Not of This Family? Now what?

[patidi]

I'm still a little stunned after getting the results from the Y-46 DNA test (from another company, now awaiting the FT results). Since I'm female, I had my brother's son take the test. Of the possible 25 matches we received, not one included our surname. It took me a while to understand that meant a Non-Paternal Event.

I began my genealogy research with the hope of sharing "our roots", but now I don't want to tell anyone in the family my discovery because although I'm objective, others might not be. It might be disturbing information on many levels, and I'm not sure I want to share someone's secret, whether they are dead or alive.

Any advise?

[rivergirl]

Are you saying you have no matches with anyone of your surname or that you have not matched with another member of your known family that also tested.

No matches with people of your surname may be because no one related to you has tested.

[mkdexter]

@Patid: It is also possible that you don't see any matches because of the ancestry involved. Certain groups, whether related to you or not, are more numerous in the database than others. Related at 12 markers vs related closely at 32 markers are two different issues. I get the impression you meant no matches at all, distant or close, and if that's the case then it is not an NPE but a database not being full of the group you are in issue.

What is the haplogroup predicted to be by the test.

Matt.

[Jim Barrett]

Have you posted your results to Ysearch to see if you have matches there?

If there was a NPE you don't know when it would have occured. The boy may not be the son of your brother. Your brother may only be a half brother. And this keeps going back. I suggest you try to find a distant male cousin to test.

[travers]

I don't think it is proper to have her jumping to conclusions of a NPE in her own immediate family. NO information she has given would suggest this.

[GayeSherman]

There are at least three reasons why no one of that surname showed up AND it was not due to a NPE - they mostly have to do with the paternal line ethnic group.

1. Not enough people from that ethnic group do DNA testing.

2. The paternal line (going back 300 or more years) was not very prolific i.e. the paternal line ancestors just did not have a lot of sons, grandsons and great-grandsons. Fewer male descendants = less of a chance that one of them tested.

3. Some ethnic groups did not adopt surnames until about 250 years ago. The two most prominent examples are Ashkenazi Jews and Scandinavians. My brother has several 37/37 matches and none of them match his surname. He does have one 36/37 match who IS a paternal line first cousin to his father. That man's father changed the family name upon emigrating.


Hope that helps!

Gaye

[Time Traveler]

For what it's worth, the patronymic naming convention was also utilized by the early Dutch immigrating to NY and NJ. These people could use 3 or more different "surnames" in varioius records in the same time frame: i.e., Han Hansen, Hans Hansen Noorman (the Norseman), Hans Hansen Bergen (where he was from), and Hans Hansen Boer (the farmer). Later generations may have adopted any one of the "surnames." It can be a real nightmare in researching.

[jhgren]

In some places fixed surnames have never been adopted - the most prominent example I know of is Iceland, where patronymics still almost exclusively are used. In Denmark it is also now (again) legal to use patronymics and matronymics.
The main transition from patronymics to fixed surnames in Scandinavia was about 110-160 years ago, I would say.

[econnore]

I mentioned this in another thread last year. Every language has names for foundlings or where foundlings were left.

For example:

VERLAETEN (Dutch)
BIJDAM (near dam - Dutch)
ESPOSITO, PROIETTI, TROVATO, CASADIO, D'AMATO (Italian)
TEMPLE (U.K.)
BOGDAN (Russian)

Google for foundling surname and the language or country.

[EdwardRHill]

I also matched up with a different surname which took a year for me to believe. I'm interested in finding out about my family history so what someone did that is now died I really don't care. We all have the same things when it comes to the good the bad and the ugly in our tree's. I except it all it makes for a more interesting tree an for those who chose to except only the good are fooling them self's. You know your family and I don't but if you have some that are interested in your family history and you think they would be able to except the news I would tell them and not the rest unless they asked.

If I was you I would break my matches down in surname groups. Than from those groups go from the largest to the smallest group trying to make contacting with as many as possible the one that can trace his or her line back the furthest might be a clue to the right surname.

Also see if they will test at FTDNA. I tested also at Ancestry and a match there went from a MRCA of 10 or 250 years to a Genetic Distance of 1 at FTDNA. All my matches a Ancestry missed markers 464a and b with me but matches each other there. When one tested at FTDNA I was able to figure out that we now match at 464a and b which help me add 4 generation to my paternal line.

[mixedkid]

I'm still a little stunned after getting the results from the Y-46 DNA test (from another company, now awaiting the FT results). Since I'm female, I had my brother's son take the test. Of the possible 25 matches we received, not one included our surname. It took me a while to understand that meant a Non-Paternal Event.

I began my genealogy research with the hope of sharing "our roots", but now I don't want to tell anyone in the family my discovery because although I'm objective, others might not be. It might be disturbing information on many levels, and I'm not sure I want to share someone's secret, whether they are dead or alive.

Any advise?

From what you have told us, I see no evidence of a NPE whatsoever.

I have never received one match with either my legal surname or our family's original surname -- after the full sequence of Y DNA testing. One match had a surname that was a spelling variation of our family's original surname.

The 6 fellows I am most closely matched with through the Y DNA test pretty much all have German or German-Jewish sounding surnames. My haplogroup is Middle Eastern in origin (our direct paternal line was Jewish). My elderly father never took the Y DNA test, but recently took the FamilyFinder test. There, he and I come up as father-child. We share many of the same cousins.

[MoberlyDrake]

I'm still a little stunned after getting the results from the Y-46 DNA test (from another company, now awaiting the FT results). Since I'm female, I had my brother's son take the test. Of the possible 25 matches we received, not one included our surname. It took me a while to understand that meant a Non-Paternal Event.

I began my genealogy research with the hope of sharing "our roots", but now I don't want to tell anyone in the family my discovery because although I'm objective, others might not be. It might be disturbing information on many levels, and I'm not sure I want to share someone's secret, whether they are dead or alive.

Any advise?

Was there one surname in your list of matches that far outnumbered in other surnames? I had a cousin test last year hoping for a break-through on a long-standing brick wall in my Mobley line, but when his results came back, Mobley or it's variants wasn't in his list of matches. But almost every match had the same surname, Hampton. I upgraded to 67 markers and the result was even clearer. I joined Y-DNA projects for both Mobley and Hampton. My cousin's DNA came nowhere close to matching anybody in the Mobley project, but he matches quite a few persons in the Hampton project with a GD of 1 or 2.

I did a Family Finder test on him and his matches in that test have revealed that that we share the same great-grandfather and the same great-great-grandmother. Therefore our great-grandfather is the first male who may have been illegitimate, adopted, etc.

I've been researching for about 10 years. I was a bit disgusted at first because of all the time and money spent researching the wrong line. Then curiosity kicked in. I've been researching one possibility, but can't find any documentation of what I suspect. It looks like all I can do is wait for a Family Finder match to provide a clue.

I did tell my relatives what the Y-DNA test revealed even before I did the Family Finder on my cousin's DNA, because I had good reasons for believing that the NPE did not occur in the last 3 generations. I could have been wrong, of course, but the test proved I wasn't.


Carol Anne