I’ve taken part in a DNA genealogy project to help determine my ancestry on my Y chromosome (Collins) side of the family. I’ve been forever stuck at not being able to trace farther back than my great-great grandfather.

I today received information that I may be descended from a Welsh family that went by the surnames Price and Miles (depending upon the branch). This leads me to ponder the idea that the reason I’ve been unable to find ancestors past my great-great grandfather is that he may have been adopted and that his original surname was Price or Miles rather than Collins.

All this needs more research on my part, but this leads to my question:

Should I discover that there are arms associated with my male ancestry, is it appropriate to adopt these arms after breaking with the family and the surname after so many generations? Also, does it lead to confusion if there are people named Collins and Miles with the same arms with claims to a common male ancestor?

Is your Collins lineage Irish or British? If it is Irish there are several branches it could be and the larger of the three is based in the Co. Cork area, which had a major Welsh settlement(s) resulting from the Invasion and onwards.

Further, if it is Irish there is always the possibility that there was either 1) a mix up of registration of the name, as the Norman and English speaking authorities did not read and write Irish very well and often transcribed the name down as a close English equivalent; of course this would be likely if your situation were reversed, but as it is not it is unlikely; 2) there were many, many, many cases of people of one name changing their name to another to either a) remove themselves from a bad personal situation, or, b) remove their family’s surname form themselves because there was an un-reputable incident involving the family and they did not want to suffer embarrassment from the name recognition. So, if it is Irish it is possible that you were/are of these Welsh families who had members in a particular part of Ireland and who for one reason or another changed their name, as mentioned above, to Collins. Of course if it is Irish and the answer lies on the Irish side of the Atlantic then we are out of luck 99 times out of 100 as one of the many blunders, I dare say horrors, of the Irish war of independence and subsequent civil war was the intentional and unintentional destruction of countless thousands of family records in government places (contrary to popular nationalist sentiment, of which I am a member, there was more than once incident of this … sad really).

And this does not even take into account the possibility that your family’s name was changed when emigrating to the U.S.A., which was also known to simply ascribe an arbitrary last name to an immigrant who could not speak very good English. And if your family is Irish and came here form Ireland it is possible that the original ancestor spoke fluent Irish, but broken English, if at all, so the name Collins could well have been given to them by an official who could not understand Irish. And make no mistake about it there were, and are, many Welsh families in Ireland who spoke, and still speak, fluent Irish – especially in the Gaeltacht areas of the south, west and north – and they would have come here with a name of one kind, but unable to pronounce it in English and were then given another Irish name … one in which the official would’ve been more familiar.

As for the initial armorial part, well, I’m not sure. I will leave that to others more adept in this field than I to sort out, but I am inclined to think you could adopt the arms and then difference them somehow to show a link whilst at the same time showing a clear break that took place in your family’s tree.

As for the secondary armorial part, I know that the Irish have many different families/names which have the same ancestor, so I can’t see why it couldn’t happen with other families in Wales, or England or wherever.

Since your name is Collins, it would not be proper to bear the arms associated with another name, even if that is your ancestry.

That would be like assuming the arms of a someone from whom you are descended in the female line.  But allow me to use another example.  If a Scotsman, who has claim to be chief of a clan, has an hyphenated name, he cannot bear the arms or claim to be chief of the clan.  The late Sir William Gordon-Cumming could not bear the un-differenced arms of Cumming (Azure three Garbs Or) as long as his name was Gordon-Cumming.  His name was changed, and he could then be granted the arms of Cumming.  Your name is still Collins, even if someone changed the name years ago, so you cannot bear the arms of an ancestor if that is not your name.  You can only assume the arms if there is a proven, true descent in the male line, and you bear that name.

Related to this; why are there so many posts lately about people wanting to change their arms?

Father Archer

Since your name is Collins, it would not be proper to bear the arms associated with another name, even if that is your ancestry.  Your name is still Collins, even if someone changed the name years ago, so you cannot bear the arms of an ancestor if that is not your name.

Related to this; why are there so many posts lately about people wanting to change their arms??  I don’t understand this.  Keep your arms.  They are registered and you’ve been using them.

Don’t count me amongst ‘em..I hadn’t registered the previous ones!

Guess it is something in the weather….

Cheers,

arriano wrote:

I’ve taken part in a DNA genealogy project to help determine my ancestry on my Y chromosome (Collins) side of the family. I’ve been forever stuck at not being able to trace farther back than my great-great grandfather.

I today received information that I may be descended from a Welsh family that went by the surnames Price and Miles (depending upon the branch). This leads me to ponder the idea that the reason I’ve been unable to find ancestors past my great-great grandfather is that he may have been adopted and that his original surname was Price or Miles rather than Collins.

Without knowing how old you are, it’s fairly unlikely that a great-great grandfather would have been adopted.  Legal adoption is a concept that didn’t really get started until the mid-19th century and was still rare on into the 20th.

It’s not all that unusual to hit a dead end in one or more lines around about 1850, before which the US census listed only the names of heads of households—later than that for many families that immigrated after the Civil War.  Also, depending on where your family’s from, there are lots of record losses in courthouses.

Also keep in mind that yDNA matches with people of other names are plentiful, especially in the 12 marker set. All that indicates is that the likelihood of a common ancestor within an historical time period is well over 90%. It’s just as possible that they are Collinses as it is that your ancestors bore another surname.

Now, if the matches are 25 markers or more, then the percentages go up to around 99%.

Remember: we all at some point had common ancestors, whether your personal beliefs range from Adam & Eve to the australopithecus, at some point in history we’re all related.

Allow me to update my last post:

A 12 marker match indicates a 90%+ chance of sharing a comon ancestor in an historical time period IF you also share the same surname. Otherwise, there’s no way to tell when that common ancestor lived.

Remember that the use of surnames, as we know and use them, is still a quite young invention when compared to the history of our species. Heck, it’s still not all that common in places like Iceland where an older patronymic system is used.

My surname is very common and I’ve been a participant in the Williams surname DNA group for more than a year. I still don’t have any good Williams matches, but I have plenty of perfect 12 marker matches from people with other surnames. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a Williams descendant-in fact I can trace my Williams lines back to the early 1700’s in this country-but it does mean that I had some fairly prolific ancestors back before surnames were in common use.

So, Arriano, your test matches do not necessarily mean that you aren’t a Collins. They merely mean that at some remote time in the past some people who are now named Collins, Price and Miles had a common male ancestor. The likelihood that you’ll ever find out who that was are about a billion to one and from a heraldic view would be meaningless anyway.

A 12 marker match may also just be a coincidence, depending on the rarity of the individual alleles.  My own DNA pattern—at the 12 marker level—is apparently the genetic equivalent of the surname Smith, for it is very near the European modal haplotype.  I also have a number of matches with men of different surnames.

It is possible to discover how rare each individual marker is, and this can tell you whether a 12 marker match is significant if the surname is different.  As others have pointed out, if the surname is the same, then a 12 marker match is much more likely to represent a real match since you have the statistical combination of two different events—the name and the genetics—and the combined probability is the product of the two.

It often takes an expanded test with more markers to demonstrate that those persons of different surnames are not related—rather like adding a middle name.

I have seen cases where the match is to a different surname, and one can find men of that surname in the same community as the ancestor, perhaps with some link in the records.  In this case, there may be the kind of non-paternity event you posit.

Kind regards,

/Charles

There is an old saying something like, Maternity is science, paternity is faith.  Still, the likelihood of common ancestry pre-fixed surnames is as likely as any other explanation.

If you should determine (based hopefully on more than just a 12-marker DNA test!) that there was a "non-paternity" event, I agree with the other comments that you can’t just adopt the "sperm donor" arms & keep the current surname.  And switching surnames doesn’t much honor the family which raised you. It may well be possible, however, to do a bit of judicious armorial blending ("composing") by incorporating some element(s) from the sperm arms as additional charge(s) or difference(s) to the arms your more recent family bears.  Whether you choose to advertise the reason for the additional charge(s) is optional—for all the world knows, you just happen to like roses or boars heads or whatever.

Even with a Y-DNA 25 marker match, one has about a 61% chance of sharing a common ancestor within 4 generations (1 gen≈30 years).  Within 8 generations chance rises to 85%; 12 gen. = 94%; 16 gen. = 97%; 20 gen. = 99%; and 24 generations is 99.66%.

At a genetic distance of 1, one has the following approximate chances of sharing a common ancestor (gen/%chance):

4/27.28

8/57.84

12/77.9

16/89.07

20/94.79

24/97.58

At a genetic distance of 2:

4/7.97

8/29.19

12/52.37

16/70.7

20/83.09

24/90.69

—Guy

Charles, Michael & Guy-thanks for all that, you’re quite correct. Family Tree DNA has another way of putting it that I find most helpful for those whose minds are not of the mathematical persuasion:

If you have two people with 12 marker exact matches and the same last name, then the common ancestor will most probably be found somewhere in the last 40 generations (or 1000 years, whichever comes first). Two people with 12 marker matches and differing last names (unless there was a paternity event) need to look back more than 1000 years for a common ancestor.

What I’m trying to tell you, Arriano, is to not worry about it. It’s statistically unlikely that you’ll find a paternity event (if there was one) and be able to ascertain who was who-the likelihood that Collins was the ancestor is just as likely that it was Price or Miles. It’s also possible that there is no relation at all and it’s just a coincidence. And it’s most probable that there was a common ancestor between y’all before people started using surnames. Why should any of this change the arms you bear?

Thanks everyone for chiming in. I’m actually looking at a 37 marker match. Results can be found on this web site:

http://www.ysearch.org/research_comparative.asp?uid=MY9MJ&vallist=MY9MJ,+A628T,+CHQW3,+DCR6U,+XXGJZ

I don’t want to bore everyone with all the details, but there are some irregularities about the ancestry of my great-great grandfather: Andrew James (aka James Andrew) Collins.

1. The earliest I find him is in the 1850 census in Indiana. He’s living with the family of John and Clarissa Collins, but he and another child are listed out of age order with the rest of the family.

2. On his marriage certificate, he lists both of his parents as deceased, but both John and Clarissa Collins are alive when he marries.

3. I’ve corresponded with descendants of John and Clarissa Collins and the only mention they find in their family history (wills, letters, bible records, etc) of my great-great grandfather is his listing in the 1850 census with the family.

Then comes this DNA test which seems to allign me with people of different surnames. I’m theorizing that Andrew Collins’ parents died when he was young and was taken in by the family of John and Clarissa Collins. Now whether he was related to the family in some way or was a neighbor, I don’t know. Just a theory for now.

Well, okay Arriano, it is very interesting. But still, you inherited these arms from your father, according to the members pages. Apparently nobody else (over here in the US at least) are claiming rights to them. Your father registered them with the ACH and you have registered the differenced version with the USHR, yes? And still nobody has come forward and said, "Hey…these are my arms!"

The possibility that you’ll ever really and truly sort out the DNA problems with any definitive answer is very, very slim. So keep your dad’s arms and be proud of them.

i agree with keeping your arms as is. i mean unless you find yourself a real descendent of some great title or something that would require you to use their arms et al. these arms speak to you and your father’s relationship, as i see it, so i say keep them. plus i really like their simplicity and uniqueness (is that even a real word???).

arriano wrote:

1. The earliest I find him is in the 1850 census in Indiana. He’s living with the family of John and Clarissa Collins, but he and another child are listed out of age order with the rest of the family.

This is the earliest you could find him, if was a minor, unless there’s an estate record providing for a guardianship or a birth record (rare in those times) or perhaps a baptism (rare in some places in those times).

Quote:

2. On his marriage certificate, he lists both of his parents as deceased, but both John and Clarissa Collins are alive when he marries.

The most likely hypothesis I would formulate to explain this is that he and the other child were orphaned children of a brother or cousin of John Collins.  People in 1850 didn’t change a child’s last name lightly just because he was living with a different family.  The household of my own 3xgreat grandfather Daniel McMillan in 1860 has a whole bunch of children named Taylor.  I found from digging in the county probate court records that they were the children of my 3xgreat grandmother’s deceased brother, and that Daniel was their legal guardian.

Quote:

3. I’ve corresponded with descendants of John and Clarissa Collins and the only mention they find in their family history (wills, letters, bible records, etc) of my great-great grandfather is his listing in the 1850 census with the family.

Unless they have records going back before John and Clarissa, there’s no reason your ancestor would be mentioned, as he wouldn’t have been a child of John and Clarissa.  That doesn’t mean he wasn’t related to them.

Quote:

Then comes this DNA test which seems to allign me with people of different surnames. I’m theorizing that Andrew Collins’ parents died when he was young and was taken in by the family of John and Clarissa Collins. Now whether he was related to the family in some way or was a neighbor, I don’t know. Just a theory for now.

It would have been much more likely in the 1840s that orphans would have been placed (by court order) with relatives, not strangers.

In any case, I see no reason why any of this would affect your arms.  It’s very unlikely that any of the people you’re talking about were armigerous, and even if they were, the burden would be on you to prove that you were their legal heir.  Your existing arms don’t reflect any genealogy that I can detect, whether genuine or false, so it seems to me you should leave well enough alone, at least heraldically.