![my dna matches have different surname my dna matches have different surname](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_FCJb7ztKE/XFw8cZNikSI/AAAAAAACWHE/ZWWzcExkIuAUVYaqaZ57M0tPs9GMtnkHACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/DNA_Origins.jpg)
An "older sister", this individual believed, had actually been his mother.
![my dna matches have different surname my dna matches have different surname](https://www.easydna.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ancestry_map2.jpg)
Professor Jobling said he knew of one man who suspected this had been the situation with his own immediate family. In the first half of the 20th Century, when a child was born out of wedlock, grandparents would sometimes raise the child as their own. Mark Jobling said tests offering better resolution on the whole genome should be able to solve other familial puzzles. Confusion might arise when customers whose DNA had been tested by different companies uploaded their own genetic information into the same database. For instance, genetic testing companies sometimes used different naming methods for genetic markers. Such false matches might also arise from technical issues with DNA databases. Also, some rare markers ran across two or more surnames, which might cause false matches. There's a spectacular common ancestry for that name."īut he cautioned that these general patterns might differ from country to country. "In a name like Attenborough, there is just one great descent cluster, and a few people who don't fit into it. There is identity within those clusters but there are many of them. "In a name like Jefferson, for example, which is quite a common name, you find lots of these little descent clusters. But, said Mark Jobling: "Even in reasonably common surnames you see 'descent clusters'. The link between last name and likeness on the Y chromosome gets stronger, the rarer the surname is. The database allowed him to see how his own line of descent fits into the wider family tree for this surname. That's statistically pretty hard to argue against," he explained. "When the results came back, of the 22 names they sent back who matched my DNA 11 were Page or Paige. But she told me that she had expected me to do this a long time ago."Įdward Cerullo, 48, a computer programmer from Norway, knew his birth father's surname - Page - before testing his DNA. "You start to wonder to yourself - if I do this, am I letting my family down? I told my mother: I really don't want to find my birth family. I am sure there are people who have been searching for their birth parents on foot, with pen and paper, for years - and have got nowhere. "It's a quick and effortless way to at least find some nugget about your history. "It was pretty concrete evidence," Mr Barber told me. Of six people in the Ysearch database who were close genetic matches, all had variants of the surname Ritchie, including one US-based Ruetschi who was a very close match. Ysearch is one database allowing users to search for genetic matchesĬhandler Barber, a 37-year-old advertising copywriter from Dallas, who was adopted at birth, said he had learned about the possibility of discovering his surname from a magazine article about consumer DNA testing. "There's a big gamble in doing it, but people sometimes say that if you're in a dark room then even a little light can be useful. Mark Jobling, professor of genetics at the University of Leicester, UK, who is unconnected with Family Tree DNA said: "If you have a surname which is reasonably rare, but not so rare that the chances of another person being typed and going into that database are infinitesimal, then you could be in luck. can act in a sense like a silver bullet." he said. "That's the real miracle of the DNA test. Mr Greenspan said that, for some adoptees, discovering the surname of their birth father in any other way might be extremely difficult, or even impossible. The tests can "read" up to 67 genetic markers on the Y chromosome. "From that, they can get the idea that they have at least found the surname they need to start looking for in the town in which they were born." The company has an online database called Ysearch containing genetic information from 125,000 men, along with surnames and other genealogical data.īennett Greenspan explained: "We now have a growing number of people who are adopted, who have tested with us and have matched several individuals with a particular surname, and maybe they haven't matched anyone else with a different surname.
![my dna matches have different surname my dna matches have different surname](https://irelanddavis.com/images/dna/viewdnamatches.jpg)
At least 30 men registered with US consumer genetic testing firm Family Tree DNA have found their "biological surname" in this way, the company's chief executive told BBC News.