Article Dans Une Revue European Journal of Human Genetics Année : 2011

Surname and Y chromosome in Southern Europe: a case study with Colom / Colombo

Résumé

According to most historians, Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. However, based on some key facts in the discoverer's biography, as well as in the linguistic analysis of his texts, some historians and linguists believe that Columbus could have been of Catalan origin. A Ligurian Columbus would have carried the Colombo surname, while he would have been called Colom if he were Catalan. In order to test whether it would be possible to discriminate between a Ligurian or a Catalan origin were Columbus' Y chromosome haplotype to be retrieved, we genotyped 17 Y-chromosome STRs in 238 Spanish (from Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands) and French Colom men, 114 North Italian Colombo (from Liguria, Lombardy, and Piedmont). The Italian samples, and, in particular, the Lombard Colombos, were genetically as diverse as the general population, and we found little evidence of clusters of haplotypes that could indicate descent from a single founder. Colombo is actually the most frequent surname in Lombardy, where foundlings and orphans used to be given the surname Colombo. By contrast, Y chromosome diversity was reduced in the Iberian Colom, where most of the men had Y chromosomes belonging to a few lineages. This implies that a positive identification would be more likely if Columbus were of Catalan descent. In this study, we have shown the diverse dynamics of two surnames linked by their etymology, in what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first genetic analysis of a surname in Southern Europe.

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hal-00671236 , version 1 (17-02-2012)

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Francesc Calafell, Luis Javier Martínez-González, Esther Martínez-Espín, Juan Carlos Álvarez, Francesc Albardaner, et al.. Surname and Y chromosome in Southern Europe: a case study with Colom / Colombo. European Journal of Human Genetics, 2011, ⟨10.1038/ejhg.2011.162⟩. ⟨hal-00671236⟩

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