[blam]

"Excellent! Thanks for the ping...although my Y is pure Celtic, it's a few loci different from Nial. I have a 16 haplotype match with the Mahoneys, Pickerings and Nichols', rather than the O'Neils."

I'm of British descent from around York. FReeper Torie told me that a lot of Vikings settled there. Don't know for sure though. The strides being made with DNA will have us all 'nailed-down' in a few years.

Happy New Year to all.

[Torie]

Thanks for pinging me. I think I told you that my surname is most common, and even more common at about the time my forebears must have decamped, in and from the York region. So maybe we are related. :)

Happy New Year to you, and thanks so much for all of the excellent anthropological and archaeological threads that you "dig up" as it were. You are one of Free Republic's jewels of the crown, that enhance it, and make it a more interesting and pleasurable place.

Kudos.

[RightWhale]

The ancestors of mine from there arrived maybe 1100 years ago, asked the locals what they called the place and that became their family name, which we still have. Where they came from before that nobody said, but probably Denmark or so.

[Renfield]

"....I'm of British descent from around York. FReeper Torie told me that a lot of Vikings settled there. Don't know for sure though. The strides being made with DNA will have us all 'nailed-down' in a few years...."

"York" is a corruption of the Norse name Yorvik (pronounced yor-wick). The root of the word is vik (wick), which is a word meaning castle or stronghold. The term "wick" is still used in Scotland to refer to old castle ruins.