New Member - 449094, O Fearghail, MDKA Ireland, Ungrouped

Basic information

Kit number: 449094

Name: O Fearghail

MDKA: not yet supplied

Background: not yet supplied. This new member hails from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland and bears the surname O Fearghail, which is one of the many Gaelic forms of O'Farrell (and has been covered in a previous post).

Other projects: in accordance with our recommendations (see Getting the Most out of your DNA Test), he has joined several appropriate haplogroup & geographic projects including the following: 

• R _R1b ALL Subclades
• Ireland yDNA

STR marker profile

He has a massive 160 matches at 67 markers and this suggests a degree of Convergence may be present. However he does not match any Farrell, which suggests either that an NPE (non-paternity event) is present somewhere along his direct male line (e.g. a secret adoption, infidelity, or illegitimacy) or that he is the first person in his particular genetic Farrell family to be tested. If the latter is the case then this becomes a waiting game for some other Farrell with a similar genetic signature to take the test and turn up as a new match to him. For the moment he has been placed in the Ungrouped section.

Reviewing his matches, many have ancestry from Monaghan, Armagh, and Cavan, and there is a strong suggestion of a close tie to the surname McMahon.


SNP marker profile

His terminal SNP seems to be A77 (again judging by the preponderance of his matches who share this SNP). This seems to be confirmed by the FTDNA haplotree which has R-A77 adjacent to other SNPs that occur frequently among his matches (e.g. BY3159, BY3166 & BY3170). His SNP progression therefore appears to be as follows:

R-L21 > DF13 > FGC35995 > DF21 > Z16267 > Z3000> Z3006 > Z3004/Z3008 > Z16274 > Z16278 > Z16273/Z16277 > Z16275 > A77

All the identified terminal SNPs of his matches fall below Z3004/Z3008, and most below Z16274. 

I checked this progression against Alex Williamson’s Big Tree at ytree.net and it places him fair and square in the Clan Colla / Airgíalla type 1 group - you’ll find it at this link here and there is an extract below … the A77 group is 10th block in from the left.

click to enlarge

Next Steps

There are several possible next steps:

1. He has already joined the appropriate Haplogroup projects (R1b & Subclades, Clan Colla) and additional Surname projects (McMahon, Carroll) and could ask the Admins for advice on further testing as well as further documentary research.
2. He could explore his more downstream SNPs by testing for individual SNP markers or with one of the SNP Packs. There are single SNP tests available for each of the blue SNPs in the diagram above ($39 each), including A77. However, in case our estimate of his terminal SNP is incorrect, it may be wiser (and more economical than repeated single SNP testing) to go for one of the available SNP Packs (via the blue Upgrade button > Advanced Tests > SNP Pack):
• R1b-M343 Backbone SNP Pack ($99) - this would only help him move downstream to Z3000 but no further
• R1b-L21 SNP Pack ($119) - again, this would only move him downstream to Z3000
• R1b-Z3000 SNP Pack ($119) - this would move him all the way downstream to A77 and would also clarify whether or not he was positive for adjacent SNPs. This would be the best test to undertake. The chances that his terminal SNP does NOT sit at or below Z3000 is (I would say) less than 1%.

Update (2nd March 2017)

FGC35995 is non longer part of the SNP Progression above. It has been taken out and the revised SNP Progression (from FTDNA) is as follows:

R-L21 > DF13 > DF21 > Z16267 > Z3000> Z3006 > Z3004/Z3008 > Z16274 > Z16278 > Z16273/Z16277 > Z16275 > A77