Notes for when you join the Surname Group

The additional information that you may find useful when ordering your DNA Kit is shown below:

Information to be used when ordering your Kit

When you have been accepted to join a Surname group, there are several questions that are asked and one of them is do you want a Surname Match only? It is better to make that a NO. If you fill that in as a Yes then you can change this later when you get access to your FTDNA page when the lab receives your test sample.

The reason for making it a No is that you want the maximum amount of information possible on your ancestral Y-Chromosome line. At first when you get the 12-Marker results, there will be matches and the surname will be all sorts of names but that is because the time frame is prior to when people had surnames so you are really related to them but prior to 600-800 years ago. As the results arrive for the 25 and 37 marker results, these matches will disappear but per chance if a common male ancestor of yours or mine sowed a few wild seeds then there may be others with a different surname that match your profile with a very small genetic distance. The other thing is that your common male ancestor could have been from an illegitimate birth of a male son whose mother had the surname that you are searching. The other scenario is that a male child could have been adopted by a family/Clan with the surname you are searching but the father was not of that line. So for these reasons it is best to indicate No to the question on “Surname Match Only”

Information to be used when ordering your Kit arrives:

The other thing is when your test kit arrives, there will be a release form that you must fill out to allow your results to be made available to the administrator and that should be filled out as a Yes. If you used a No then your data would be hidden and nobody could help you to determine what your results mean or tell others that you are a match to their profile. It is only by these matches that you will find others who match your profile.

What DNA analysis will and will not do for you:

One of the main things to remember when working with DNA analysis is that the results WILL NOT tell you who you are related to and make a connection to a particular person as your ancestor. All that  you will know is the genetic distance between your profile and someone else with either an exact match or a partial match with a given genetic distance. How far in the distant past the common male ancestor existed is anyone's guess. Some try to imply as to when this time is but that is pure speculation and not of much benefit. One of the ways to look at at this is explained in the following example using a branch of any fruit tree where the fruit is equivalent to the DNA profile of a person that has been tested and found to match with others from the same tree.

Example: Given a cherry tree then consider a limb of the tree with many sub-branches and the fruit hanging from each end of a small twig. If you picture the tree hanging upside down where the main trunk is pointing upwards then that is like the starting of that tree. If you take a fruit from any twig then it is impossible to say the exact line that must be taken up the tree to find the common point to where the fruit from another twig also makes the common connection. If the fruit are from the same small twig where the bunch of cherries are from then it is easy and that is equivalent to the paper trail that exists from our ancestral searches using conventional genealogy research methods. With this tree analogy it is easy to find the link from one cluster of fruit to another because we can see the tree and how all the limbs are connected but in the human evolution chain, we cannot see how the different sections are connected but only by additional tests and much research work, data can be gathered and analyzed that will give us an insight into the possible way that mankind has developed over the eons. These additional tests are what are called SNP test and are used to determine the main branches and sub-branches of the human evolutionary tree. Much work on these tests and the development of new SNP test is an ongoing research project as more and more people are tested and the database of known information keeps growing. You are adding to this database by being tested and that is how the system will continue to grow and improve over time. Thirty years form now people will look back and say that things were so primitive in the early 2000's but that is how research works to break new ground. An example of the Sub-Clade Tree Structure for Y-Haplogroup I by Ken Nordvedt is a good way to show the SNP tests that are all shown as M170, P38, ...

A second example using the fruit tree approach is that of a Fruit Salad Tree. This is a fruit tree that has had branches grafted that are for different varieties of fruit. Each branch that has been grafted on will bear fruit that correspond to that kind of tree. In some ways, this is similar to the different Haplogroups that have evolved in the Human evolutionary tree but these are not grafted on but rather are from mutations that have occurred over time that have resulted in the major haplogroups or Clade structure. The proper designation for these mutations is based on what is known as SNP(Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP which is pronounced 'snip') tests. An example of this is shown at the following link for the Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree. When your DNA results are known then you will be assigned to a Haplogroup that defines what branch of mankind your line has descended from.

The following items are only of concern after your FTDNA page has been setup when you test has been received by the test lab and/or your results have been obtained:

Other items that you will find useful and part of the FTDNA page is that you can have a GED file uploaded that shows your pedigree for the kind of test that you have had(Note: information on living persons is not shown). This is very useful as it helps when you have a match with someone else to be able to see what their tree looks like compared to yours This same GED file is used when you set up your Y-Search account that allows others or you to search for other people that have had DNA tests done by other testing labs.

If you want further information on DNA Genealogy or want to contact me then do so from my home page.