Abstract
A sample of 416 males from western and eastern Andalusia has been jointly analyzed for surnames and Y-chromosome haplogroups and haplotypes. The observed number of different surnames was 222 (353 when the second surname of the Spanish system of naming is considered). The great majority of recorded surnames have a Castilian-Leonese origin, while Catalan or Basque surnames have not been found. A few Arab-related surnames appear but none discernible of Sephardic-Jewish descent. Low correlation among surnames with different population frequencies and Y-chromosome markers, at different levels of genetic resolution, has been observed in Andalusia. This finding could be explained mainly by the very low rate of monophyletic surnames because of the historical process of surname ascription and the resulting high frequencies of the most common Spanish surnames. The introduction of surnames in Spain during the Middle Ages coincided with Reconquest of the territories under Islamic rule, and Muslims and Jews progressively adopted the present male line surname system. Sampled surnames and Y-chromosome lineages fit well a power-law distribution and observed isonymy is very close to that of the general population. Besides, our data and results show that the reliability of the isonymy method should be questioned because of the high rate of polyphyletic surnames, even in small geographic regions and autochthonous populations. Random isonymy would be consistently dependent of the most common surname frequencies in the population.
Highlights
To achieve a refined knowledge of the human population structure and its reconstruction is advisable to apply different but complementary knowledge bases, which are strictly biological. This multidisciplinary approach seeks to reconcile and interpret insights derived from historical events, population dynamics including demographic characteristics, cultural behaviours, and geography with expected strong effects upon extant gene pool
Western and eastern Andalusians from Huelva and Granada provinces, respectively, were selected and reasons for this decision are described in the abovementioned references
In the sample of 416 Andalusian males, 222 different first surnames were observed of which 159 were singletons and the other 63 surnames (!2, n = 257 individuals) ranged in frequencies from 2 to 21
Summary
To achieve a refined knowledge of the human population structure and its reconstruction is advisable to apply different but complementary knowledge bases, which are strictly biological. This multidisciplinary approach seeks to reconcile and interpret insights derived from historical events, population dynamics including demographic characteristics, cultural behaviours (mating patterns), and geography with expected strong effects upon extant gene pool. Surnames, considered key cultural markers, are being used to further investigate and enhance the genetic signals of population structure when analysing genetic data [1,2]. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0123098 April 10, 2015
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