Breifne Clans Y-DNA Project - Family Project Website

Project Surnames:

Boylan	Brady	Carnaghan	Carnahan
Clancy	Clarke	Collivan	Colvin
Coogan	Coyne	Cullivan	Curneen
Curry	Darcy	Donaghy	Donahoe
Donahue	Donohoe	Donohue	Dorcey
Dorsey	Drum	Earley (for O'Mulmoher)	Early (for O'Mulmoher)
Farrelly	Faughnan	Flood (for MacAtilla)	Flynn
Ford (for MacKinnawe)	Forde (for MacKinnawe)	Gaffney	Gaffny
Gallon	Gibney	Gilhooly	Golden
Goldrick	Goorty	Gorty	Gourkey
Gourtey	Gowan	Gowen	Gowne
Haltaghan	Haltan	Hanfey	Hanfy
Hanify	Hannify	Hanvey	Kiernan
Kinnawe	MacAtilla	MacBrady	MacCabe
MacConsnave	MacCoogan	MacDarcy	MacDonough
MacDorcey	MacDorsey	MacGilhooly	MacGoldrick
MacGoorty	MacGorty	MacGourkey	MacGourtey
MacGovern	MacGowan	MacGuire	MacIlduff
MacKiernan	MacKinnawe	MacManus	MacMaster
MacMorrow	MacMorry	MacRannall	MacShanly
MacSharry	MacTiernan	MacTuile	Magauran
Maguire	McBrady	McCabe	McClancy
McCoogan	McDarcy	McDonaghy	McDonough
McDorcey	McDorsey	McGilhooly	McGoldrick
McGoorty	McGorty	McGourkey	McGourtey
McGovern	McGowan	McGowen	McGuire
McGwyre	McKernan	McKiernan	McManus
McMaster	McMorrey	McMorrow	McMorry
McRannall	McRannell	McShanly	McSharry
McSherry	McShery	McTernan	McTiernan
McTully	Meehan	Moriarty	Morrey
Morrow	Morry	Mulbride	Mullady
Mulleady	Mulmoher	Mulready	Mulvey
Murray	Murrey	Murry	O'Boylan
O'Carnaghan	O'Clery	O'Connor	O'Conor
O'Curneen	O'Curry	O'Donoghue	O'Donohoe
O'Drum	O'Farrelly	O'Faughnan	O'Flynn
O'Gallon	O'Gibney	O'Haltan	O'Hanfy
O'Meehan	O'Moriarty	O'Mulbride	O'Mulleady
O'Mulmoher	O'Mulready	O'Mulrooney	O'Mulvey
O'Murray	O'Redehan	O'Reilly	O'Rody
O'Rourke	Railey	Redehan	Redican
Reiley	Reilly	Reily	Reylie
Reyly	Reynolds	Riley	Rodahan
Roddy	Rorke	Rorque	Rourke
Shanly	Sharry	Smith (for MacGowan)	Smythe (for MacGowan)
Tully

Project Background:

Cos. Cavan & Leitrim plus bits of adjoining cos. constituted the area of the Kingdom of Breifne, which was in the early 12th century coextensive with the Catholic Diocese of Kilmore. A number of surnames have been associated with the Breifne area since the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, and according to the traditional genealogies are descended from a common male-line ancestor who lived in the 6th century. Some branches of these families later split off and took on other surnames, and families bearing surnames originating elsewhere (some perhaps identical or very similar to a Breifne surname) moved in over the succeeding centuries. This project is concerned with all of these surnames.

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Project Results:

SEE MEMBERS' SUBGROUPINGS
Last updated: 1 Sept 2008

SEE REPORTS
Last updated: 1 Apr 2008

The Breifne Clans Project (BCP) with Family Tree DNA (FTDNA):

For general information on the project go to the FTDNA website: http://www.familytreedna.com/surname_join.asp?code=T77392&special=True&projecttype=S.

For more specific information go to the Breifne Clans Project (BCP) website: www.familytreedna.com/public/BreifneClans.

As this BCP website does not yet have the capability of importing some of the illustrations and formatting, only the summaries will be presented here. Two other websites will present the full reports with the illustrations and intended formatting:

http://donohoeclan.org and http://www.odonoghue.co.uk/

These last two websites are subscription websites, but you may read the BCP reports for free on both. The Donohoe Clan Society website will present all the reports in full. On the Donohoe Clan Society website homepage, click on “About” in the list on the left side of the page, then scroll down to the bottom of the “History” page where you can click on the reports. The O'Donoghue Society website will present the most recent report in full. On the O'Donoghue Society website, click on "Y-DNA Project" in the list on the left of the homepage, scroll down to the bottom of the page that comes up and click on "Results April 200x", scroll down the page that comes up a little more than halfway to the paragraph on "Spreadsheet C" and click on the underlined "here".

Breifne Clans Project
Report 4
1 April 2008

Summary

More evidence has been gathered to support the conclusion that the extensive web of strong-to-loosely interlinked profiles of the Mixed Breifne Surnames (MBS) group represents lineages of the Ui Briuin Breifne, and that the participants belonging to this network are all R1b M222. A significant aberration is the presence of participants surnamed Clancy in this group, as this clan is traditionally not of the Ui Briuin nor even of the Connachta.

The MBS so far appears to be composed of two subgroups which differ somewhat from each other and from the R1b M222 modal haplotype, a Donohoe-McTiernan subgroup and an O’Reilly-McGovern subgroup, and a third subgroup of assorted surnames, including the O’Conors and the Clancys, which is intermediate between the other two and somewhat closer to the R1b M222 modal haplotype.

Several isolated subgroups, all R1b but not R1b M222, are taking shape as more data is gathered. The surnames involved are all traditional Breifne surnames. One subgroup is composed only of Donohoes and another is made up only of McTiernans. Another is a subgroup of surnames weakly linked with six assorted O’Rourke lineages, none of which are even weakly linked with each other but which appear to fall into two unrelated clans on the basis of their marker value profiles, one of which shows moderate links with an isolated McTiernan pair and the other of which has a marker value profile resembling that of the Reynolds, a non-Ui Briuin Breifne clan. A fourth subgroup includes a tightly linked group of Bradys weakly linked to two Donohoe pairs, themselves only weakly linked, one pair of which conforms to the South Irish Modal Haplotype and both pairs of which fit into the two main unrelated O’Donoghue of Kerry clans, all supporting the impression that the Bradys of Breifne fame are of Munster origin.

The Oriel Group continues to be made up of a tightly linked cluster of McGuires (five lineages) and two historical branches of the clan, Donohoes (eight lineages) and McManuses (one lineage), with a couple of weakly linked representatives of other surnames. The Donohoe lineages fall into two clusters with the McGuire lineages intermediate to those two clusters. Although the members of this group are not R1b M222, the marker value profile of the McGuire modal haplotype matches the NWIMH at about a third of the markers where the NWIMH deviates from the SWAMH, suggesting that the McGuire modal is intermediate between the SWAMH and the NWIMH and branched off from a common ancestor before the M222 mutation occurred.

Joseph A. Donohoe
Group Administrator
Breifne Clans Project © 2008 Joseph A. Donohoe V

Breifne Clans Y-DNA
Report 3
5 April 2007

Summary

There are several indications and conclusions in this report to supplement the conclusions reached in earlier reports.

The most significant conclusion here is that many in the largest group of linked individuals in the project, the Mixed Breifne Surnames (MBS) group, belong to Haplogroup R1b1c7, the modal haplotype of which is known as the Northwest Irish Modal Haplotype (NWIMH). The MBS group is a loosely linked and widespread group, indicative of a common male-line ancestor who was remote in time but still within the historical era of the region.

As the Ui Neill have been shown to belong to Haplogroup R1b1c7 by Moore, McEvoy et al.2, and the O’Conors in this study (one of whom belongs to the family of the O’Conor Don) also belong to Haplogroup R1b1c7, and as the historical tradition states that the Ui Neill, the Ui Briuin Ai (the O’Conor ancestral lineage) and the Ui Briuin Bhreifne are all of the same fifth-century origin, there is an indication here that the MBS group may represent the Ui Briuin Bhreifne. More Ui Briuin Ai data will be required to make this a firm conclusion.

A second conclusion is that at least some surnames now found in the Breifne area arose independently more than once, from different eponymous ancestors who bore the same forename, either in the region or elsewhere or both. The two surnames, Donohoe and McTiernan, represented by 20 or more lineages in the BCP are each represented in two or more groups in the project which are unrelated within the historical era. The two forenames relevant here, Donnchadh and Tighernan, were fairly popular in the period when surnames were being adopted in the region.

A third conclusion is that the other principal groups is the BCP (Groups B1, B2, B3, B4 and C1) do not belong to Haplogroup R1b1c7, and in fact belong to a haplogroup or to haplogroups which have not yet been defined, and/or are not being tested for by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA). This means that these participants do not belong to Haplogroups R1b1c1 through R1b1c8.

The McGuires and their branches, participants representing 13 lineages, belong to one of these groups, C1, which suggests that the McGuires are not Airgialla or that the Airgialla (at least that part associated with the McGuires) are not a branch of the Connachta. Participants representing two surnames strongly associated with Breifne, O’Rourke and Brady, also fall into these groups (B3 and B4), which indicates that these two clans do not belong, at least by descent, to the Ui Briuin Bhreifne, as tradition asserts. The sample groups for all three of these clans are small, however, so more data is needed here.

Joseph A. Donohoe
Group Administrator
Breifne Clans Project

© 2007 Joseph A. Donohoe V

Breifne Clans Y-DNA
Report 2
3 April 2006

Summary

The two conclusions made in Report 1 are strengthened and extended by the data presented in this report.

The first conclusion, that there were at least four broad lineages now represented in the Breifne area whose ancestors adopted the Donohoe surname independently, not by descent from a common eponymous male-line ancestor, is further supported in this report by the Donohoe representatives in the first four groups above; those in the fifth group do not have a Breifne connection. This conclusion may be extended to say that the McGoverns of Breifne, who take their surname from a rare forename, do not appear to have multiple origins.

The second conclusion, that several lineages bearing different surnames associated with the Breifne area descend from a common male-line ancestor who lived in historical times, finds considerable additional support from the data presented for Group A: Mixed Breifne Surnames (MBS) above. Members of this group have now been extended to represent eight different surnames: Donohoe, McGovern, McTiernan, Faughnan, Curry, MacKiernan, Reilly and McGoldrick. These participants are linked by a complex web of relationships of widely varying degrees of closeness, punctuated by numerous gaps, which would be expected of a group that would have to go back somewhere around 50 generations to find a common male-line ancestor.

An additional third conclusion from the data presented in this report is that one of the four Donohoe lineages of the first conclusion, that in Group D: McGuire Surnames, may now be identified as a fifteenth century branch of the Maguires of Fermanagh, descendants of one Donnchadh Mag Uidhir. This Donnchadh Mag Uidhir was probably the son of Aodh Mag Uidhir, himself the son of Pilib an Tuaigh, king of Fermanagh.

A fourth conclusion is that an analysis of Y-DNA profile patterns can be useful in complementing as well as supporting the results of the calculations of the number of generations to the most recent common male-line ancestor. This is particularly evident in the treatment of the MBS group, where distinguishing and making associations within and between groups is possible among the Donohoes and McGoverns on the basis of these patterns, and with more discernment than would be possible on the basis of the calculations alone.

A fifth conclusion is that the MBS group is close to the IMH (or Ui Neill) haplotype and its hypothesized extension, the NWI haplotype, while the other groups in the study are not. All of the members of the groups presented here are distant from the GR1b haplotype, with the exception of the Donohoe pair in Group C: Lone Surnames Group and perhaps four (Donoghue, Clancey, O’Donoghue and Boylen) in the Miscellaneous Unassigned Surnames Group, which approach that haplotype more closely.

Joseph A. Donohoe
Group Administrator
Breifne Clans Project

© 2006 Joseph A. Donohoe V

Breifne Clans Y-DNA
Report 1
8 April 2005

Summary

In summary, at these probability levels the results indicate (1) that there were at least four lineages now represented in the Breifne area which adopted the Donohoe surname independently, not by descent from a common eponymous male-line ancestor, and (2) that several lineages bearing different surnames associated with the Breifne area descend from a common male-line ancestor who lived in historical times.

Joseph A. Donohoe
Group Administrator
Breifne Clans Project

© 2005 Joseph A. Donohoe V