(+) Divided By The Pond: Why Genetic Drift Means US Results Can’t Pinpoint the Origin of a British Surname

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Chris Pomery.

Like so many great technological innovations, the use of Y-chromosome DNA testing to unravel the history of a surname was invented in Britain…and commercialised in the USA.

Since the very first published surname project, on the Sykes surname back in the year 2000, the number of Y-chromosome test results has risen to several hundreds of thousands worldwide. FTDNA alone has 165,000 in its database, many within the more than 5,500 surname-based projects registered on its site. In just over a decade we’ve gone from one surname project to a point where a significant percentage of surnames of Western European origin are included within a registered DNA project. And more are being created every day.

I’ve no statistics to prove this next statement, but my guess is that over three-quarters of those Y-chromosome results have been gathered from men who live in the USA. A number will also live in Canada and other parts of the Americas, others in former British colonies like Australia and New Zealand. A relatively small percentage will reside in Europe, and many of them in the UK or Ireland.

Why is this important? After all, your DNA is your DNA and your surname is your surname. Surely the significance of your DNA result doesn’t depend on where you live?

Well, it turns out that it does.

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