Introduction
In 2004 I registered the Bowes surname with the Guild of One-Name Studies and started the Bowes DNA project. The variants I have formally registered with the Guild are Bowes, Bowe, Bows, Bow, Boe, and Boaz.
Over the years it’s become apparent there are many similar surnames reflecting unique geographic origins — such as Bowe, Bowie, and Buoy or Bowes, Boze and Boas — that have shared or still share the same or similar surname variants. These include surnames from the UK, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and other areas too. This phenomenon of different surnames sharing the same surname variants can be an issue for documentary researchers, especially those who descend from immigrant families but who don’t know their country or locale of origin. The possibilities for place of origin among these very similar names are rather numerous!
So while the focus of this one-name study is the Bowes and Bowe surnames and their known variants, the Y chromosome DNA project is very broad to explore many surnames that sound alike and could give rise to the same variants. Many of these names are uncommon to rare, so they’re not likely to develop robust DNA subgroups. Over time Y chromosome DNA will establish the interesting historical relationships among the many similar names. (See DNA project surnames and current results.)
Website Conversion Progress
Current status: EARLY
At the end of 2016 I began migrating my old Google Site to the Guild’s own hosting service. This will allow the work to be preserved long into the future and also provides a blog space where people can follow my findings, whether or not they are on Facebook. The migration will take a long time. Many of the Google Site pages need updating and I plan to update them as I transfer them here. I’ll post on the blog when a page has been transferred and/or updated.
Help Is Welcome!
Since 2004 a number of others have come along who’d already been researching substantial portions of related material. Thankfully you’ll find much of their work here too. If you would like to help research or share what you have, your participation is most welcome! There’s always more room on the contributors list.
