Your DNA Can Spill Your Surname Secrets

Researchers at the University of Leicester are trying to develop techniques that an one day enable police to work out criminals' surnames just by analysing their DNA.

Dr. Turi King, Wellcome Trust postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Genetics, has found that men with the same British surname are highly likely to be genetically linked. She insists that her findings have implications in the fields of forensics, genealogy, epidemiology, and the history of surnames.

You can read more at : http://www.andhranews.net/Technology/2008/October/8-Your-spill-your-surname-68134.asp

Comments

[Marilyn H]

>>has found that men with the same British surname are highly likely to be genetically linked<<
No! Really?

(Happy to bring some snarkiness back to the comments.)

[Mariann]

So, has she thought about studying the origins of names or should we just put at the men named Smith on the same family tree?

Dick, I like your snarkiness; it brings a smile to my face, reduces my stress, because of the smile and lowers my blood pressure, also because of the smile (sorry for the run on sentence) :-]

[Scott Norton]

Ummm I wonder if they have discovered DNA surname projects?

Check a criminal DNA against surname projects and see if there's a match. You have the last name barring a non-paternity event.

[Jim McMillen]

Maybe, when the surname derives from a location, but not when from an occupation.

[Raphaël]

Some scientists also say that men with the same British surname are highly likely to have the same British surname :-)

This kind of studies are really (I'm not ironical) interesting beaucause they can help us checking genetical links between same name holders or between related names holders (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6987222.stm about Lermontov and Learmonth).

But what a pity for Dr. Turi King that some made nearly the same researches and same conclusions years ago :)

[E.W.Wallace]

I stumbled on illegitimacy in my own English grandmother's lineage, and a subsequent name change for her father after his marriage, when I first began researching her line. Furthermore I discovered that the vicar in his parish records spelled the surname any old way, causing me towonder how accurate these academic conclusions are!!! The parish vicar, probably trained at either Oxford or Cambridge, probably had trouble with the Suffolk dialect, even as I, an American, have trouble with understanding the dialects in some counties in England.

As one noted English genealogist has stated in one of his lectures, The Victorians were not so Victorian. Besides, the crimes change from century to century, if not from decade to decade. How wonderful to be an academic and make generalizations!