Recent discoveries resulting from an analysis of the Y-DNA results of certain clan lineages has put into question the genealogies as documented by the medieval Irish Annalists.

For example, “Eóghanachta Fitzpatricks have lived for the past three hundred years and more, going by their ‘corrupted’ surname. Their identity is bound to Fitzpatrick and whatever narratives, accurate or not, of how they adopted their surname. To date, Co. Cork Fitzpatricks have reacted with lukewarm enthusiasm when learning they could descend from seventeenth-century Ó Maol Phádraig ‘rebels’, rather than Mac Giolla Phádraig nobility. …”

Following is a link to an article entitled “DASTs, CASTs, and the Quest to Reclaim Lost Irish Clans: “Gene-Ealogy” and the New Era of Irish Surname, Clan, and Kindred Research” which discusses the issue of clanship and what it means in the new era of “GENE – alogy”.