New York – Listen more kindly to the Irishmen who assure you that the blood of early Irish kings flows in their veins. At least 2 percent of the time, they are telling the truth, according to a new genetic survey.
The survey also lends credence to the existence of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century, regarded by some historians as more legend than real.
The survey used 2004 census data from New York City, where about 400,000 residents say they are of Irish ancestry.
The survey shows that 20 percent of men in northwestern Ireland carry a distinctive genetic signature on their Y chromosomes, possibly inherited from Niall – who was said to have had 12 sons – or some other leader in a position to have many descendants.
About one in 50 persons of European origin carry the genetic signature linked with Niall and northwestern Ireland, writes Dr. Daniel Bradley, the geneticist who conducted the survey at Trinity College in Dublin. He arrived at that estimate after surveying the Y chromosomes in a genetic database that included New Yorkers.
The report appears in the January issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Bradley estimated that 2 million to 3 million men worldwide carry the distinctive Y chromosome signature, which he named the IMH, for Irish modal haplotype. (A haplotype is a set of genetic mutations.)
Niall is thought to be the patriarch of the Ui Neill, meaning “the descendants of Niall,” a group that claimed the high kingship and ruled the northwest and other parts of Ireland from about A.D. 600 to 900.
Bradley tested Irishmen with Ui Neill surnames and found the IMH signature was much more common among them than among Irishmen as a whole.
The men with Ui Neill surnames tested by Bradley included those with the names O’Gallagher, O’Boyle, O’Doherty, O’Donnell, O’Connor, Cannon, Bradley, O’Reilly, Flynn, McKee, Campbell, Devlin, Donnelly, Egan, Gormley, Hynes, McCaul, McGovern, McLoughlin, McManus, McMenamin, Molloy, O’Kane, O’Rourke and Quinn.