When starting out in my Y-DNA quest to genetically map all the Kilcoyne's of Western Ireland, I expected to find the usual variants of the name Kilcoyne in the DNA lists of the testers. Coyne. Coen , etc. Of the 60 testers there are in the Kilcoyne/Coyne Project, I have found no such connection between the Kilcoyne and Coyne surnames. I am sure as time goes on, that this will change. This is where it stands now though.
One connection I see consistently across 4 unrelated Kilcoyne families, is the matching to the Coyle's. My initial thought was that it was a coincidence, that there must have been a non paternal event somewhere in these families. The two surnames are completely different clans. The Coyle's primarily being from Donegal and Tyrone. With Scottish and English lines as well. The Kilcoyne's exclusively being from Mayo and Sligo. So I set out to discover more. I encouraged the testers to upgrade their STR kits to the BigY700. I was lucky in having wonderful participation and several made that happen. The BigY is a far superior test than the standard STR tests. STR's (short tandem repeats) are not very reliable in determining genetic distance between testers. With the BigY, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism) are found in the y chromosome which enable the haplotree to build down genetic branches, which are much more helpful in seeing where families branched off more recent in time.
While waiting on test results and finding and encouraging others to test, I decided to take on the Coyle Y DNA project on FTDNA. The administrator for that Project was no longer interested in managing it, and was eager to hand it off to me. My thought was to combine the two Projects, but there are many Coyle's and variants of the name that have no connection to the Kilcoyne's. So, the best I could do was to encourage members of both groups to join both the Kilcoyne and Coyle Projects. Most of the testers in the Coyle Project are no longer active so I found it was easier to have my Kilcoyne's join the Coyle Project. I labeled each lineage in both the Projects according to color. So the Gold in the Kilcoyne group are the same as the Gold in the Coyle Project. See the results pages of both projects.
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Kilcoyne?iframe=ycolorized
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/coildna/dna-results
This is the name distribution of the kilcoyne and Coyle surnames on the 1901 census. https://barrygriffin.com/surname-maps/
As BigY results began to post, the result was clear for two groups, the Blue and Gold. In the early 18th century, the Blue Kilcoyne's were based around Louisburgh, Mayo and the Gold are from South Sligo. Both groups had Coyle matching that can be estimated back 400-600 years. The other two groups. Light Blue and Brown, do not have BigY testers, but they show close STR matching with Coyle's, the matching for these remain unsubstantiated at this point though due to STR's not being very reliable for dating. The matching is still very telling.
The Gold Kilcoyne's match is to Donegal. While the Blue Kilcoyne's is to Athlone, Roscommon. My opinion is that the matching to these four groups are not a coincidence, that they are the result of the cultural pressure Ireland was under in the last several hundred years. As the Irish were forced to anglicize their names, surnames became mistranslated as they were documented. This was a common occurrence for many Irish families. So I had to take a closer look at the two surnames and see what could have happened, and sought help from an Irish speaker. As explained, the Coyle name in the Irish language is "Mac Giolla Chomhghaill, which translates as "son of the servant of St Chomhghall. Kilcoyne translates to Mac Giolla Chaoin. As in son of the servant of Coyne. There is substantial similarity between Chaoin and Chromhghall, particularly if you drop the ghall part off the name, for convenience or translation purposes. If you hand write Chaoin and Chomh, they are remarkably similar, particularly since "in" looks identical to "m" and the literacy levels of those are in question when these names when being written"
To me, the evidence was clear. There are many Kilcoyne's that carry the Y chromosome found in many that have the name Coyle. And vice versa. From the Y-DNA evidence and what is known about the two clans, there are many Coyle's that have no connection at all to the Kilcoyne's, but there are surely many that do. It will be interesting to see how all this unfolds as more testers are recruited in both Projects.
The results from the Blue Kilcoyne group, as mentioned, show a match to Coyle man from about 400-600 years ago. But interestingly, this same group shows a match to a Kilcoyne man that is estimated back 600-800 years ago. So it seems the Kilcoyne surname in this instance has been used for that long, and the introduction of Coyle in this genetic pool could have been the result of the Kilcoyne name being mistranslated, and it being a variant of Kilcoyne. The timing of the match coincides with the island losing its native language as it's primary language. I eagerly await test results and finding and encouraging others to test, so we can discover more
These are the Kilcoyne families in Ireland discovered using Y-DNA . 8 groups. The largest being the Gold, Light Blue and Blue. Its is possible the smaller groups are from non paternal events, like adoption, or a child taking the surname of his mother.
Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome.
If you are a Coyle, Coyne or Kilcoyne, and would like to participate, feel free to reach out to me.
I am the volunteer Project administrator of the Kilcoyne and Crow Projects on FTDNA.
Michael Crow
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