Tracing Family Names

The World Names Profiles provides an interesting tool that could also help in narrowing your search for ancestral origins. With its statistical breakdown you can easily work your way all the way down to the provincial level (or equivalent).

Native American DNA Links to Six "Founding Mothers"

Gene-based DNA research is becoming more and more sophisticated, with places like FamilyTree DNA and others offering sophisticated technologies at prices that are attainable by many. It may be that big push that assures you that you are headed in the right (or wrong) direction for people whose ancestry is primarily traced to Europe. For Native Americans, however, it may be that searching for your precise ancestry will get much easier, as this report from National Geographic shows:

Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central, and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.