About us
This page is an explanation of our results. To see the actual DNA test results, please click on the DNA Results link at left. I think the most useful display is the Y-DNA colorized chart.
If you click on this link, you will see two maps I drew of where the name Cullen was found in Ireland in the mid 1800s and in 2006: http://cullengene.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-cullen-distribution-map.html
There were several places where the Cullen name was very common:
1) the entire southeast of Ireland, especially Counties Wicklow, Wexford, Dublin and also Kilkenny, Laois (Queen's County), Carlow and Kilkenny
2) the Leitrim, Sligo, northern Roscommon area and surrounding counties
3) a very large cluster at the south end of Lough Neagh in the Armagh/East Tyrone area
And you will see that there are several smaller clusters, and that the name Cullen is almost absent from the west and southwest of Ireland, and nearly absent from Counties Down, Antrim and Derry (except for a few in Belfast and near Lough Neagh).
The most important thing we have learned from our DNA project is that in most cases Cullen men from one part of Ireland have no genetic connection to Cullens from other parts of Ireland.
And we have started to see that Cullens from the same part of Ireland very often belong to one or two genetic lines of descent. In almost all cases, the men in our project tested independently without any expectation of matching another Cullen. In many cases they had to wait several years until a new person tested and they eventually found a meaningful match. This is to say that all the matching groups below are significant, as the groups are not composed of two brothers or known close cousins who tested.
Small Cullen Cluster
Project administrators have found very few references anywhere to the large group of Cullens near the south end of Lough Neagh, although the 2006 map shows that the name is still very common there. And only a few Cullen men with roots in this area have done DNA testing. But the two Cullens in group 2b have matching markers and they also match an American Collins who was a part of the now retired Worldfamilies site as C-53.
If you click on this link, you will see two maps I drew of where the name Cullen was found in Ireland in the mid 1800s and in 2006: http://cullengene.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-cullen-distribution-map.html
There were several places where the Cullen name was very common:
1) the entire southeast of Ireland, especially Counties Wicklow, Wexford, Dublin and also Kilkenny, Laois (Queen's County), Carlow and Kilkenny
2) the Leitrim, Sligo, northern Roscommon area and surrounding counties
3) a very large cluster at the south end of Lough Neagh in the Armagh/East Tyrone area
And you will see that there are several smaller clusters, and that the name Cullen is almost absent from the west and southwest of Ireland, and nearly absent from Counties Down, Antrim and Derry (except for a few in Belfast and near Lough Neagh).
The most important thing we have learned from our DNA project is that in most cases Cullen men from one part of Ireland have no genetic connection to Cullens from other parts of Ireland.
And we have started to see that Cullens from the same part of Ireland very often belong to one or two genetic lines of descent. In almost all cases, the men in our project tested independently without any expectation of matching another Cullen. In many cases they had to wait several years until a new person tested and they eventually found a meaningful match. This is to say that all the matching groups below are significant, as the groups are not composed of two brothers or known close cousins who tested.
Group 1a: O'Cullens of Leinster
Many men surnamed Cullen from SE Ireland very often belong to a single family which were originally called the "18-23" Cullens because they have the unusual DNA result YCAII=18-23. You can see this as group 1a on our colorized results page. The 18-23 Cullens are part of a larger group called the Leinster cluster or Irish Sea cluster which is very numerous in SE Ireland and includes many other families like Byrne, Beatty, Barry, Murphy, Gleeson. Very likely this genetic lineage of 18-23 Cullens represent the large "O'Cullen of Wicklow" family which is the best known of all Cullen families in Ireland and which has been mentioned in histories etc. for hundreds of years.
Recent Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) testing in the form of FTDNA's Big Y-700 test has revealed a specific STR mutation that is ancestral to all the Big Y-tested Group 1 Cullens: R-A7936. The shared ancestor to this O'Cullen group is estimated to have been born around the year 1350 CE. This ancestor was likely a Gaelic speaker living in the Wicklow Hills outside what is now Dublin, Ireland. Big Y-700 testing has revealed additional subgroups within this Cullen cluster, identified by the mutations R-A7947 and R-FT18733.
Recent Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) testing in the form of FTDNA's Big Y-700 test has revealed a specific STR mutation that is ancestral to all the Big Y-tested Group 1 Cullens: R-A7936. The shared ancestor to this O'Cullen group is estimated to have been born around the year 1350 CE. This ancestor was likely a Gaelic speaker living in the Wicklow Hills outside what is now Dublin, Ireland. Big Y-700 testing has revealed additional subgroups within this Cullen cluster, identified by the mutations R-A7947 and R-FT18733.
Interestingly, there is a Cullen living in England who is descended from a Protestant clergyman in the 1800s whose Cullen family was from the Co. Tipperary/Limerick City area, where the name Cullen was not at all common. He found in his family papers an unverified family tree tracing his ancestry back hundreds of years to the O'Cullens of Wicklow, and indeed he matches them, he is also an 18-23 Cullen. This is in line with earlier researcher notes about a group of Cullen men migrating to the Tipperary/Limerick area from their earlier home in the Wicklow mountains. The R-FT18733 mutation has been found in both Big Y-tested Cullen men with ties to the Tipperary/Limerick area.
There are some other Cullen men tracing their paternal ancestry to Wexford, Wicklow and other parts of southeast Ireland whose results match the Irish Sea cluster, but these Cullen lack the distinctive 18-23. So it's not clear if they are related to the 18-23 Cullens. Some of these people are doing the Big Y test which should answer this question. All of the Irish Sea Cullens, the 1a/18-23 group and the others, are in section 1, colored yellow.
Leintrim/Roscommon Area Cullens
Not enough Cullen men from the Leitrim/Roscommon area have done DNA testing. But two of them belong to the R-M222 haplogroup (the "Niall of the Nine Hostages" lineage which is very common in the northern half of Ireland and also Scotland, and which includes dozens of surnames). More importantly, their markers show they belong to the same Cullen family. These are in section 2c on our colorized results page. And there are five Cullens in groups 5a and 5b which might all be related to each other, but not to the R-M222 CullensSmall Cullen Cluster
Project administrators have found very few references anywhere to the large group of Cullens near the south end of Lough Neagh, although the 2006 map shows that the name is still very common there. And only a few Cullen men with roots in this area have done DNA testing. But the two Cullens in group 2b have matching markers and they also match an American Collins who was a part of the now retired Worldfamilies site as C-53.