The Hebrides · 1156
Somerled. Two houses on one branch
A January night in 1156. Off the coast of Islay two fleets meet: the ships of Godred, King of the Isles under Norway, and the ships of Somerled, ruler of Argyll. The night will end in partition: the southern Hebrides will go to Somerled.
Eight and a half centuries later, that night can be read in the Y chromosome. One in five MacDonalds and more than a third of MacDougalls belong to a single paternal branch — and the man it traces back to lived in those same years.
King of the Isles
Somerled ruled Argyll, the Gaelic shore facing islands that had been Norse for almost three centuries. Godred, King of Man and the Isles, was his brother-in-law. The battle off Islay on the night of 5 January ended without a victor, and the kingdom was divided: Somerled received the southern Inner Hebrides, Kintyre and the islands of the Clyde, and Godred kept Man and the north. Two years later Somerled drove Godred out of Man and became King of the Isles.
He died in 1164 at Renfrew, having come ashore with an army on the lands of Walter FitzAlan, the royal steward from whom the Stewarts would descend. The fight was over almost before it began: Somerled was killed in the first skirmish, and his army scattered.
His sons divided the isles. From Dougall came the MacDougalls, lords of Lorn. From Ranald, through his son Donald, came the MacDonalds, the Lords of the Isles: from Finlaggan on Islay they ruled the west almost as a separate kingdom, until the Scottish crown stripped them of the title in 1493.
The branch
The branch shared by MacDonalds and MacDougalls goes back 950 years.
In the chronicles
Somerled and the two houses of his descendants
- Dugall
- Descendants MacDougalls
- Ranald
- Donald
- Descendants MacDonalds
In the DNA
The shared node and two paternal branches
R1a-YP326 R1a-YP5543 R1a-FGC11896 Two sons — two houses. Two branches under one node — from that same time.
From the north
Somerled took the isles from the Norse — and bore a Norse name: Sumarliði, “summer wanderer”, the name for those who went to sea for the summer. The paternal line of his houses tells the same story. It comes from the north.
This branch belongs to R1a, the largest line in Eastern Europe. In Scotland, though, R1a is Scandinavian: it came to the isles and the northern coast in the Viking Age. Among Scottish surnames it accounts for 5%, against 72% for the main line of Western Europe.
Above the node the branch runs a thousand years deeper, to the beginning of the Common Era.
Names of the clan
On the branch of their house, the MacDonalds are joined by the MacDaniels and the Alexanders — names of Clan Donald too.
| Surname | Shared branch | Share of surname | Age (years) |
|---|---|---|---|
| McDaniel | R1a-FGC11896 | 24% | 850 |
| Alexander | R1a-FGC11896 | 13% | 850 |
| McConnell | R1a-FGC11896 | 12% | 850 |
| McAlister | R1a-FGC11896 | 6% | 850 |
The remaining MacDonalds come from the old population of the western shores, which lived there long before the Kings of the Isles and took the chief's name along with the land: the surname has 21 lines in all — as many different fathers.
The same population is found among the MacDougalls: MacDonalds and MacDougalls also meet on an older branch, 1,500 years old — shared ancestors not of the houses but of the shore. The clan was an oath, not kinship.
Under one node
A century and a half after Somerled, his houses stood on opposite sides: in the war for the Scottish crown the MacDougalls of Lorn fought against Robert the Bruce, the MacDonalds of Islay for him. Bruce won and took Lorn from the MacDougalls.
Which surnames does yours meet on the tree — and when did the branches part?
A card for every surname with its lines and branch ages, the surnames nearest to it, and a comparison of any two — in the app.