from the word "syke", being a stream or ditch often serving as a boundary (Yorkshire Surnames Series Part Two: Huddersfield & District). I expect most of us remember in the early days of DNA testing, when Prof Bryan Sykes of Oxford University produced his famous (infamous?) report claiming that ALL Sykeses derive from a common progenitor. It then emerged he had only tested about 65 men with the name! Sykes, in my view, is what we in the media used to call a rent-a-quote and will say anything to get publicity (and more funding for his work). It seems to me that Sykes is far too prolific a surname to be of much use in this area of testing. In any event, there certainly would not have been anyone called Sykes in Celtic and Viking times, since surnames did not exist then. They are a product of medieval times, post-Conquest. Let's not forget, also, that a fair number of Sykeses will turn out not to be Sykeses at all, due to what are called "non-paternity events", i.e. the mother played an away fixture! Some genealogists estimate these to be as high as 20 per cent of all births. My main criticism of DNA testing is this: OK, so testing may show that two people share a common ancestor somewhere in the dim and distant past, but it doesn't begin to tell you WHO that ancestor was or fill in any of the gaps in between. It may be romantic to say "Oh, yes, we descend from Vikings at Almondbury", but virtually all Yorkshire folk whose ancestry can be taken back several centuries in the county MUST descend from Vikings at some point! Also, from Anglo-Saxons and Celts, since the independent Celtic kingdom of Elmet survived into the 6th or 7th centuries. Due to the fact that the population of the whole of Britain was tiny at that time (only about 2 million in the Middle Ages, never mind in Viking times), the mathematical connundrum says we must all be ultimately related anyway, however distantly, so the point of DNA testing has yet to convince me! -- Roy Stockdill Professional genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE