English Genetics: Abstracts and Summaries

by Kevin Alan Brook

Family Tree DNA - Genetic testing service
Family Tree DNA: Genetic Testing Service
DNA testing will reveal your connections with other families and ethnic groups. Their database includes many peoples from throughout Europe and the rest of the world including English, Welsh, Scots, Danes, Dutch, Romany, and members of many other ethnic groups. If you have English heritage, you are eligible to join a number of relevant projects at Family Tree DNA, including the English Mapping DNA Project, the England GB Groups EIJ Project, the British Isles by County project, and regional projects like those for Yorkshire, Wessex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Norfolk, Northumberland, Kent and Sussex, and the Isle of Wight.
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English people descend from Germanic peoples (including the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse) combined with Celtic Britons and Norman French (who themselves were partly Germanic). Their partial Scandinavian ancestry, most prominent in northeastern regions of England, is related to both Danes and Norwegians. Genetic evidence decisively shows that the English did in fact have many ancestors from the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, so that their influence was more than merely linguistic, contrary to Susan Oosthuizen's denial of these ancestors in her 2019 book The Emergence of the English.

The 15 English mtDNA samples I recruited for GenBank in 2024-2026:
MitoTree haplogroupAccession numberGeographic origin
H1de1 PZ272645 Scole, Norfolk, England
H2a2a1i2 PZ319847 Colchester, Essex, England
H3aq4 PZ526798 Burgh on Bain, Lincolnshire, England
H7 PP838813 Kessingland, Suffolk, England
H7a1b4 PZ543490 Lanercost, Cumbria, England
H11a4c PZ532770 Manchester, England
H13a2b2a4a PZ343852 Sedgley, Staffordshire, England
J1c3v PV692096 London, England
K1a1b1f1g PZ234921 England
K1a9j PX070374 Ickleford, Hertfordshire, England
T2aq2 PZ459838 North Tawton, Devon, England
U3a1a1a1 PZ168321 Winlaton, County Durham, England
U4b1b1a4 PZ364722 Alphington, Devon, England
W5a1a1b1 PZ459839 Hexham, Northumberland, England
W5a2a2 PZ444038 Wilbarston, Northamptonshire, England

Major studies of the English

Joscha Gretzinger, Duncan Sayer, et al. "The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool." Nature 610 (September 21, 2022): pages 112-119.
      Modern-day English people are autosomally compared to pre-modern people from England and elsewhere. About 76 percent of English ancestry comes from continental Europe (mainly Friesland, northern Germany, Denmark, and southern Sweden). The largest ancestral component in the English is Anglo-Saxon but there are also Celtic Briton and Frankish components. Some ancestral differences were detected between English people from different regions (east versus west, north).

Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman, and Mark G. Thomas. "Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration." Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:7 (2002): pages 1008-1021.
      English men were compared to Welsh, Norwegian, and Frisian men. The English were found to have some Germanic ancestry, as we would expect.

Stephan Schiffels, Wolfgang Haak, et al. "Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history." Nature Communications 7 (January 19, 2016): article number 10408.
      English people were autosomally compared with 10 ancient and early-medieval samples from three sites in eastern England. These scientists "estimate that the modern-day East English population derives on average 38% of its ancestry from Anglo-Saxon migrants."


  • Family Tree DNA Genealogy by Genetics, Ltd. - This site is an affiliate
  • Living DNA - specializing in British genetics
  • England Genealogy and Family History Resources at Ancestry.com
  • English Family History Records at Find My Past

  • The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons: Decoding the Ancestry of the English by Jean Manco (Thames and Hudson, 2018) - includes DNA evidence

  • Genetics of Cornish People
  • Genetics of Welsh People
  • Genetics of Scottish People
  • Genetics of Frisian People
  • Genetics of Jewish (Israelite) People