I had a question recently from Marilyn. Could I look at her brother’s YDNA? Marilyn knew of some family lore that their Brown surname could have originally been Smith. That would be confusing as both Brown and Smith are very common names.
Looking at Howie’s YNDA
Howie had the 37 STR marker test done. That is the entry level test for YDNA. Based on Howie’s DNA results, FTDNA has classified him as R-M239. R-M239 is a very basic and old clade. A clade is a YDNA type or classification. According to the FTDNA Project, “R1b All Subclades”, R-M239 “…is the most common Y chromosome clade of paternal lineages across much of Europe.”
R-M239 Map
Eupedia has a map showing a likely progression of R-M239 and it’s offspring:
Based on this map, R-M239 moved to the NE of Greece where it split off. One branch moved to around the area of current eastern Germany and made more splits. The L21 branch is associated with the early setters of the British Isles. Another branch, U106 went up into Scandinavia or stayed in the NW of Germany. This branch is also associated with the Saxons which later came to England as the Anglo Saxons. Anglo is associated with England. The eariler L21’s were aslo known as the Britons which is where we get Great Britain from. So within Great Britain or England, there are the Britain’s (L21 aslo associated with Celtic culture) and the English (U102 or Anglo Saxons).
Is Howie L21 or U102?
FTDNA does not go out on a limb in predicting clades or subclades. However, the administrators of the FTDNA projects are good at looking at the STRs and making predictions. That is why I suggested that Howie join the R1b and all subclades FTDNA group. R1b is roughly associated with R-M239. However, I believe that strictly speaking, R1b is even more basic (probably the M343 in the map above).
Here is a R-M239 tree at the R1b and all Subclades Project website:
This graphic shows R-M239 as a Basal (early) branch. My Hartley branch is under L21 which is to the bottom left. Below that I am in L513 and there is a whole large tree just for L513 (not shown above). This shows that L21 and U102 are not the only choice for Howie, but they would be popular choices.
R1b and All Subclades Project
There are over 16,000 people in the R1b Project. They are all in a table that begins like this:
These are the first 3 names of 16,000+ entries. The numbers are the STR valuues. The header above the numbers gives the name of the STRs. The maroon STRs are the faster moving STRs. This is important as these are the STRs that are more likely to change. The change in the color of blue indicates different STR panels. Howie took the 37 panel STR. On the right side of the header, the STR name goes from blue to a lighter blue. The lighter blue on the right is the start of the 67 panel STR test.
The third column is Haplogroup. If the value is green, it means that person has tested for that haplogroup. If the value is red, it means that the haplogroup is assumed from the STR test. Howie hasn’t tested for a haplogroup, so his R-M239 would be red. These 16,000+ names and results are organized into different categories. The first group is for people that are M343+ M269-. That means that they are have a very old type of DNA. The M269- means that they are not R-M269, so they predate that split.
When I look for Howie in the R1b All Subclades, he is in this category:
That is not good news. That means that the administrators don’t want to bother figuring out where Howie is with only 37 STRs.
Making My Own Guess For Howie’s Subclade
That means that I have to make my own guess. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to do that. I have an old spreadsheet from 2014 which is a bit outdated. However, I can plug in some of Howie’s STRs into that and see what comes out.
This spreadsheet has 67 STRs, but I’ll just use Howie’s 37. The STRs I want to concentrate on first are the ones with the orange numbers. These are the low numbers. For example, STR 426 is 0.09. That means that there is a 0.09 chance in 1,000 generations that this STR will change. My spreadsheet had already chosen 12, 12, and 11. 11 for the orange STRs. Those were Howie’s numbers also.
However, that doesn’t narrow things down far enough. Next I will choose Howie’s yellow rate STRs. I’ll start with STR 392 which has a rate of 0.52 in 1,000 generations. Howie has a 13 for that, which I had also previously chosen. I continued this process down to the STRs with the gray-rated STRs. I found that Howie had an unusual number for YCAiib. There was only one person on the speadsheet that I had with a combination of 18-18 for YCAiia & b. That was a Weber with roots in Switzerland. And he is not in the current R1b All Subclades list. That puts me at a bit of a stalemate. I don’t know if Howie is in the U152 subclade or if Howie and Weber are outliers in their own respective subclades.
One tact would be to ignore YCAiia & b and move on. Another odd thing that I note on my spreadsheet is that the only values for YCAiib are 18, 22, and 23. What happened to 19, 20 and 21? I followed Howie’s grey STRs while ignoring the YCAii’s and got this group of people. These are people that share Howie’s slower moving STRs that I plugged into the spreadsheet:
Basically, I don’t like the results as I had to ignore YCAii. This shows possible results all over the place. However, at least most of them are in hte British Isles.
At this point, I would say that Howie would have to do the BigY test or a 67 STR test to find out more. In the long run, the BigY is better, but it can be a bit pricey. That should get Howie down to the surname level and likely nail down a location. Note from the list above, I don’t see any Browns or Smiths, but again this is old information. A lot of testing has happened since 2014.