Thursday, March 22, 2007

DNA testing, AINSCOUGH- male volunteers wanted!

I received the following email from Billie in Tennessee today. They are looking for volunteers with the surname AINSCOUGH or similar eg. Ascough, Ainscow etc to take part in their DNA testing programme. They must be male because its a Y chromosone thing! There is a cost involved,see text or the ACUFF website for further details....www.acuff.org

.....it would be great if we could determine a link to a Viking/ Nordic origin. Billie can be contacted directly at: acuff@acuff.org

"Hi again, Barbara!

We have learned this week from DNA tests that the surname Acuff as it appeared in Tennessee and Virginia in the US is pretty definitely of British origin.
Could you post a request on your blog for any males who are bloodline descendants of Ainscough, Ascough, Askew, or any variant in the UK to contact me about participating in our project? It has to be a male, because the specific DNA markers for family origin and ancestral lineage passes from father to son.
I've posted a new update to our site at www.acuff.org for anyone who is interested.
If the individual has already tested through FamilyTreeDNA, he can join the Acuff project as a second group. If he has not, the initial test costs approximately 50 pounds.

Thanks!
Billie in Tennessee

And less than 1 hr after sending Billie's email request out to "Ainscough" people/ relatives I know, Ed Ainscough, Perth, Australia, replies with the following. Keep us all updated Ed & Billie....are we of Scandinavian or Germanic origin?

"Barbara - I'll do it. The origin to Scandinavia, if there, will obviously be through a different source to that noted on the link page as based on your and our ideas on the root of the pronunciation of scough being skog, it won't be from any Swede's called 'Koff.

I assume if we were linked to the Acuff's who had Ascough roots it would be a case of mispronunciation at some point during the move to the New World. Let's face it, down in Essex everyone always said it wrong, and it wasn't until you travelled North in the UK that it was pronounced correctly - so what hope moving across the world? My youngest asked me the other day if he could change his name to 'cuff at the end because he was sick of correcting the teachers at primary school....... I said "no", of course, and told him to toughen up!!!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My grandfather - Ralph Ainscough, b. 1899 in Horwich - told me that his father and older generations (from Blackrod & Westhoughton) always pronounced the surname as "Ainsker". One ancestor moved to Staffordshire in the 1840s and changed it to "Insker".

Mike Ainscough
www.mjra.net

Anonymous said...

haha this blog is so interesting. I am an American Acuff. Its funny to me how the different pronunciations are actually the same name!