This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: ksaxe Surnames: McConnell, MacDonald, McDonald, McReynolds Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.mcconnell/2452/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Ray McConnell and Haplogroup I After Ray McConnell heard about the discovery of a genetic signature shared by descendants of Clan Donald's founder Somerled and the Viking heritage that signature reveals he decided to join the Genographic Project in 2005. The Genographic Project gathers both Y DNA and mitochondrial DNA from people around the world to learn more about ancient migratory patterns. By joining the project, Ray added information about his Y chromosome to a massive database that can be analyzed to reveal a great deal about the history of human migrations. A portion of the fee Ray paid to join the project went to support the Genographic Legacy Fund, which helps indigenous and traditional peoples around the world. You can learn more about this worthy project by going to their website at https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/about.html. When Ray received his results that December, he learned that he definitely was not a male line Somerled descendant. He did learn about the Clan Donald DNA project shortly after his results came in and did join. Looking at his results on the project tables showed that not only was he not a Somerled descendant, he was the only McConnell in a relatively small group of men whose results placed them in a group called Haplogroup I. What is a haplogroup? What do Ray's results tell him about his genealogy? How can he learn more? In a way, the haplogroup idea is simple. A haplogroup is a group of people who share a distinctive DNA pattern that identifies them as descendants of an individual who lived in the distant past. The haplogroups based on male line descent from a common ancestor all arose on the order of tens of thousands of years ago. Haplogroup I predates the last glacial maximum, which occurred about 20,000 years ago. That means that Ray probably doesn't share a common male line ancestor born during the last 20,000 years with any other McConnell in the study! How can this be? Does it mean that Ray has no matches in the study? First, most males in the clan do not descend through Somerled in their male line. Ray's male line ancestors may have acquired the name "McDonald" in a number of ways. When men began using surnames, men whose fathers were named Donald could take the name McDonald, meaning "son of Donald" and many did. Marriages of Clan Donald daughters were often involved when new male lines were added to the clan and those men sometimes took the name McDonald. Although it sounds quite different to English speakers, the name McConnell is simply a variant of McDonald and is not far from the original Gaelic pronunciation. You can learn a lot more about the ways new male lines joined the clan by visiting the Other Ancestry page of the project website at http://dna-project.clan-donald-usa.org/DNAmain4.htm. Ray does have matches in the project. His 12 marker test results match the results of 5 other men in the project on 11 out of 12 markers. Although none of these matching men is a McConnell, their names are all variants of the name McDonald, just as McConnell is. One is a MacDonald, another is a McDonald, and the remaining 3 are McReynolds men. Considering the way the variant forms of the name have changed over time, it is certainly possible that one or more of these men share a relatively recent ancestor with Ray. Because Ray only has results for 12 markers, the estimated time to most recent common ancestor statistics (TMRCA) on the project results tables are very rough estimates. These say that Ray and his five matches are about 34 generations removed from their common ancestor. Comparing results for more markers would almost certainly lead to a range of estimates with a low end in the 20s or lower and a high end in the upper 30s or higher. Whether any of these ! men would turn out to be close matches for Ray is anybody's guess with the information currently available. Since discussion of these matches is somewhat off the topic of haplogroups, I'll save it for later. The amazing thing about Ray's results so far is that, while they aren't very specific about his relatively recent ancestry, they tell us about his male line tens of thousands of years ago! By exploring a link on Doug's DNA page 1 on the project website, I was able to navigate to the website of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, where I found the following on their page for Haplogroup I at http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpI07.html: "Y-DNA haplogroup I is a European haplogroup, representing nearly one-fifth of the population. It is almost non-existent outside of Europe [of course Americans and others of recent European origin are not counted as "outside of Europe" here], suggesting that it arose in Europe. Estimates of the age of haplogroup I suggest that it arose prior to the last Glacial Maximum. Probably, it was confined to the refuge in the Balkans during the last Ice Age, and then spread northward during the recolonization of northern Europe follo! wing the retreat of the glaciers." The page continues with information on the two main subgroups of group I and their branches. Ray's haplogroup, which is known by the older name I1c, is also known as I1b2a and as I-M223. About Ray's subgroup, the page says, "Within I-S23 et al, I-M223 occurs in Britain and northwest continental Europe. A subgroup of I-M223, namely I-M284, occurs almost exclusively in Britain, so it apparently originated there and has probably been present for thousands of years." Whether Ray belongs to the subgroup I-M284 is unknown, but it certainly is interesting to know that finding one little mutation called M284 in Ray's DNA would tell us that his male line ancestors probably settled in Britain thousands of years ago. This bit of information may seem like the end of the story of Ray's haplogroup, but it really isn't because Haplogroup I is still around. We have also skipped the BEGINNING of this story. Haplogroup I is descended from earlier haplogroups, and using the ISOGG website it is possible to trace his line back even further. You can see that even with the results from just 12 markers, it is possible to learn an incredible amount about the movements of your ancient ancestors by learning about the history of their haplogroups. I have left out a LOT of details to keep this post to a readable length. You can expect a more detailed explanation of haplogroups and how I found this information to be posted later. 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