A New Oldest Keating Family?

A recent new member to the FTDNA Keating Project signed up for the Y-700 test and the updated results arrived this week. Since the preliminary (STR-based) results were a near match to my own, we were both quite interested in what the SNP-based test results would indicate and were hopeful that the results would show a common ancestor within a documentable period, say… within a hundred or so years before our respective ancestors immigrated to the US. However, we were surprised to learn that our Most Recent Common Ancestor was likely born around 1232 CE (with a possible range of 61 – 1815 CE). Although disappointed we wouldn’t be able to document our way through our brick walls, we were pleased to learn that we were likely members of the oldest known Keating family, with a common ancestor born within a single lifespan of the first known written instance of the Keating name.

The surname Keating first began appearing in the late twelfth century around Wexford, Ireland. Halis Keating is credited with being the first documented member of the family in 1179 CE, only 10 years after the Norman Invasion of Ireland. Surname usage in Ireland isn’t much older, starting around the tenth century. As a result, one can assume there were no “Keatings” at all before the tenth century and few, if any, between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.

One might be forgiven for assuming that we’re all one huge family with unbroken lines dating back to Halis Keating in the twelfth century. However, one of the interesting things I’ve discovered through the FTDNA Keating Project is that any random Keating I meet on the street may or not not actually be related to my own Keatings¹, despite sharing the name. Genetically, there are many different “family groups” of Keatings whose common ancestors pre-dated surnames coming into usage in Ireland.

Using the FTDNA Keating Project data, I’ve broken out the groups that I’m currently aware of into the following family groups who have at least two members with known Keating (or variant) paternal ancestry and who have taken the high resolution Y-700 test. For each test, I indicate the Most Recent Common Keating Ancestor (MRCKA), the current known ancestor haplogroup, and the median and 99th percentile ranges for the birth of the MRCKA.

Family Group 05 – MRCKA – R-FTA38663 – ~1232 CE (61 – 1815 CE)

Family Group 06² – MRCKA – R-BY188176 – ~1631 CE (1308 – 1837 CE)

Family Group 07 – MRCKA – R-FT186760 – ~1744 CE (1481 – 1904 CE)

Given the current collection of test kits, this seems to indicate that Family Group 05 is the oldest Keating family in the project, followed by Family Group 06 and Family Group 07 some 400-500 years later.

Of course, these results are based on only eight Y-700 tests across three different groups. Hardly a respectable sample size. The results could quickly change with additional Y-700 tests, either new or upgrades. Additional testing could shrink the MRCKA birth ranges, could provide an older MRCKA for a family group, or could add new family groups.

1. Discounting maternal or legal relationships. It also discounts relations prior to the period when surnames were in use in Ireland. ↩︎
2. An earlier “Has Y-DNA Helped Us Discover Halis Keting?” article indicated that Family Group 06 went further back, but at the time, I included group members who had historical surnames other than a Keating variant.There was a Y-500 test which would likely push the date back in time, but doesn’t provide consistency for comparison for this purpose. These tests were removed for this article to leave a more consistent set of “Keating” tests. ↩︎