Hi Wolf, I can't speak in terms of specific towns within Switzerland, as I'm only a bit familiar with Frutigen and vicinity. Also, my grasp of genetics is a little shaky, so if something of what follows is in error, I hope someone is in a position to correct me. In the article, "Surnames and the Y Chromosome" by Bryan Sykes and Catherine Irven, Am. J. Hum. Genet., 66:1417-1419, 2000, the authors say, "The frequency of isonymy, the marriage between individuals with the same surname, has been used as a crude method of estimation of the inbreeding coefficients within populations. However, it is acknowledged that the method relies on a number of assumptions, of which a monophyletic origin [i.e., same surname = common ancestor] is one .....Although a few surnames are very common in any population, surveys in Britain and Switzerland have shown that most people have an uncommon surname." This would mean that the uncommon names were more common than the Hubers, Schmids, Meyers, etc., apparently enough so that the common names are an insignificant factor in calculating isonymy. And also, I would say that the smaller the town, the less likelier you will have genetically unrelated people with the same surname who happen to live there and are marrying one another. I'm not sure that it is any likelier in cities like Geneva, because there is a larger pool of people with different surnames to choose from as marriage partners. Parenthetically, there are two different Bricker family lines with participants in the Bricker DNA Project who were long thought to be related. One of the two families (mine) has circumstantial and anecdotal "evidence" of a connection to the Brueggers of Frutigen. The two families lived only within a couple of miles of one another in Pennsylvania, arrived by different ships during the 1730s in Philadelphia surrounded by fellow passengers with known Swiss roots (Liechti, Stampfli, Staehli, Buerki, Beiler, etc), settled as neighbors with those same people in America, and when these two Bricker families migrated West 100 years later they moved to exactly the same township and county in Ohio. One of the immigrants, who became a prosperous farmer, gave the daughter of the other immigrant, a tailor, a fair amount of property for almost nothing before his death, So when a man from each line had their DNA tested, we found to our surprise that the two families did not share a common ancestor, at least one who would have lived since the time that common people in Switzerland started using surnames, i.e., since the late 13th century or early 14th century. In other words, the two families independently would have adopted the name "Bruegger" when other people around them were also adopting surnames. So, yes, if both families were indeed from Switzerland, this would be a clear indication that not all the people with similar surnames in Switzerland are related within a "genealogically significant" period, i.e., when there are church registers and/or historical records on paper to allow us to trace roots. There is a tradition in Frutigen of two Bruegger families, and I'm now investigating whether one of them could have come from Innertkirchen in the Hasli Valley. I'm in the process of trying to recruit to our DNA Project an American Bruegger who I've tentatively established shares a most recent common ancestor with me that was born in Frutigen in 1575, and also recruit a second American Bruegger whose immigrant ancestor came from Innertkirchen in about 1900. Then we will be able to make further DNA comparisons and reach conclusions as to origin. I have had zero luck after contacting Swiss Brueggers. Dale Bricker > > Von: dbricker@cyburban.com [mailto:dbricker@cyburban.com] >> Gesendet: Dienstag, 26. Juli 2005 20:06 >> [...] >> What follows is the summary of an article. > > [...] >> The gist of this is that the authors of the article found that the >> population in places such as Frutigen (where my patrilineal line is >> supposed to have come from), Poschiavo, Einsiedeln, Mels, Widnau, and >> Appenzell have relatively few surnames compared with practically all >> other communes of similar population size in Switzerland, which means >> that in-migration from elsewhere has been historically low and >> consequently due to inter-marriage almost everyone there is probably >> related to some extent to everyone else. > >Possibly I shouldn't comment on an article which I haven't read myself - >I hope Dale puts me right if my asumption is incorrect. > >>From the above I get the impression, that a genealogical relation is >always assumed for people with the same surname. I often read this >asumption between the lines of queries sent to me - and it's simply >wrong! In German (not sure about Rumantsch) there are several very >common surnames, carried by hundreds (or even thousands) of families >with no genealogical connection whatsoever - just consider all the >Meier, Schmid, Huber, Keller, .... - there are no really equivalent >surnames in French and Italian speaking parts of the world. If this >feeling of mine is correct, this would mean the above study is heavily >biased towards high consanguinuity in the Geramn speaking part of >Switzerland - which in turn renders any conclusion from this study >questionable, to say the least. Conclusions of this kind will be much >less biased when comparing single communities within a common language >reagion, of course. There are several areas (and I guess you can find >these all over the world) where for geographical or religios (and >possibly other) reasons in-migration has been very low - of the above >especially Poschiavo will qualify for geographical reasons, might also >apply to Frutigen and Einsiedeln, I would not necessarily expect Mels >and Widnau here. > >Best regards - Wolf >__________________ >Wolf Seelentag, Ph.D. >Reherstr. 19 >CH - 9016 St.Gallen >+41 (0) 71 - 288 51 21 >wolf.seelentag@swissonline.ch > >______________________________