Sarah Sundquist writes: 

Dear Dr. Adamson,

I am a member of Haplotype I2b1a1 (well, more correctly, my mother’s line of Quinns is).  I am an amateur genealogist, but professional scientist (neuroscience).  I am also a member of the I-M223 YDNA haplogroup study through which Kenneth Nordtvedt acquires his samples.  It’s a public project, so all of our surnames and known origins are there.

In looking at Griffiths valuations for my known Quinn ancestor, I noticed something odd.  He was living on a bit of churchland (a small bit, not much more than a mile square) called Killyharry Glebe (Donaghmore Tyrone), and on that Glebe, there were 25 other surnames.  A lot of them seemed familiar to me, and indeed, upon checking, I discovered that fully 50 percent of those surnames occur in our I2b1a1 test group.  I started looking at other “glebes” in the area and found that the surnames of the group are similarly represented.

Thinking about what possible link there could be between the church and a Haplotype, I started doing the only other thing I could think to do, which was start looking at the origin of the names.  I do not speak or read Gaelic, so this was quite a challenge, but I got through it.  What emerged is that an enormous number of the names are anglicized versions of Gaelic names related to the church.  Following that lead, I discovered that many of these names are related to families that are hereditary coarbs or erenachs of the church. 

I also discovered that many of them came from families with roots considered to be Cruthin (a term I had never heard of until I arrived at it from the grouping of the Haplotype names).  Imagine my delight when I found that I am far from the first to have posited this origin for the Haplotype.  There is nothing a scientist likes more than finding that someone else has arrived at the same conclusion, but with completely different evidence!