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Ulster Dynasties and their Genetic Markers
Directors: Dr Katharine Simms e-mail
Professor Dan Bradley (Smurfit Institute of Genetics) e-mail
Gaelic surnames have long formed an undervalued and under-researched source of information not only for Ireland and Scotland but for the history of human development in general. While in England and most of the rest of Europe surnames were formed in the high Middle Ages largely from colours, professions and place-names associated with certain families, in Ireland and Scotland they developed in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries from the personal names of direct male ancestors, in a way that correlates to the transmission of Y chromosome DNA, and then continued virtually unchanged to the present day. This information is made more valuable by the fact that before these surnames evolved, written records were kept in Ireland from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, giving not only the father-to-son ancestry of many royal lines before they developed surnames, but tracing the connections between related dynastic branches, always using only the male line as the link.
A number of amateur investigations have been set on foot by Irish or Scottish clan societies or individuals arranging to have their DNA patterns commercially tested, but the results are of very limited use unless provided with a historical interpretation which takes into account the existence of multiple unrelated identical surnames originating from different areas of Scotland and Ireland, together with known corruptions and forgeries in the medieval genealogical records.
The obscure period c. 350 to 550 A.D saw the end of Roman Britain, Ireland's conversion to Christianity, Anglo-Saxon invasions, and the migration of Irish colonists into Scotland and even Wales. Traditions about the north of Ireland at this period are particularly confused: they posit a legendary province-wide kingdom of the Ulaid, defeated either by the rising power of the Uí Néill, or by the Three Colla brothers, allegedly ancestors of the nine mid-Ulster federated kingdoms of the Airgialla, while in East Ulster (Antrim and Down) the Ulaid are divided into the Cruithin dynasties of Dál nAraide and Uí Echach Cobo and the Érainn dynasties (otherwise associated with Munster) of Dál Fiatach and Dál Riata. A possible prehistoric movement of population from Scotland to Ireland (the Cruithin) is balanced by the better-attested proto-historic colonisation of south-west Scotland from the north Antrim kingdom of Dál Riata. Clearly genetic analysis could serve to clarify the reliability or otherwise of the various genealogical records as long as the modern surnames tested can be traced back to their correct medieval groupings.
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