What does this specific Haplogroup say about my ancestry?

apie3000

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Ethnic group
Ulster Scots, English, German, Swiss German, Probably Gaelic Irish
Y-DNA haplogroup
R-L21
mtDNA haplogroup
T1a1
Alright so my Haplogroup on 23andme used to R-L21 and has recently been updated to R-S660 of which I understand is a more specific subclade of the former. So, what country is R-S660 predominant in and what does it say about my paternal ancestry? This is important to me because I cannot trace my father's line back to the old country. My father's surname is one of the names that comes from old Gaelic Mac Aoha but I have no idea if his ancestors were Irish, Scottish, or Ulster Scots. The situation is confusing because while its a surname associated with the native Irish its also found in Scotland, and according to some genealogies of other unrelated families with the same name among the protestants of Ulster as well. I live in the American South which was heavily populated with Ulster Scots but also some Scottish and Irish so I can't really tell anything by my surname. Help would be appreciated and thank you in advance.
 
It says, you are an Indoeuropean. (y)
Etymologically you seems to be a Gael, but to confirm this you would have to make
a genealogical research. If it is impossible, because of vanished sources, then should
you test on Y other members of potential family, and then you would be sure, which
family (if any) you are a part of (becasue - as I understand - you have a patronimic
surname, which can be the same among many different families) and where you, as
her member, originated from. Your sole result in that matter says nothing.
 
Alright so my Haplogroup on 23andme used to R-L21 and has recently been updated to R-S660 of which I understand is a more specific subclade of the former. So, what country is R-S660 predominant in and what does it say about my paternal ancestry? This is important to me because I cannot trace my father's line back to the old country. My father's surname is one of the names that comes from old Gaelic Mac Aoha but I have no idea if his ancestors were Irish, Scottish, or Ulster Scots. The situation is confusing because while its a surname associated with the native Irish its also found in Scotland, and according to some genealogies of other unrelated families with the same name among the protestants of Ulster as well. I live in the American South which was heavily populated with Ulster Scots but also some Scottish and Irish so I can't really tell anything by my surname. Help would be appreciated and thank you in advance.

That's a bit tricky to disentangle, because these separate identities (Irish, Ulster Scots and Scottish) indicate you want to know the ethnic and social identity of people after the Protestant Revolution and before they went to the US - and the 3 possibilities are actually extremely close to each other historically, so some overlapping is virtually inevitable and you can't discard the possibility that even if your haplogroup is more common in some of those groups than in the others you can still descend from someone who belonged to that smaller minority in the other ethnic group, especially because Y-DNA haplogroup is much easier to be thoroughly "changed" than your autosomal ancestry. But the subclade R-S660 or R1b-L21 is, according to YFull YTree, 1850 years old and has a TMRCA of ~1800 years. That's more than enough time for the haplogroup to travel to the other side of the narrow strip of ocean dividing Ireland from Scotland or Wales. Besides, a relevant proportion of Scottish people have Irish ancestry, Scottish Gaelic being a testament to that close relation (that Celtic language in Scotland almost certainly did not come directly from Pictish or Brittonic people in Britain itself). Then Ulster Scots, who had come from Scotland, reversed the flow of migration towards Ireland, and there it's not possible to say there wasn't any mixing whatsoever with Irish people and no conversion to their ethnoreligious identity throughout the centuries - apart from the fact that mixing with Irish people may have happened centuries earlier, when many Irish came to live in Scotland, or even so many years ago that there were only Celts in the British Isles and not even a shadow of a Scottish identity existed yet.

As I said, I think it's complicated. The R-L21 and S-660 subclades indicate that you must have some Irish (the clear majority of people with the DF109/S660 subclade live in Ireland) or more broadly Insular Celtic ancestry (maybe in its earliest origins associated more with Goidelic Celtic languages instead of Brittonic ones?). But you may well descend more directly, in a more modern perspective (i.e. the last 300 years), from an Ulster Scots or a Scottish man, but one that had had some Celtic or more specifically Irish ancestors centuries earlier.

Finally, remember that your Y-DNA does not define most of your ancestry. It just tells you something interesting about one of your many paternal ancestors, the one who had an unbroken line of male descendants until you were born. It's theoretically totally possible that the overwhelming majority of your ancestry does not even come from the same population that your male forebear that lent his Y-DNA haplogroup to you belonged to.
 
My mtdna comes from Ireland. Yes, you have a Gaelic Y-DNA, while mine is German assimilated Polabian Slav. The Scots Gaels came from Ireland, originally, their kingdom of Dal Riata also included part of Ulster.
 
A close cousin of mine just found out his Y-DNA hg is R-S660. He and I share one of my 2nd great grandfathers.....Patrick Molloy from Co. Offaly, Ireland (Birr civil parish).
 
Molloy is the "shortened anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Maol Aodha ‘....descendant of the devotee of Aodh’."
 
Just to add to the muddle, my name is Murphy (somewhat common in Ireland!) 23andMe gives my y-DNA haplogroup as R-S660. My great grandfather was born in 1829 near Dungiven, Co. Derry in Northern Ireland. There is speculation that this line of Murphy's was from Connaught, Counties Galway or Mayo.

I copy the following, not sure how accurate, but for what it is worth: "R-M222in Ireland is most concentrated in Donegal (nearly 20 percent of thepopulation) and then nearby counties to the south and west (five to10 percent). It is also found in Lowland Scotland and the WesternIsles. The ‘Downstream’ subclade R-DF109 or S660 is predominantlyfound in Ireland (25%), then Scotland (10%), Northern England (10%)and Wales (5%)."

I'm unsure what years R-S660 spans.
 
I have the R-S660 aswell
 
I'd we are related so my father and grandfather are from that area
 
A close cousin of mine just found out his Y-DNA hg is R-S660. He and I share one of my 2nd great grandfathers.....Patrick Molloy from Co. Offaly, Ireland (Birr civil parish).

I'd we are related so my father and grandfather are from that area
 
Probably you must be one of descendant the Niall the nine hostages?
 
Alright so my Haplogroup on 23andme used to R-L21 and has recently been updated to R-S660 of which I understand is a more specific subclade of the former. So, what country is R-S660 predominant in and what does it say about my paternal ancestry? This is important to me because I cannot trace my father's line back to the old country. My father's surname is one of the names that comes from old Gaelic Mac Aoha but I have no idea if his ancestors were Irish, Scottish, or Ulster Scots. The situation is confusing because while its a surname associated with the native Irish its also found in Scotland, and according to some genealogies of other unrelated families with the same name among the protestants of Ulster as well. I live in the American South which was heavily populated with Ulster Scots but also some Scottish and Irish so I can't really tell anything by my surname. Help would be appreciated and thank you in advance.
R1b-L21 is the most commonly found YDNA marker in the British Isles. It has its highest concentration in Ireland and western Scotland. It is even more common among the English than the western part of the Continent. Usually referred to as the Celto-Atlantic genome. It came into the British Isles from Holland during the early Bronze Age. Its highest concentration on the Continent is in NW France. It is relatively high in SW Norway and this is partly due to the importation of slaves from Ireland and Scotland during the Viking age.
 
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