Hi everybody! My mother tongue is Catalan, which is co-official with Spanish where I live so English would be my third language... I apologize for all the mistakes I _will_ make. Sorry. Feel free to correct me O:-)
I'm a Telecommunications Technical Engineer (3 years degree), a Computer Scientist (5 years degree), and now I'm pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at UIB (Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain).
So, I have some technical background... but I'm fairly new to genealogy and genetics. I'm interested in these areas mainly as a hobby, but I'd love to learn enough about them to do some serious (and hopefully useful, or at least interesting) research in the future.
My DNA has already been tested during the last year at FTDNA (everything but Full Mitochondria Sequence) and now I have a lot of results waiting to be used. I understand that most of these results need to be put in context in many, many senses. I would appreciate your comments and recommendations to get the most of my results. I'd like to know whether some conclusions I've already drawn are totally or partially right (or just wrong!).
For instance, my yDNA haplogroup is R1b and my mtDNA haplogroup is H7. R1b is pretty common (yeah, my paternal line is european, I could probably have said that in front of a mirror with no DNA tests at all ;-) but H7 looks very exciting: it's relatively scarce and unknown. And my maternal line is more mysterious to me, due to our naming conventions!
My full name is Guillem Cantallops Ramis. Guillem is my name. Cantallops is my first surname and I got it from my father, he got it from his father, etc. So the paternal line keeps the first surname here, and Cantallops has probably been related to haplogroup R1b at least for some centuries. I live in Mallorca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorca#History). In 1229 the island was conquered by Christians (mainly) from Catalonia.
As far as I know, Cantallops has never been a prestigious family name associated to nobiliary privileges. But there are several geographic features and towns called Cantallops in the Pyrenees (it makes sense: "canta" is a Latin root for "sing" and "llops" is "wolves" in Catalan :-) Of course, people coming to Mallorca from these places could have been genetically diverse and it's probably easy to find non-R1b Cantallops. But at least that surname has some kind of relation to the haplogroup.
Ramis is my second surname and I got it from my mother. But she got it from his father so it's not related to the H7 haplogroup. Here we get our second surname from our mother, but we take her first surname, not the second one. So in fact we always get the first surname of both grandfathers. No maternal lineage in our names :-(
I've done some (extremely amateur!) classic genealogic research. I've got data about ancestors of mine in the early 19th century, but for most branches I'm stuck in the 20th century. That's OK, I haven't seen written documents _yet_, I've just interviewed my relatives. The most interesting fact I've found out is that I'm closely related to Juan Mascaró Fornés, a prestigious sanskritist who taught in Cambridge.
I discovered FTDNA when I signed up for the Genographic Project. I did it to learn more about my ancestors. I think it would be great to find out more facts linking me to specific geographic locations, (pre)historic events or ethnic groups. And if I didn't get it wrong, this _must_ be done by comparing my results (and additional informations) to others, and by using statistical methods (I _do_ hate statistics, but sometimes you can't have that abstract thing called "truth" O:-)
Do you know how could I learn more about Haplogroup H7? Can I help to clarify its history? How?
Well, a conclusion is just the place where you got tired of thinking. Today, the conclusion is here. Nice to meet you. Thank you for reading this messy brainstorm. Happy New Year to everybody, R1b/H7 or not ;-)
I'm a Telecommunications Technical Engineer (3 years degree), a Computer Scientist (5 years degree), and now I'm pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at UIB (Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain).
So, I have some technical background... but I'm fairly new to genealogy and genetics. I'm interested in these areas mainly as a hobby, but I'd love to learn enough about them to do some serious (and hopefully useful, or at least interesting) research in the future.
My DNA has already been tested during the last year at FTDNA (everything but Full Mitochondria Sequence) and now I have a lot of results waiting to be used. I understand that most of these results need to be put in context in many, many senses. I would appreciate your comments and recommendations to get the most of my results. I'd like to know whether some conclusions I've already drawn are totally or partially right (or just wrong!).
For instance, my yDNA haplogroup is R1b and my mtDNA haplogroup is H7. R1b is pretty common (yeah, my paternal line is european, I could probably have said that in front of a mirror with no DNA tests at all ;-) but H7 looks very exciting: it's relatively scarce and unknown. And my maternal line is more mysterious to me, due to our naming conventions!
My full name is Guillem Cantallops Ramis. Guillem is my name. Cantallops is my first surname and I got it from my father, he got it from his father, etc. So the paternal line keeps the first surname here, and Cantallops has probably been related to haplogroup R1b at least for some centuries. I live in Mallorca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorca#History). In 1229 the island was conquered by Christians (mainly) from Catalonia.
As far as I know, Cantallops has never been a prestigious family name associated to nobiliary privileges. But there are several geographic features and towns called Cantallops in the Pyrenees (it makes sense: "canta" is a Latin root for "sing" and "llops" is "wolves" in Catalan :-) Of course, people coming to Mallorca from these places could have been genetically diverse and it's probably easy to find non-R1b Cantallops. But at least that surname has some kind of relation to the haplogroup.
Ramis is my second surname and I got it from my mother. But she got it from his father so it's not related to the H7 haplogroup. Here we get our second surname from our mother, but we take her first surname, not the second one. So in fact we always get the first surname of both grandfathers. No maternal lineage in our names :-(
I've done some (extremely amateur!) classic genealogic research. I've got data about ancestors of mine in the early 19th century, but for most branches I'm stuck in the 20th century. That's OK, I haven't seen written documents _yet_, I've just interviewed my relatives. The most interesting fact I've found out is that I'm closely related to Juan Mascaró Fornés, a prestigious sanskritist who taught in Cambridge.
I discovered FTDNA when I signed up for the Genographic Project. I did it to learn more about my ancestors. I think it would be great to find out more facts linking me to specific geographic locations, (pre)historic events or ethnic groups. And if I didn't get it wrong, this _must_ be done by comparing my results (and additional informations) to others, and by using statistical methods (I _do_ hate statistics, but sometimes you can't have that abstract thing called "truth" O:-)
Do you know how could I learn more about Haplogroup H7? Can I help to clarify its history? How?
Well, a conclusion is just the place where you got tired of thinking. Today, the conclusion is here. Nice to meet you. Thank you for reading this messy brainstorm. Happy New Year to everybody, R1b/H7 or not ;-)
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