Our surname in America is mostly spelled “Milam” but it may be spelled Milam, Mylam, Millam, Mileham, Milum, Mylum or Millum. In recent years we contacted 150+ such British men and were able to recruit 26 men to Y-DNA test with our Family Tree DNA surname project of which I am currently the lead administrator. We focused on counties where we knew from British records that “Milam” men were born in the 1600s prior to that arrival of John and Thomas Milam in the Piedmont region of Colonial Virginia in the early 1700s.



Most of the British men with whom I spoke – regardless of surname spelling - thought that their family originated in the village of Mileham in the County of Norfolk and that over time the spelling had evolved. The Mileham lordship - a name of Anglo-Saxon origin - was granted to the Norman, Alan Fitz-Flaald (son of Flaald), ancestor to the Earls of Arundel, by William the Conqueror in 1067.  As you probably know, it was the Normans who introduced the French concept of surnames to the British Isles and by 1300 most families had adopted surnames.



From the test results of the first nine men in 2007, we were disappointed to learn that none matched our Y-DNA haplogroup: R1b-U152. Eight of the nine men were haplogroup I1 and one was haplogroup J2. Thus we were eager to learn the results from testing 17 more British men with a variety of surname spellings recruited during 2017. The bottom-line is that none of the 26 match our Rb-U152 haplogroup! What was even more surprising was that the British represented six genetically distinct families not related to the surname spelling! For example, there largest haplogroup – I1-M253 - consisted of 15 men who spelled their name six different ways: Milam (6), Mylam, Millam, Milum, Millum and Mileham (5).  And the results were not county related; five men whose oldest known ancestors were from Berkshire represented three genetically distinct families: I1-M253, R1b-L48 and R1b-M222. The spelling, Milam, was associated with three different haplogroups.



There was one possible correlation. Our second largest haplogroup – R1b-L48 – consisted of five men who were from Cambridgeshire and the Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, not too far from the village of Mileham. They all spelled their surname: Mileham. But two others from different counties also spelled their name, Mileham; so it wasn’t exclusive.

You may read our summary of this effort along with information about each of these six haplogroups and some correlation with recent ancient DNA results here:  http://www.milaminvirginia.com/genetics.html#britgen

William Milam, MD

www.milaminvirginia.com<http://www.milaminvirginia.com>







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