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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Jill Eaton on Wednesday 24 October 18 12:53 BST (UK)
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I check my Ancestry DNA matches on a regular basis and today, just for a joke put "Eaton" in the surname search.
Eaton is my married surname - not my maiden name.
What was surprising was how many matches I had on MY tree for the name Eaton. Not close matches. One match was for a 4th cousin with the rest being 5th to 8th cousins mostly.
if the surname was Smith or something else fairly common I wouldn't have been at all surprised but Eaton isn't that common.
It's probably of no relevance at all but I found it rather odd!
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Maybe not that odd. I see your married name has a rank of just over 500 at gbnames.publicprofiler.org with 300 occurrences per million so plenty of scope there for there to have been some Eaton's back along your line.
As it is a locational surname ie based on a place there could be many different Eaton lines all deriving the name from different locations of the same name and so not related (round about way of saying even if you did have Eaton's in your tree they may not be related to your partners Eaton's)
I actually like searching out surnames in my tree that are rare. If I ever finished doing my tree I might like to do a one name study on one of them (my actual surname is too common for that).
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Are you and your spouse remotely from the same area, if not recently historically? Have you looked at one of those Maps that shows the surname distribution across the UK? Perhaps you come from an area where there were a lot of Eatons.
Martin
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These things pop up for me also. Mostly on my sons line through his mother. More just names though. 1 or 2 rare enough for me to do a double take.
I havent delved into it too much but may do as a project