History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 214
Flanders now refers to that part of Belgium that is inhabited by speakers of Dutch or
Flemish dialects, and the inhabitants are considered to be Flemish. A broader
definition of “the Flemish” includes people who have Flemish roots, but have migrated
to Britain, Canada, the U.S., or elsewhere. This broader definition was adopted in this
study so that DNA samples collected from people living in the U.S. and elsewhere
could be used and compared to DNA derived from sources in Flanders.
Materials and Methods
This study relies on the pooling of three sets of Y-chromosome STR data. The two
larger datasets contain data on 12 Y STR markers, DYS393, DYS390, DYS019,
DYS391, DYS385a, DYS385b, DYS439, DYS389i, DYS392, DYS389ii, DYS437, and
DYS438. The Flanders-Flemish DNA (FFDNA) project dataset has haplotypes with
12, 25, or 37 markers from Family Tree DNA’s (FTDNA’s) three panels of
markers. Each set was collected in a different way from different subjects and is
independent of the others.
The first set of Y-STR haplotypes was derived from the FFDNA project, launched by
the author in November 2005. As of March 2007, 45 records had been submitted to
this project at FTDNA. These records were mainly from people living in the U.S. who
believed that their patrilineal lines came from Flanders. These initial 45 records were
used for the first analysis undertaken in the spring of 2007 and published in
September 2007 (Deboeck, 2007). Since September 2007, 18 more records have
been added to the FFDNA project, bringing the total number of FFDNA samples to
63. While all of the participants who have joined the FFDNA project believe that their
paternal lines come from Flanders, there is no way to verify this.
The map in Figure 2 is marked to indicate where members of the FFDNA project
live. The map in Figure 3 shows the location of the most distant ancestors of those
members. On the second map, three markers are shown in Ireland, but these are
from people who believe that their ancestors migrated there from Flanders. Arnold
Fleming wrote that “history is an eternal tangle of cross purposes, and we could not
take a more complicated case than the heterogeneous factors lying behind the
influence of the Flemings upon the British people” (Fleming, 1930).
Figure 2 Residences of Flanders-Flemish DNA Project members.
214