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Hey there,

I recently tested for my haplogroups with LivingDNA and was fairly surprised by my yDNA result, namely U106>DF98. I haven't tested to get any further than that as I don't really fancy splashing out on downstream yDNA tests quite yet, so I understand that a lot of conjecture is involved with the information I'm able to provide.

On its face, my fatherline is about as Irish as it can get. I have an Irish surname (anglicised Daly from the Irish ? Dálaigh) and come from a line of Irish-speaking Roman Catholics as far back as I can reliably get (census records confirming both a great-great-great grandfather and his children who were both Irish-speaking and Roman Catholic in County Roscommon, Ireland in the early 1800s). The ? Dálaigh clan is said to have its origins in Tethbae, Westmeath -- pretty much bang in the centre-north of the modern Republic of Ireland -- from the 12th century, so my family's impression was that some ancestor of mine moved west from there to Roscommon at some point, where my earliest verifiable ancestors come from.

Having done some research, however, it seems that U106 is not native to Ireland and doesn't really feature in ancient Irish samples. It does, however, seem to spring up in the medieval era, indicating possible Anglo-Saxon, Viking or even Norman influence.

My theories on this are as follows and I was hoping that someone with a little more knowledge might be able to point me in the right direction or correct any misconceptions I have:

1) Ancient Celtic descent from some early Germanic migration to Ireland(?)
From what I've read, this seems unlikely, as we'd expect U106 to be more prevelant in Ireland if it's survived for thousands of years up to the modern day.

2) Anglo-Saxon/Ulster plantation descent
I feel like this is fairly unlikely given how U106 seems to be distributed in the British Isles, i.e. focused in the East and South of England and fading as you go north and west, with barely anything in Ireland apart from Ulster at around 14%. It doesn't seem as though there were any large-scale settlements of Anglo-Saxons in Ireland during the medieval era, as you'd expect to see more U106 (though isolated occurrences are obviously not impossible). I've also seen the argument that U106 in Ireland can be explaned by later plantations of people of mixed Anglo-Saxon stock, but it seems strange to me that a planter/a planter's descendants would have a) learnt Irish (as mentioned, Irish-speaking shows up in my family's earliest available census records), b) adopted an extremely established Irish surname, c) converted to Catholicism and d) moved south to Roscommon (not necessarily in that order).

3) Norman descent
This seems unlikely to me, as if I'm not mistaken, men in Normandy historically and to this day demonstrate low quantities of this subclade and are primarily R-L21 and R-S28. As well as that, many people of Norman descent in Ireland can trace their surname back to the invasion, and it seems strange that a Norman would adopt ? Dálaigh as a surname in their new homeland -- particularly as the ? Dálaighs were an eminent bardic family, fiercely proud of their status as Irish-speaking Ollamhs (chief poets) of Ireland (not to suggest they were all Ollamhs, but it seems like a fairly high-brow family name to adopt).

4) Viking descent
This, to me, actually seems like the most reasonable option. From what I've read, the U106 subclade appears to have jumped from >1% in pre-medieval Ireland to 5-6% in medieval Ireland, which coincides with the Viking settlements of Ireland. A fairly recent paper (2018) () also concludes that in the areas of heaviest Viking influence in Ireland (chiefly Leinster and Connacht), their yDNA impact was larger than earlier estimates suggested:

Of all the European populations considered, ancestral influence in Irish genomes was best represented by modern Scandinavians and northern Europeans [...] in specific genetically- and geographically-defined groups within Ireland, with the strongest signals in south and central Leinster (the largest recorded Viking settlement in Ireland was Dubh linn in present-day Dublin), followed by Connacht and north Leinster/Ulster (; ). This suggests a contribution of historical Viking settlement to the contemporary Irish genome and contrasts with previous estimates of Viking ancestry in Ireland based on Y chromosome haplotypes, which have been very low [].

Given that the Dalys are said to have originated in county Westmeath in Leinster, and our ancestors as far as traceable moved at some point from there to Roscommon in eastern Connacht -- that is, all within the hotspots of Viking activity in Ireland -- does it seem fair to assume that I could be descended from a Norse settler? I believe U106 is fairly well-represented in Scandinavia, more so than in Normandy. The adoption of the surname also seems less far-fetched to me than for the Normans, as the Vikings didn't have anything resembling a surname culture, so as Viking pre-eminence in Ireland faded, perhaps they adopted the ? Dálaigh surname in their attempts to assimilate.

Am I way off the mark in this line of reasoning? Again, I know it's hard to tell without more downstream yDNA information and conjecture plays a big role, but it seems compelling to me on its face. I feel particularly strongly that the Ulster plantation theory doesn't apply here (not only because of my own biases) given my personal family history (surname/Irish language/Roman Catholicism).

Thanks so much for reading this far and for any suggestions/pointers/critiques in my reasoning you're able to give.

Cheers,
Alex