Surnames in the project

Warrincks, Warring, Warringa, Warringe, Warringh, Warrings, Warrink, Warrinks.

Etymology of the surname

The Dutch surname Warringa is a patronymic type of surname in that it derives from the father's forename. The Warringa family originate from the province of Drenthe in the Northeast Netherlands. This area along with the neighbouring provinces of Groningen and Friesland generally used the patronymic naming system until it was stopped by the Emperor Napoleon in the early 19th century. The surname Warringa was first used as a permanent surname in 1811 and reaffirmed in 1826.

Adoption of Surnames [Acte van Aangave]: Odoorn. 21 July 1829. The person of Warrink Egberts, mentioned in the death register for March, and Warrink, Warringa, from the Memorandum of Succession, are one and the same person. Warringa, is the adopted family name and first used in 1826.

The index to the register of name adoptions mentions under the surname Warrink that it was registered twice at Anloo; 1811 # 12; 1826 # 8.

The adoption of the surname Warringa is unusual as it is in the Frisian form of a surname ending (inga); it should have been Warrink (ink) to be in an East Drenthe format.

The Dutch Drenthe Warringa family can be traced through various documents to their Y-DNA paternal progenitor Warrijs Smidt who was born circa 1575 and lived in the village of Borger. His byname of Smidt indicates that he was a blacksmith and in the legal records of Drenthe [Goorspraken] he is recorded on the 14 March 1599 in a dispute with the villagers of Westruppe near Borger concerning dues for stabling horses; then in 1601 he is mentioned in a case of wounding Jan Janss. Earlier ancestry for Warrijs (the smith) is unknown, but it should be mentioned that Warrijs is not a particularly common forename and there are others documented as using the Warrijs forename in Beilen, which is about 20km west of Borger in the early 16th century and use of the Warynge name is recorded in Drenthe as far back as the late 14th century.

There is also a completely separate family surnamed Warringa that originates from Friesland and perhaps there are others; but this Warringa Y-DNA project is for the Drenthe family. So people with Drents Warringa ancestry all descend from Warrink Egberts who was born 6 December 1751 at Odoorn, Drenthe, Netherlands and whose descendants adopted the permanent surname of Warringa.

But this Y-DNA project is also to find anyone sharing the same Y-DNA and they may have a completely different surname! For example Warrink Egberts was the son of Egbert Warrings who had another son called Harm Egberts; by the same Napoleonic decree his descendants were surnamed Harms. The progenitor of the family Warrijs Smidt in the early 16th century had several children who under the patronymic naming system would have descendants with ever changing surnames and who probably only had a fixed surname from the Napoleonic age.

FTDNA provide their excellent Surname Project facility and the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) www.isogg.org provides links to the latest DNA research.

Membership 

The use of the patronymic naming system for someone’s "surname" really means it is impossible to readily identify familial relationships beyond siblings e.g. cousins and ancestors; but matching Y-DNA is a great way to overcome this obstacle; so not having the surname Warringa does not disqualify you from being a member of this family, you just need matching Y-DNA. Hopefully female descendants can find a Warringa father, brother, or male cousin who can act as a Y-DNA donor for their line. Participants are asked to make sure that the project administrator has the genealogy information on their ancestral line.