The Cryan- Crean Surname Project

 My first surname project was for the Kilcoyne family. I am several years into this research and have nearly 100 men tested to include the variant Coyne. 57 of these men are Kilcoynes. Like the Kilcoynes. the Cryans is a relatively rare surname. I have discovered some incredible things like how each connect to each other and their ancient migrations into Ireland. My goal is duplicate the success of the Kilcoyne project for the Cryans that will overlap with other surnames like Crehan and Crean. I am at the stage with the Kilcoynes that if a man tests from anywhere in the world, I can easily place his family in the west of Ireland often times into a specific parish. This is done with a male only Y-DNA test that only looks at the male inherited Y chromosome. 

Below is a map of Kilcoyne families, the pins represent paternally unrelated branches based on the earliest known locations of descendants who have tested. There are ten groups here but four of these make of the bulk of the testers. Six of these groups are likely related to the Kilcoynes by the female line. Eventually I envision the Cryans and variants having a similar looking map. It is an incredibly powerful study because often times, many in the diaspora, do not know the family history and where their family lived in Ireland. Simply testing can bridge the gap back to the 19th century. For the European tester, you learn when your family entered Ireland, your connection to individuals uncovered in archeological digs, and where your cousins ended up settling wherever that maybe. 


The Y passes from father to son relatively unchanged, until the line dies or daughters out. The Y test allows us to reach far back into time, in excess of 300k years. So we can determine not only our ancient roots and where our ancestors traveled to, but also allows us to reconstruct our family trees within the last several hundred years using variants known as SNPs (singe nucleotide polymorphisms). These SNPs occur randomly in our male ancestors, that creates unique branches or haplogroups,  which allows us to create a genetic tree. These SNPs are only found by using the BigY700 test, the most expensive of the three kits available at FTDNA. The other two tests read 37 and 111 STR markers, these kits are affordable and great to get your family represented in our Project. Here is a Kilcoyne example of a genetic tree 



I volunteer my time for the development of surname studies. I am the administrator for several Projects to include the Cryans, Kilcoynes, Crows and Coyles. If one takes whichever level YDNA test  through FTDNA, I help interpret the results and research the family tree and decipher which family group you belong to. The privacy of the tester and private information is protected and only shared if given permission. FTDNA was the original DNA company that has had surnames studies for twenty years. They are well respected and do not share your information. 

If you would like to participate in our journey to genetically map the Cryans , Creans and variants, visit familytreedna.com. Choose whichever Y-DNA test is affordable for you, and if needed, lean on me for support with the family tree and genetic genealogy. The Y chromosome test our our go-to for the study, but if you would also like to test all of our autosomes, I suggest testing through ancestry.com. This site has a great ethnicity reading, and the largest database of users. 


Regards,

Michael Crow 

mikec1120@comcast.net 





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