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Holiday Sale at FTDNA

Family Tree DNA is holding a Holiday Dale now through January 3rd. The Y-37 test is on sale for $99 and the Y-111 test is on sale for $199. Y-DNA upgrades are also on sale. Please be advised these are the only tests our project can use to identify your Phillips family. Here is a link to a page where you can order a test through our project thereby assuring your results will be included in our project.

Why do I match men with different surnames?

There are two reasons you may have a Y-DNA match with someone with a different surname. It may be that your connection is from a time before surnames were in common use. This is especially likely for groups where surnames were often not adopted until the most recent 100 to 200 years, for example, Scandinavians and Jewish populations. Another reason for surnames not to match is that there has been a surname change in genealogical times. That could be in either your match's or your own line.

The main place that you will see matches with many different surnames is the Y-12 marker matches section. The time to a common ancestor for these matches may extend beyond genealogical records and the adoption of surnames.

If you continue to match others outside your surname at the Y-37, Y-67, and Y-111 marker levels, then there is likely to have been a surname change within the genealogical time frame. Common causes for this include deliberate name changes, adoptions and illegitimacy. For those matches at a higher number of markers (Y-37, Y-67, and Y-111), contacting your matches is the best way to learn more.

The importance of a surname match at 12 markers

If two 12 marker Y-DNA results match for two participants with the same surname and the genealogy research shows a common ancestor in 1835, the DNA test has validated the research and proven that the two descendants are related. In this example, you have two items of evidence to support that the individuals tested are related…a documented paper trail and the Y-DNA results. In addition, the research provided a precise time frame for the common ancestor.

Without the genealogy research, and where 2 participants with the same surname match on the 12 marker Y-DNA test, then the scientific answer to the degree of relatedness is that 50% of the time the common ancestor would have occurred within 7 generations, or within approximately 150 years. The range of generations for the common ancestor extends to 76.9 generations or almost 2000 years for those cases where there is not a surname in common. Therefore the importance of a surname link is paramount to provide a comfortable conclusion of relatedness. Most of the time random matches with people with different surnames do not stand the test for extended DNA testing.

Phillips DNA Blog