How Celtic or Germanic are the English?

[Stevo]

I think that's true too. Most of my DNA Tribes 27 marker top 20 matches are multiple matches to Portugal, Spain, and Flemish. Others are to France, Basque, Swiss, Morocco, Slovakian, Croatian, and Romanian (I am a quarter Slovakian).
I know of several people who are also of mostly British Isles descent who get Iberian top matches. The only Iberian ancestry that I know of comes from royal lines of my Colonial ancestors from England, on my maternal grandmother's side.

The autosomal results you and BlackWolf get as individuals cannot be extrapolated to the entire population of the British Isles or even just to the population of the old "Celtic fringe" of the British Isles.

As I mentioned in a couple of previous posts, large-scale autosomal studies contradict the conclusions you are reaching. They show that northern Europeans, including the inhabitants of the British Isles, group with other northern Europeans; and southern Europeans, including the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, group with other southern Europeans.

I even posted a link to one such study, but I guess it's worth posting it again:

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143

[rainbow]

As I said before, there are other people (besides Black Wolf and myself) that get Iberia top matches, but their genealogical ancestry is mostly English or British Isles. Most people don't post their DNA Tribes results. 23andme has me in the Northern European category (advanced view French-German). Dr. McDonald says I'm Western European. And my percentages tests vary widely.

I still think that redhair is indigenous to Britain/British Isles, from the sparse population that lived there during the LGM.
And I believe that CeltiiIberians settled in the British Isles. And I believe that various peoples (Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Anatolians, Saxons, Normans and many more) settled there.

Maybe that old R1b in Anatolia-Armenia was from a group of British Celts that travelled far and settled there thousands of years ago. And what about the redhaired and blonde tartan-wearing Tocharian mummies found in China?

[BlackWolf]

As I said before, there are other people (besides Black Wolf and myself) that get Iberia top matches, but their genealogical ancestry is mostly English or British Isles. Most people don't post their DNA Tribes results. 23andme has me in the Northern European category (advanced view French-German). Dr. McDonald says I'm Western European. And my percentages tests vary widely.

I still think that redhair is indigenous to Britain/British Isles, from the sparse population that lived there during the LGM.
And I believe that CeltiiIberians settled in the British Isles. And I believe that various peoples (Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Anatolians, Saxons, Normans and many more) settled there.

Maybe that old R1b in Anatolia-Armenia was from a group of British Celts that travelled far and settled there thousands of years ago. And what about the redhaired and blonde tartan-wearing Tocharian mummies found in China?

My DNAPrint profile was also more in overall profile of Spain. This is due to ancient South Asian Indo~European which is in Celtic and Spanish ancestry very high.

And where did the original Haplogroup I mtDNA said to come from? Pakistan~India and Iran. Also, haplogroup M has been found in ancient populations and other autosomal results have been found in Celtic regions as South Asians. Heck I even matched a Hazara Pakistan on my results in DNATribes, in top 20. That is from the European, South Asian and Native American (Mongol) in the DNA.

There is a reason why "Black Irish" and "Black Welsh" are thought to be original from Spain. Because they look like them! lol

COLE, comes from the Celtic (some say Saxon) Coel , meaning "Black" or the "Dark Ones"

[rainbow]

My DNAPrint profile was also more in overall profile of Spain. This is due to ancient South Asian Indo~European which is in Celtic and Spanish ancestry very high.

And where did the original Haplogroup I mtDNA said to come from? Pakistan~India and Iran. Also, haplogroup M has been found in ancient populations and other autosomal results have been found in Celtic regions as South Asians. Heck I even matched a Hazara Pakistan on my results in DNATribes, in top 20. That is from the European, South Asian and Native American (Mongol) in the DNA.

There is a reason why "Black Irish" and "Black Welsh" are thought to be original from Spain. Because they look like them! lol

COLE, comes from the Celtic (some say Saxon) Coel , meaning "Black" or the "Dark Ones"

Someone on another dna forum post his results there. He is 100% Turkish , but got a wide array of matches - one was to Ireland. And I remember a dna tv show where an English lady was told she had deep ancestry from Turkey.

[rainbow]

The Galatians of Anatolia/Asia Minor were Celtic.

Brittany, in northwestern France was/is Brythonic Celtic. Many Britons escaped the Anglo-Saxon invasion by moving to Brittany in NW France and Britonia (Galicia) in NW Spain. One of my top matches (#4?) is to NW Spain, which I accept as a proxy for autosomal Celtic/Brythonic ancestry because DNATribes doesn't have NW or NE or SE or SW or Central England categories.

[Stevo]

As I said before, there are other people (besides Black Wolf and myself) that get Iberia top matches, but their genealogical ancestry is mostly English or British Isles. Most people don't post their DNA Tribes results. 23andme has me in the Northern European category (advanced view French-German). Dr. McDonald says I'm Western European. And my percentages tests vary widely.

I still think that redhair is indigenous to Britain/British Isles, from the sparse population that lived there during the LGM.
And I believe that CeltiiIberians settled in the British Isles. And I believe that various peoples (Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Anatolians, Saxons, Normans and many more) settled there.

Maybe that old R1b in Anatolia-Armenia was from a group of British Celts that travelled far and settled there thousands of years ago. And what about the redhaired and blonde tartan-wearing Tocharian mummies found in China?

That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that large-scale autosomal tests of actual northern Europeans (as opposed to Americans of mixed European descent) show that northern Europeans group with other northern Europeans and that southern Europeans, including folks from the Iberian Peninsula, group with other southern Europeans.

What I think the British Isles have in common with the Iberian Peninsula is mostly relative to the y chromosome, since both have a high frequency of various kinds of R1b1b2. But even on that score there are differences in the breakdown of the various subclades of R1b1b2, with Iberia having greater percentages of R-SRY2627, R-M153, and R-P312*, and the Isles having greater percentages of R-L21, R-U106, and R-U152.

[Stevo]

. . .

There is a reason why "Black Irish" and "Black Welsh" are thought to be original from Spain. Because they look like them! lol . . .

The term "Black Irish" is really vague and ambiguous, with very little real meaning. It is mostly an American term once used by admixed white people to hide the minority (Amerindian or African) component in their backgrounds.

The fact that it is used at all demonstrates clearly that one doesn't expect swarthy features among the Irish, that such features are the exception.

"Black Welsh" is a new one on me. The Welsh, like the Irish, are mostly very fair-skinned and light-eyed, but you may be on firmer historical ground in connecting at least some of the southern Welsh with Iberia. The 1st-century Roman historian Tacitus, in his Agricola, speculated that the Silures (one tribe) of southern Wales may have come from Spain originally.

[BlackWolf]

The Galatians of Anatolia/Asia Minor were Celtic. Brittany, in northwestern France was/is Brythonic Celtic. Many Britons escaped the Anglo-Saxon invasion by moving to Brittany in NW France and Britonia (Galicia) in NW Spain. One of my top matches (#4?) is to NW Spain, which I accept as a proxy for autosomal Celtic/Brythonic ancestry because DNATribes doesn't have NW or NE or SE or SW or Central England categories.

Yeah, similar ancestry. I as well matched Northern Irish, Irish, Scotland (Viking area), Norway, Switzerland, France and Spain and Basque. My Euro test said Spain, Basque, Norse and Celtic. About a equal dose of Norse and Celtic. My Welsh ancestry did not show up on tribes, but I believe that is in my Spanish results. I also has Denmark and Flemish Dutch. I have confirmed traditional geneology of Irish, Welsh, Scotland Orkney Norse, Scots Irish, French, Switzerland, German, English and Dutch Wallon. It also picked up a good chunk of my Native American. The tribes test got every one of them except Wales, England and Germany. Being I am from the American South, I have many lines of Welsh, Scots Irish, Irish etc. The English I have is almost all from Cornwall and Devon. My Y-DNA matched Ireland and Devon or Wales still disagreement. Mt-DNA, Cornwall. Either way I look very "Black Irish" with jet black hair, olive skin and blue eyes. Even Irish Americans have told me I "look" Irish. Either way, yes I believe overall the Spanish results found in many White Americans are due to Celtic ancestry. I even know a girl from Ireland who had a lot os Spain in her results.

[BlackWolf]

The term "Black Irish" is really vague and ambiguous, with very little real meaning. It is mostly an American term once used by admixed white people to hide the minority (Amerindian or African) component in their backgrounds.

The fact that it is used at all demonstrates clearly that one doesn't expect swarthy features among the Irish, that such features are the exception.

"Black Welsh" is a new one on me. The Welsh, like the Irish, are mostly very fair-skinned and light-eyed, but you may be on firmer historical ground in connecting at least some of the southern Welsh with Iberia. The 1st-century Roman historian Tacitus, in his Agricola, speculated that the Silures (one tribe) of southern Wales may have come from Spain originally.

Black Irish is a term by Irish Americans to describe the Gabriel Byrne look.

There are plenty of olive colored Welsh, English and Irish

"Black" in this regard being, olive with dark hair. I dont think it came from the secret of Roan Inish. lol

I think it comes from exactly where the ancient Irish said it came from, Iberia

[rainbow]

The term "Black Irish" is really vague and ambiguous, with very little real meaning. It is mostly an American term once used by admixed white people to hide the minority (Amerindian or African) component in their backgrounds.

The fact that it is used at all demonstrates clearly that one doesn't expect swarthy features among the Irish, that such features are the exception.

"Black Welsh" is a new one on me. The Welsh, like the Irish, are mostly very fair-skinned and light-eyed

from Wales: Catherine Zeta-Jones

from Scotland: Craig Ferguson

American "Black Irish" (means dark eyes and hair): Rosie O'Donnell

[BlackWolf]

from Wales: Catherine Zeta-Jones

from Scotland: Craig Ferguson

American "Black Irish" (means dark eyes and hair): Rosie O'Donnell

Others...

Vinnie Jones: Welsh

Gary Stretch and Clive Owen: English

Colin Farrell: Black Irish

Sean Connery: Scotland

[Stevo]

You all are free to create new definitions for essentially meaningless terms if you wish, but large-scale autosomal studies contradict your extrapolations from anecdotal lists of a handful of Irish and Welsh individuals with somewhat swarthy features.

There is no real evidence the Irish or Welsh "came from Iberia".

You might as well hunt down examples of Germans, Swedes, Lithuanians, etc., who have dark features, list them and start calling them "Black" this-or-that.

Here is a little bit fuller excerpt from Coon's old The Races of Europe. Again, the section on the physical appearance of the Irish was based on a study of 10,000 Irishmen (not three or four so-called "Black Irish") done by Harvard University's Anthropology Department.

Let us now examine the pigment characters and morphological traits of the Irish, both as a total group and regionally. In the first place, the Irish are almost uniquely pale skinned when unexposed, untanned parts of the body, are observed. Out of 10,000 men, over 90 per cent had skins of the pale pink shade represented by von Luschan #3, while not a single individual was darker than von Luschan #11. Although regional differences are not great, they are suggestive. In the southwestern coastal regions which we have designated as a metrical unit, the darker shades run from 4 per cent to 7 per cent; in the east, in the central plain and the counties near and south of Dublin, they run from 10 per cent to 18 per cent.

The pale Irish skin, where exposed to the sun, shows a marked inclination to freckling. Forty per cent of the entire group are freckled to some extent; in Kerry the ratio rises as high as 60 per cent, in Waterford and Wexford, Carlow and Wicklow - the southeastern counties - it falls to 30 per cent. Thus a difference of two to one in this character serves to differentiate the southwest from the southeast even more clearly than do metrical criteria.

The hair form shows a difference between Protestants and Catholics; 44 per cent of Protestants have straight hair, and only 28 per cent of Catholics; the most numerous category in both groups, however, is low waves. The hair is almost uniformly medium in texture; coarse and fine alike are rare. The beard is moderately developed in the general European sense, extremely heavy and sparse beards are alike rare. At the same time the body hair, which is almost always present, is of a moderate development, and few very hairy men are found. The Aran Islanders are much less hairy, much thinner bearded, and on the whole straighter haired, than the other Irish. Elsewhere the waviest hair, along with a minimum of pilous development, is found in the Great Plain.

The hair color of the Irish is predominantly brown; black hair accounts for less than 3 per cent of the total, while the ashen series (Fischer #20-26) amounts to but one-half of one per cent. Forty per cent have dark brown hair (Fischer #4-5); 35 per cent have medium brown (Fischer #7-9); reddish brown hues total over 5 per cent (closest to Fischer #6, #10), while clear reds (Fischer #1-3) run higher than 4 per cent. The rest, some 15 per cent, fall into a light brown to golden blond category (Fischer #11-19). Thus the hair color of the Irish is darker than that of most regions of Scandinavia, but not much darker than Iceland; it is notably different from Nordic hair, as exemplified by eastern Norwegians and Swedes, in its almost total lack of ash-blondism. The rufous hair color pigment reaches a world maximum here; not so much in reds as in the prevalance of golden hues in blond and brown shades. The lightest hair is found in the Aran Islands, where the commonest shade is, nevertheless, medium brown; in the southwestern counties there are more goldens and at the same time more dark-browns than in Ireland as a whole, while the Great Plain runs fairest of all. Red hair, with a regional maximum of 8 per cent, is commonest in Ulster, rarest in Waterford and Wexford.

In the proportion of pure light eyes, Ireland competes successfully with the blondest regions of Scandinavia. Over 46 per cent of the total group has pure light eyes, and of these all but 4 per cent are blue. Very light-mixed eyes (equivalent to Martin #13-14) account for another 30 per cent, while less than one-half of one per cent have pure brown. There is probably no population of equal size in the world which is lighter eyed, and blue eyed, than the Irish. The almost total absence of gray eyes corresponds to the equal paucity of ash-blond hair. Compared to eastern Norway, Sweden, and Finnic and Baltic groups, the eye color is disproportionately light in comparison to hair color. Regional differences, while not great, are of some importance. The ratio of pure blue eyes falls to 33 per cent in Kerry and Clare, and rises to 50 per cent in other regions - Carlow and Wicklow in the southeast, and Armagh, Monaghan, and eastern Cavan in the North. On the whole, the east is lighter eyed than the west, as it is lighter haired. At the same time the Presbyterians are blonder than the Catholics, who are in turn fairer than the members of the Church of Ireland.

As I said, that was from a study of 10,000 Irishmen done by Harvard's Anthropology Department. No mention of "Black Irish" or even of any significant proportion of the sample with swarthy features. Very dark hair and brown eyes are rare in Ireland. For every example you list, there are literally thousands of fair-skinned, light-eyed Irish.

As I said, the term "Black Irish" began in America as something used by admixed white people to hide the minority element (Amerindian or African) in their backgrounds. You two are expanding its use, as some others do, into a sort of urban legend without any real foundation.

There is nothing wrong with having dark hair and otherwise swarthy features, but we should try to be accurate and not generalize from a basically useless term and a handful examples to an entire population, drawing the erroneous conclusion that because Colin Farrell and Catherine Zeta Jones have somewhat swarthy features therefore the Irish and Welsh "came from Iberia".

[BlackWolf]

As I said, that was from a study of 10,000 Irishmen done by Harvard's Anthropology Department. No mention of "Black Irish" or even of any significant proportion of the sample with swarthy features. Very dark hair and brown eyes are rare in Ireland. For every example you list, there are literally thousands of fair-skinned, light-eyed Irish.

As I said, the term "Black Irish" began in America as something used by admixed white people to hide the minority element (Amerindian or African) in their backgrounds. You two are expanding its use, as some others do, into a sort of urban legend without any real foundation.

There is nothing wrong with having dark hair and otherwise swarthy features, but we should try to be accurate and not generalize from a basically useless term and a handful examples to an entire population, drawing the erroneous conclusion that because Colin Farrell and Catherine Zeta Jones have somewhat swarthy features therefore the Irish and Welsh "came from Iberia".

That the Irish are different than Spaniards today is obvious. The point is that there is a common ancestry. The English I do believe are more, Saxon than what Sykes believes, however, there is Celtic there too.

English towns up until the 1600's had "Celtic Quarters" of their cities and racist propaganda noted Celtic features in the working class of the English in the 1800's.

The principle arguement here, is whether or not the Irish came from Iberia. Ireland, like all other nations, have been having admixture up until the present. Norse Viking, English, Scottish, Germans, Dutch, Danish have all had settlements there at one time.

Y-DNA evidence does point to a Iberian origin for the Irish, as they do match Basques most highly. As do the countless legends of the Irish and Welsh people themselves, who describe their ancestors as coming from there.

I have absolutely ZERO Spanish ancestry, but I matched Extremadura Spain as my highest result. I also matched matched in my top 20 Northern Irish, Irish and Republic of Ireland in my tribes results. The 2nd highest match was Denmark, the 3rd Highest Basque.

Northern Irish was the 7th. It was a smattering of Norse and Celtic nations in my tribes results, all of which I descend. The only nations that were not Celtic/Norse were Romania, 2 matches in top 20 near the bottom.

The hightest above all was Spanish. My Euro test came back as Spanish, Basque, Norse, Celtic, Belgic.....all in that order from least to great. Y-DNA is matches Welsh and Irish origin. Mt-DNA is Cornish, another Celtic area and the city where it matches is very old ancient Cornish of Celtic descent.

I am not sure the bias towards the Spanish in this thread, they are of Celtic ancestry or partial Celtic ancestry. The fact that they are related to other Indo-Europeans is well known. There are many many blonds in Central and Northern Spain or brown hair, very light skin, etc. Bagpipes, Tartans, all are seen there in Northwest Spain in particular.

We are talking ancient connections, which can also show up on autosomal tests.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-descended-from-spanish-fishermen-study-finds-416727.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitanians

[rainbow]

Stevo, The term "Black Irish" is a term used among Irish American communities for the dark brown or black hair phenotype in Irish people. You posted that forty percent have dark brown hair.
I googled the term for you, here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish

The stereotypical Irish is the redhaired phenotype (the Ron Howard/Richie Cunningham and Marion Ross/Marion Cunningham look. Mr. C/Tom Bosley has the "Black Irish" look). I wouldn't be surprised if most of the "Black Irish" have the recessive gene for redhair. They have children or grandchildren with redhair because it skips generations.



It's NOT a term for people with a mixture of Caucasian and African and Native American ancestry. I don't know of any admixed people who adopted the term.

[Stevo]

rainbow,

Read the article you linked above.

In the United States South, mixed-race descendants of European and Native Americans, or European and African Americans, sometimes called themselves "Black Irish" or "Black Dutch" to explain their coloring and conceal their minority heritage.

And

The term 'Black Irish' is ambiguous and not frequently used in everyday conversation. People from different locales and at alternate junctures in history have coined it for varying reasons. Likewise, there are those whose opinions differ as to the typical physical characteristics of so-called Black Irish: e.g., dark hair, brown eyes, and medium skin tone; or dark hair, blue or green eyes, and fair skin tone.

In other words, "Black Irish" is a useless, inexact term that describes no definite people or ethnic group.