YDNA confusion, surnames, sales hype

[Ruskie]

NPE can also stand for "Not Parent Expected"

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/dna-test-upends-identity-family-secret-facebook-group-124208111--abc-news-topstories.html

https://www.npefellowship.org/

The term "Not parent expected" is a bit deceptive in regards to family history. A female will always know that she is the mother of her child, but the male can't always be sure he is the father.
I think the use of "paternal" is preferable.

"Not parent expected" may be used in America rather than elsewhere.

[pughcd]

Hi @diplodicus

Yes you are correct the FT-DNA Y-DNA Haplotree will show your presumed or confirmed SNP results in specific colours.
SNPs tested positive will show in green.
SNPs tested negative will show in red.
SNPs presumed positive will show in brown.
SNPs presumed negative will show in black.
SNPs downstream show in blue.

I have a number of SNPs downstream (blue) of my current terminal SNP,  BY151. I could take these as individual tests or upgrade from 111 markers to the Big-Y500.

pughcd

[pughcd]

Hi @Ruskie,

Yes the acronym NPE explanation seems to depend where you live.

Thanks,
pughcd

[RobertCasey]

"Non-Paternity Event" is the original and most accepted term for NPE. It really means that the surname associated with the father is not consistent with YDNA results. There are many ways the transmission of surname from father to son may not track the YDNA transmission: 1) the most common is probably via adoption (children of neighbors/relatives killed by war, famine, disease, etc.) or young widow remarries and her children take on the surname of her second husband; 2) swearing an allegiance to a clan and taking on the clan surname; 3) due to the wealth of the mother, the father has to take on the surname of the mother in order to get blessing for marriage and received inheritance or gain favor from the wealthy; 4) Infidelity of the wife during marriage to husband; 5) rape of wife by slavery, conquest during wars, sexual crimes, etc.; 6) Changing of surnames - avoiding the law, did not like the surname and just changed it, etc.; 7) Some lords had bedding rights of new brides under their protection.

[RobertCasey]

I am one of the admins for the R-L226 haplogroup project, the third largest haplogroup (dominated by Irish heritage) that has one YSTR signature (which is over 99 % predictable). For an extreme case, we now have 81 67 marker or higher testers that belong to one particular O'Brien surname cluster (descendants of King Brian Boru, the first king to unite/conquer the entire island of Ireland). Being royal and conquering your neighbors has its advantages as this line has a prolific number of male descendants that can be tested.

The O'Brien surname cluster has 81 testers at 67 or more markers, 19 YSNP branches within this surname cluster and another 25 YSTR branches. This is 44 branches just for one man who first used the surname of O'Brien around 1,000 AD. R-L226 also has 20 other surname clusters where there are at least five testers with the same surname (or variants) and have less than a 50 % NPE rate at any branching event (YSNP or YSTR). This surname cluster starts with the box labeled "TMRCA = 1000 AD" and takes eight pages to show the connections:

http://www.rcasey.net/DNA/R_L226/Haplotrees/L226_Home.pdf#Page=76

My Casey surname now has 24 67 marker testers, two YSNP branches and five YSTR branches.

http://www.rcasey.net/DNA/R_L226/Haplotrees/L226_Home.pdf#Page=44

So R-L226 is finally making some serious progress - but this is not consistent for everyone. But our project has grown over 100 % in size during the last 18 months and now has 160 Big Y tests due to the significant progress that our prolific project is making. The largest Irish/Scottish haplogroup that has one YSTR signature is much older and has five times as many testers. The second largest Irish haplogroup, CTS4466 is around 50 % larger than L226. Around one third of our 760 testers are assigned to branches under surname clusters - that is a lot of genealogically significant information to work with. On the other hand, some haplogroups only have 20 or 30 testers and five or so branches which is really too small of a sample size to determine all the connections. But even these smaller haplogroups have 20 or 30 % of the tester belonging to well defined YSTR branches within YSNP branches.

[Spelk]

I do not agree with this statement by diplodicus
“My own experience indicates that for either Y-DNA (male line) or mtDNA (female line) I would have to be luckier than a lottery winner to find anything that will help me with my tree which goes back the mid-1700s. Thus it seems reasonable to conclude that such tests are of almost no value in assisting the search for near-family connections within the past four hundred years.”

Work on families with the same surname from the north of England has generally come to a blockage in the male line in early 1700s due to them being Roman Catholics and so no paper trail to get further back.
So a member from each family line has taken YDNA tests which shows that 4 families who come from the North York Moors (with acceptable slight mutations) share a common male ancestor who lived in the Egton area around 1700 or earlier.

The results also show that the people of the same (or similar) surname who come from the North West of England or Scotland are not related.

There was also a more recent test (not listed) of another line from the North York Moors who did not show a link - maybe a “non-paternal event”.

The results can be viewed on this site -
http://www.hoggarth.co.uk/DNA-results.htm

[diplodicus]

I am happy to stand corrected by Spelk whose website (quoted) shows what can be done with Y-DNA testing.

I should have phrased my own statement more cautiously. I was thinking about the chances of a match appearing from an unknown distant relative here in England who is:

• interested in genealogy;
• interested in DNA testing as a genealogical research tool;
• can afford and has submitted a DNA sample for Y-DNA testing.

One thing clearly highlighted by Spelk's posting is the value of focussing on a single tree branch amongst so many.

[Spelk]

Yes my point was that for proving or disproving a potential link then YDNA (and I suppose mtDNA) does have its uses.

And I agree that to find by accident a link to some random person is unlikely and I might ask why bother? I already have about 30 known cousins of who I have only ever met less than 10 and really would not care to add hundreds of second cousins.
Having said that a few months back I received the first ever note from FTDNA that they have found a pretty good YDNA match to me from some chap in Scandinavia. None of my lot went to sea that I know of but some of my DNA cousins (in what I call the Egton Branch) did take up seafaring and would have been doing the baltic trade - so I might get in touch just for fun. Maybe he has an ancestor born from some unknown English seaman.

As for finding family with autosomal DNA I have long been rather scathing of the value of that. However a couple of months back I paid FTDNA to check mine in the hope that it might give a hint as to the father of my illegitimate Grandmother. Results came back and no match.
I might have a go with the Ancestry DNA autosomal as they have a larger database and given the money I have spent on Family History over 20 years  - a bit more will not hurt - and at the moment our cat has a better pedigree than me.

[sugarfizzle]

Another reason for doing yDNA testing.

https://dna-explained.com/2019/01/22/caution-invisible-fathers-and-autosomal-matching-whos-hiding-in-your-dna/

Regards Margaret