Member Count
158
Email
Contact Group Administrator
Description
Welcome to the home page of the McNamara surname DNA project.
SURNAME HISTORY
The Irish surname McNamara, or in Irish Mac Conmara (son of the
hound of the sea), is, according to MacLysaght, that of the most
important of the Dalcassian septs after the O'Briens, to whom they
were marshals. It is most common in County Clare, but also numerous
throughout North Munster and in all parts of Ireland.
In its County Clare homeland, Mack is often used to represent
McNamara in speech, but the full name is normally retained for
formal and legal purposes. Nevertheless, Mack is sometimes found in
written records, especially among the diaspora.
The 1911 census of Ireland included 6,645 McNamaras, about a third
of them (2,228) born in County Clare.
A brief history of the surname can be found on the
Clare
County Library website.
The most extensive history of the surname is probably
The Story
of an Irish Sept by Nottidge Charles Macnamara, first
published in 1896 and reprinted in 1999 under the title
The
Origin and History of the MacNamaras. More details of the book
and an order form can be found
here.
PROJECT ADMINISTRATORS
This project (as McNamarra, a rare spelling variant) was originally
hosted by WorldFamilies.net, which closed down in May 2018.
As of 23 May 2018, the project administrator is genetic genealogist
Paddy Waldron (grandson of a McNamara). Paddy Waldron's
personal website
has some additional reading on genetic genealogy, such as
How
to get the most out of your DNA results and
Interpreting
Y-DNA results.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
- If you are not already a project member and you have any
ancestor with the surname McNamara (or a variant spelling), then
please JOIN the project by clicking on the JOIN button to the
right of the castle in the banner photograph above. However, if
you are not yet an FTDNA customer but have submitted a DNA
sample to one of the other DNA companies, then you may be able
to copy your data to FamilyTreeDNA.com via the free Autosomal
Transfer and should do this before joining any projects.
- One of the principal reasons that male FTDNA customers
participate in projects is for guidance on their place on the
Y-DNA Haplotree. If you allow project administrators to view
your Y-STR match lists, then they will often be able to predict
with considerable confidence a more recent place for you on the
haplotree than the automated predicted haplogroup given by
FTDNA. You will then be assigned by the administrator to the
relevant subgroup on the Y-DNA Colorized Chart in the DNA
Results area of the project website.
- As of May 2018, in order to achieve the full benefits of
project membership, you must take action to give the project
administrators "Limited" or "Advanced" access to your kit. This
can be done when you join or can be done later by clicking here.
For each project that you have joined, click the pencil icon,
scroll down and change "Minimum" to "Limited" or "Advanced" as
necessary, then click "Accept Project Preferences" and then
click "Confirm".
- In order that you and the other members can benefit from your
membership of the project, it is imperative that you squeeze in
names, dates and places to the 50
characters allowed for both your Direct Maternal (i.e.
matrilineal) and Direct Paternal (i.e. patrilineal) Most Distant
(i.e. most distant known) Ancestors under the Earliest Known
Ancestors tab here in
order to help those looking for mitochondrial DNA matches and
Y-DNA matches respectively; and that you also upload a GEDCOM
file here
showing your direct ancestors (which should automatically
populate your surname list, although this was not working around
2019-2020).
- If you are a male McNamara, and especially if your most
distant known male line ancestor is not yet represented on the McNamara surname DNA
project Y-DNA Colorized Chart, then please order whatever
level of Y-DNA
analysis your budget allows, preferably Big Y-700. Project
administrators are generally willing to arrange further
discounts on the Big Y-700 sale price.
- If you are a female, then please also recruit a male McNamara
descended from your most distant known male line ancestor to the
project.
- If your McNamara lineage is already represented in the project
or if it has "daughtered out", then you can donate to the project
here to fund more advanced Y-DNA analysis of existing DNA
samples. These donations can be used only to purchase DNA
analysis from FTDNA. This project also appears as McNamara on
the dropdown menu on the Group General Fund
Contribution page.
- If you want to see which of your Family Finder matches are in
this project (or in any project that you have joined), then just
go to the Advanced
Matches page, login if necessary and tick the Family
Finder checkbox, select the project in the "Show Matches For"
dropdown and click the RUN REPORT button. Finally, click the
Family Finder column heading to sort the matches by closeness of
estimated relationship.
- If you have received Big Y-700 (or Big Y-500 or Big Y) results
and belong to either of the main branches of haplogroup R
(R-P312 or R-U106), then please copy your results to The Big
Tree by following these instructions and uploading here.
- For a discussion of the latest results, see here.
- Please feel free to use the Activity Feed to
direct any questions that you may have to the project
administrators and for discussion with other project members.
- Please note that FTDNA feels obliged by GDPR to expose the
email address of the project administrator on this page to every
spammer in the world, hence it is merely a "noreply" address,
like FTDNA's own email addresses on its own website.
Last updated 14 June 2023.
Requirements
A Surname Project traces members of a family that share a common surname. They are of the most interest in cultures where surnames are passed on from father to son like the Y-Chromosome. This project is for males taking a Y-Chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) test. Thus, the individual who tests must be a male who wants to check his direct paternal line (father's father's father's...) with a Y-DNA12, Y-DNA37, Y-DNA67, or Y-DNA111 test and who has one of the surnames listed for the project. Females do not carry their father's Y-DNA. Females who would like to check their father's direct paternal line can have a male relative with his surname order a Y-DNA test. Females can also order an mtDNA test for themselves such as the mtDNAPlus test or the mtFullSequence test and participate in an mtDNA project. Both men and women may take our autosomal Family Finder test to discover recent relationships across all family lines.
Surnames In This Project
Mac Conmara, Mack, Macnamara, McNamara, McNamarra