Are you a Bradley? A Boyle? Perhaps a Cannon? What about an O'Donnell, a McDonald or a McDonnell; an O'Neill or a McNeill; a Doogan, a Dougan or a Dugan; a Lunny or a Looney; a Doherty or a Docherty; a Kane, Cain or Caine; an O'Connor, a Gallagher; a McLoughlin or a McLoughlan; a Hamill, a Flaherty, a Laverty; a Carlin or a Carolan? Maybe a Sweeney or McSweeney?

Turns out every one of you have a common ancestor--correction-an uncommon ancestor, as found in a recent Donegal gene pool discovery made by Ph.D. student Laoise Moore, at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College, Dublin. She was participating in a study conducted by scientists in Trinity, which found that as many as one in twelve Irish men could be descended from the fifth century king who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland.

In the northwest of Ireland, particularly in Donegal, the number rises to 21%, or one in five.

Moore made the discovery when she tested the Y chromosome of over 800 men from across Ireland. The chromosome is passed down from father to son.

Professor Dam Bradley, who supervised the research, said the results reminded the team of a similar study in central Asia, where scientists found 8 % of men with the same Y chromosome. Subsequent studies found they shared the same chromosome as the dynasty linked to Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan didn't reach Ireland. So which Irish dynasty was the common link for the O'Donnells, Cannons, and the others? Not hard to answer.

It was the dynasty founded by the very uncommon Niall Naoi Giollach, in translation Niall of the Nine Hostages.

For a long time various historians had doubts about the very existence of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Writing as recently as 1972 in volume 1 of The Gill History of Ireland, Dr. Gearoid Mac Niocaill, lecturer in Mediaeval History at University College, Galway, had this to say at page 12:

But it is worth raising the question, even if it is unanswerable, whether all these links with Niall are not perhaps fictitious; whether, indeed, although some recent writers have accepted his existence…he ever existed at all.

Professor Bradley himself had some doubt. Discussing the team's recent findings, he said:

"Before I would have said that characters like Niall were almost mythological, like King Arthur, but this actually puts flesh on the bones,"

Based on their study they calculated that the most recent common ancestor of the family septs named in the opening paragraph of this article lived some 1,700 years ago, around the fourth or fifth century.

Genealogical experts gave them a list of people with surnames that are genealogically linked to the Ua Niall dynasty, the descendants of Niall. The results showed these people had the same chromosome, proving a link between them and Niall's descendants.

Since genealogy has become a popular study around the world, all the above may interest many readers. Geneticists are unravelling many mysteries which hitherto were unsoluble. They have their fictional counterparts in popular television shows such as Bones and NCIS, but fact still remains stranger than fiction.

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