A Quaid Surname Project

Here’s the short version: I want to understand the history of the surname Quaid, and I think the best way to do that is through Y-DNA testing. If you come by the name Quaid in the traditional way and you have a Y chromosome, I would like a chance to convince you to take a Y-DNA test so we can figure out the relationship of everyone named Quaid.

Origins of the name Quaid

As I’ve described in this post, I believe the name Quaid arose in rural County Limerick, most likely in the 17th century, as a quirky Anglicization of the Irish name Ó Cuáin. The evidence suggests that the name Quaid is entirely distinct in origin from the name McQuaid, but that it is closely related to Quain.

In the Irish Census of 1901 and 1911 the name Quain was more common than Quaid, and was also geographically distinct. So there are at least two theories about how this might have happened.

Theory #1 is that the choice of how to Anglicize Ó Cuáin was a regional thing, possibly down to one person – let’s say the parish curate of Kilfinny – preferring Quaid, and his counterpart in, say, Fedamore preferring Quain.

Theory #2 is that the odd Quaid form applied to just one family. The name Quaid isn’t that common; its distribution in 1901 could, mathematically speaking, be descendants of a single Quaid family in the 1600s.

How Y-DNA can help

There are no surviving documents that will help here, but we should be able to investigate these theories with Y-DNA testing. You inherit most of your DNA as a mixture of all your ancestors, but Y-DNA comes to you directly from your father, entirely unchanged. Well, almost entirely unchanged. In each generation there’s a small chance of a mutation, and that mutation will get passed along in turn. So in a given family every male will have nearly identical Y-DNA, but with enough variation that you can roughly estimate when their common ancestor lived.

The Quaid surname might be a one-time mutation of Quain that got passed along to descendants, from father to son, much like Y-DNA. If so, we should see a tree of Quaids rooted in that event. If instead Quaid was a regional quirk, then we should see Quaids and Quains with common ancestors from a much older period, possibly going back to the adoption of surnames in the 12th century.

What we have, and what's possible

Let’s look at what those outcomes might look like. First, we'll look at the results we have so far from the only test with enough detail to be helpful in this context, the Big-Y 700 test from FamilyTreeDNA:

Big-Y results for the Quaid family at FamilyTreeDNA

This diagram shows all of the Big-Y 700 DNA testers named Quaid. Both of them. I’m one of those testers, and the other is my second cousin. We’re a close match, but different enough that FamilyTreeDNA can estimate that our common ancestor was born in 1863. That’s the best guess within a very large range. In our case we know that our common ancestor, the person labelled R-FTG1120 in that diagram, was in fact our great-grandfather Thomas Steven Quaid, who was born in Limerick in 1865. So that estimate is amazingly accurate, a combination of good science and quite a bit of luck.

For more information on the history of my (our?) Y-DNA line, see here.

So far we have just two testers with an already-known relationship, so we haven’t learned much yet. The kind of graph I’d like to develop is exemplified by the Marrinen family, a bunch of not-that-closely related people who have taken the Big-Y 700 test. Let’s take a look at their results:

Big-Y results for the Marrinen family

What you see here are several distinct groups of families, each separate from each other for hundreds of years. Some of these families have common ancestors in the 1700s, and they all go back to an ancestor born around 1650. Each of those points in the graph represents a real person – we don’t know their names and quite likely never will, but they were actual historical people.

I am hoping to see something similar as we test more Quaids and Quains. We should be able to identify distinct family lines, quite possibly identify a common ancestor for all Quaids, and perhaps identify an older ancestor of all Quaids and Quains. The more people who test, the more accurate and complete our understanding can become.

How you can help

If you come by the name Quaid or Quain in the traditional way (i.e. through the male line) and you have a Y chromosome (i.e. you’re a genetic male), or you know someone who fits that description, then we need your help. To participate in this investigation, you’ll need to take a Y-DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA. There are multiple types of Y-DNA tests at that site, but for this project only the Big-Y 700 test will give us the level of detail we need. You won't be surprised to hear that in addition to being the most detailed test, it's also the most expensive.

When you order a test they’ll send you a kit, which is associated with a number, not a name. You swab your cheek, put the swab in a vial, and send it back in the included packaging (see here for details). Then you wait, and wait some more. The results can take months to come in. Once they are ready, you can choose how much information you want to share.

This kind of test will tell you about the history of your surname, but it won’t give you much information beyond that. If you’re looking for ethnicity estimates or cousin matches, you’ll want to take the more common (and much more affordable) Autosomal DNA test. FamilyTreeDNA does autosomal testing as well, but you’ll probably get more interesting results if you test at Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com.

If you have any interest in participating or any questions at all, please contact me. The Big-Y test is expensive, but it can be free to people who meet some specific criteria.

PS: There is a surname project on FamilyTreeDNA for McQuaid and Quaid, and if you get any kind of DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA you might want to join it. In this post I'm not proposing to create a competing project, but rather to encourage Quaids and Quains to participate.