I have been absent from posting and other duties of late due to my mother being in hospice and passing away; slowly things are returning to normal and I will take a moment to answer a persistent question that shows up in my email weekly.
The question... Are The McCains Connected to Clan Donald?
Well, this is an easy one to answer as Joe McKane and I discovered the facts the first few months of the McCain DNA Project. The answer is No. That is a different McCain family, the DNA results were very conclusive. The Clan Donald McCains are in no way related to us. The Clan Donald McCains are in fact Norse in origin and we are typical Gaels. One can tell this by the DNA Haplogroup which shows up in the test.
Our McCains are connected to a Mac Lachlainn family of Dunadd in mid Argyll. They are a historical family that began using the surname Mac Eáin circa 1450 AD. Mac Eáin is anglicised phonetically as McCain, McKane, McKean, McKeen, McKane, etc.
We did find the Clan Donald McCains in the test. Their are two branches, one from Ardnamurchan and one from Glencoe were both were located and both participated in our DNA test. They match each other (as they should), but do not match our mid Argyll McCains. Our mid Argyll McCains are the Mac Eáin family of Kilmichael Glassary and were a very distinguished group, but lessor known than the Clan Donald McCains.
2 comments:
Hi there,
I was wondering if you could tell me what is the best way for me to go about determining whether my Cain ancestors were from Clan Donald or from your people.
I am female and that is through my father's side. It is my mother's father's mother's mother's father, named Cane, who came over from Scotland. I am guessing there is no easy way to tell, other than actually going there and trying to find any documentation on him, as I don't know what area of Scotland he came from.
Thanks.
Kristen
you will need you mother's father's mother's mother's father's paternal line, a male to test to the DNA test. That is a male from that line from that paternal descent. Cain is the anglicised form of both Mac Eáin and Mac Catháin, easy to tell them apart via DNA testing. Most of the Cains and McCains we have test are not part of Clan Donald. If you go to the results page of our DNA project you can see the results. The Glencoe and Ardnamurchan McCains are about 1/2 down the page. The mid Argyll McCains are at the top.
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