Hampshire Anglo-Norman Ancestry and DNA

[DocDAve]

I am interested in using a y-DNA test and hope for some expert guidance.
Using paper documents from the National archives, I have established with increasing confidence my paternal deep ancestry back to 1522. The spelling of the surname changes several times .There is then a gap until 1480 when the surname appears to be that of a well-documented Anglo-Norman family. The locality is North Hampshire. I wish to be able to use a y-DNA test to back up this long paper trail. There are French people alive today who bear the name (a distinctive surname meaning “raised lance”) and also French Canadians.
Can yDNA testing help me ? Can my test alone do this or is a comparative test the only way? Should I choose the 37 marker test or 64?
I am not looking for a geographical proof of origin, only to prove or disprove that I am descendant of this Anglo-Norman family, for which I have a seal and arms.

[DocDAve]

I'd be grateful for any response please - 376 views but no replies - can I provide more information ? or clarification?

[stepives]

I don't wish to appear negative, but until you can put names on paper, or find those names written on velum, parchment, paper or stone, I really cannot see the point.

Without even doing a DNA test, some people can trace back to Europe by surname alone.

Perhaps this is the reason for so many views, but no replies.

One example......Benjamin D'israeli........no where would you think his heritage lies.

Anyway, good luck and good hunting.

[DocDAve]

I have a vellum/paper chain of my surname and variants ( Lansley-Lanceley-Launcelett) and then a tantalising gap of about 70 years when the name Launcelevee occurs in the same locality. My idea was to try to sign up a present day Lancelevee in France and, as it is an uncommon name and originates from Normandy where the first Hampshire Launcelevee arrrived from, to see if yDNA matched then I would be satisfied of my paternal line origin.

I believe DNA testing for paternity reasons is illegal in France without a court order but would that apply to YDNA testing for genealogy?

[Ladkyis]

I have to agree with stepives, unless you have DNA from those people in the 1400s then you cannot be sure. You can only point at the result and say "possibly related" or "possible cousin with common ancestor somewhere in the past" and it is possible to do that with paper records.
I think the DNA tests look so good that companies are determined to somehow fit them into the family history catagory and then charge a lot of money to tell you about it. I am also very vary of the
"You will be entered into our genetic database to find family connections" well why would anyone put their unique genetic make-up online for anyone to use?

Probably not the answer you were hoping for, and that's why I was reluctant to say anything

[DocDAve]

If a British person's surname was " Threepepperpots" and there were families of the same name in the 1400s and today in another country it would be interesting to perform comparative YDNA testing.
I'm in a similar situation with the unusual name Lancelevee ( French for lifted or raised lance) for which a seal and arms have survived.
I agree about the companies having a database from which they can extract matches. It's the name I'm interested in.

[Deeny]

I can't offer "expert guidance", but I do have some experience and a positive attitude towards DNA testing.

If money is no object start with a Y67 test. You can upgrade that later if it shows some evidence of matching and you want to clarify the results further. Y37 is a good enough and cheaper starting but below that any matches are little more than background noise. There would be no point doing autosomal testing which would potentially only find you matches within the last 200 years.

Where the paper trail ends, for what ever reason, DNA adds another tool to confirm or deny ancestral origins. It may not give you the answer you want straight away, or indeed ever, but it will give you more information than you have now. Keep logging in to your DNA account regularly in hopes that more people with a matching Y-line get tested.

I too have some Hampshire surnames in my tree which have Norman origins and I am intrigued to know what your "round lance" surname is.

Good luck.

Deeny

[DocDAve]

Thank you for that, much appreciated.
I have as yet to join and purchase from familytreedna. It appears you get matches if you are fortunate but not for surnames specifically.

With a strong hunch about my Launceletts ( 1522) being preceded 50 years or so by La(u)ncelevee - the former being a French diminutive of the latter - my logic tells me to try to test a modern day Lancelevee, of which there are hundreds around Rouen.

The more I go on the more I feel like giving up and drawing a conclusion from the paper trail. On the other hand it' so tempting to arrange testing. The legal difficulty I don't know about, with the French. I would I suppose offer to pay for their test - Y67.

The name is "lance levee" i.e. lifted lance

[stepives]

We could all go on about the 'why's' & 'wherefores'.....but in reality, with your logic......all the Smiths, Fletchers, Millers, Lancelots, plus all the various permutations of those names worldwide that exist are related. In reality, we are all a part of what Europe and beyond are made from. A right old blood soup, and where I pray,did they exist before France......how far will you go.

I accept the temptation you feel, and hope you find what you need.

Good luck and good hunting, wherever it leads.

[Break2015]

As someone who has done DNA testing on ALL the sites just to see what the hype is about, to see if it can hold up against well researched genealogy, I got to say... save your money and buy whatever records are available.

The problem with DNA testing has a few major issues.

Autosomal first.

The first & foremost is the large majority of people who do DNA testing widely don't know their ancestry beyond the 1700s. Most are actually more modern history > e.g. great-great grandparents if lucky. So it essentially becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. I have long since gotten fed up with the overrated hype. After all, most old-time individuals [be they British, German, French, etc.] who may potentially share the same genetics as those long forgotten ancestors aren't going to test their DNA. It's a waste of money to them as they've lived in X location for donkey's years so what is a DNA test going to teach them? That they've got a bunch of distant cousins who likely know jack about family history > so do they invite them to the family BBQ this summer?

The second is sites like ancestry.com. Most of those trees, as I am sure many on this forum and other genealogy forums can tell you, are wrong. Either they purposely are constructed wrong, as I have heard of people purposely ignoring their dirt-poor ancestors in favor of richer people of similar names / DOBs born nearby, or the person making them doesn't know any better. There are multiple complaints about this issue around ancestry.com on various forums > including the ancestry.com forums themselves. The major thing is a severe lack of documentation. Or erroneous documentation placed with people; as if putting John's census record for Joe Dilly Jack means that Joey is the same person as John Dilly Jack.

FTDNA is not much better in a way. How can you guarantee that those peoples' trees are accurate?

Because they all share the same DNA. Well what if while Johans was away at war his wife entertained his mother's third cousin Fredrick? Sure those descendants are all related they're just not Johans' descendants. Because unless you can find Johans' grave you can't prove one way or the other.


Then there is the Y-DNA.

Did you know Y DNA can be carried through generations unaltered? My father shares the same Y-DNA and mutations as a guy in the early Norman era. And some mutations with people from earlier. He also shares the same mutations with a chap in the Americas, the only "close" DNA relative. He also shares the same with a guy in Denmark.

I put "close" regarding the American in quotes like that as over 300 years separate us as per FTDNA summary. Those 300 years however would be if we had the same surname & came from the same area. We don't. So, given our own family history which is well researched in England and England's own history of population movements [war, etc.] a more probable distance is something like 500+ years. The person seems to think closer, but, again given what we know of our own history (and the knowledge they have of their own British ancestry) and the entirety of Y-DNA results that'd be rather unlikely.

Useless in a way because until you can find the in between people god knows how close, how far we are related.

So you prove you're related to the Frenchmen. How far, how close. What if that Frenchman actually doesn't share the same ancestry - a non paternal event on his side - that you and he doesn't know of.

But given the surname it is likely anyways. Surnames don't just drop out of the sky. They typically have some basis. Either a paternal [Erikson], locational [Clee from Clee Hills], or characteristic [Russell, little red one], etc.