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December 3

Fords

I am not aware of any of these people being traceably related to each other. Am I right that they aren't, as far as is known?

--142.112.220.31 (talk) 23:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know none are related, but it is also (AFAIK) conceivable that a skillful genealogy researcher might discover, after a determined effort, some shared 16th-century ancestor. So it is difficult to assert that you are right. Gerald Ford assumed the surname of his stepfather, so if you also require the common surname to be inherited he can be eliminated for consideration. --Lambiam 08:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You could get a trial membership in Ancestry.com and try to construct trees for each of them and see how far back they can be traced. Or you could start with a free site such as Findagrave.com and see how far back they go. For example, the silent film actor's entry has only his parents.[1] But it would be a start. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't ask if a skillful genealogy researcher might discover a connection or how to research the possibility of one myself. It was just an offhand curiosity as to whether one is known, actually prompted by Bonnie Crombie not being related to David Crombie. Thanks for commenting. --142.112.220.31 (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikt:Appendix:English surnames (England and Wales), it's the 106th most common surname in England and Wales. Originally, it referred to a person who lived near a ford or river crossing and there must have been an awful lot of those. According to this, there are 350,371 people with the Ford surname worldwide. Alansplodge (talk) 18:18, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Only 350,365 to go, then. (grin) --142.112.220.31 (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I estimate that in 1650 the world population was something like 550 million instead of today's 8 billion, so the number of Fords then (people, not cars) was more like 24,000. So tracing the paternal ancestry of two Fords back to the 17th century, there is a chance of about

p=1/24000

for them to have the same ancestor. Since there are ten pairs under consideration, the likelihood of a hit can be estimated to be

1-(1-p)^{10}\approx 10p\approx 0.4\,{\text{‰}}.

Small, but not impossibly small. Using the same argument, for a bunch of 183 randomly selected Fords the odds should be even. --Lambiam 23:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All Europeans have a common ancestor from about 1,000 years ago, [2] so it's certain that they are all related if you go back far enough. Alansplodge (talk) 12:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone who's not an alien has a common ancestor if you go far back enough, assuming our understanding that any previous life, if it existed, was entirely anhilated and there's nothing that's not related to LUCA. (I suppose we're all cannibals, then. It's just a question of how much of our DNA we're eating.) 71.112.180.130 (talk) 16:14, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well yes, but two people sharing a British surname are more likely to have a nearer common ancestor than they are with somebody of say, East Asian of African heritage, although there are exceptions. Alansplodge (talk) 11:56, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The claim in the article in Nature is merely that any two Europeans are likely to have a recent common ancestor (although from before baptismal or birth registers were kept). The sketchy argument I gave is based on the unstated assumption that paternal surnames were passed on through the generations and applies solely to common ancestry through patrilineal descent. (Aside: the article states, "Any two Europeans are likely to have had a common ancestor several centuries ago." This raises the question, when did they stop having a common ancestor?) --Lambiam 21:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe when they died? Saying that two dead people have a common ancestor may sound odd to some, since a person now dead has, in the present, nothing. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.215.44 (talk) 00:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Then the caption should have said, "Any two dead Europeans are likely to have had a common ancestor several centuries ago." I don't think this is true, though. Aesop and Tolkien, both deceased, are not likely to have had a common ancestor several centuries ago; you have to go back at least several millenia. --Lambiam 11:13, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Two Europeans living at approximately the same time are likely to have a common ancestor several centuries before their roughly shared date of death?" I feel like that would solve the problems, but no doubt it raises others. 71.112.180.130 (talk) 15:36, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Too wordy. Saying they have a common ancestor is the normal way to say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]