engleski

Surnames and changes in genetic structure on the Island of Pag, Croatia

The aim of this study was to estimate, from the distribution of surnames, the recent historic changes in inbreeding, kinship and genetic distance matrices among Pag Island village populations (Croatia) over three generations, and to correlate them to previously published findings on the anthropometrical, sociocultural and genetic distance matrices. The study included 484 marital pairs with spouses born between 1929-1960 ("current generation", CG), 704 pairs with spouses born between 1897-1928 ("parental generation", PG), and 680 pairs with spouses born between 1859-1896 ("grandparental generation", GG), taken from 11 villages. Total inbreeding on the island, estimated from the frequency of isonymous marriages, amounted to 3.14% in CG, and 3.31% in PG and GG. Total kinship (unreduced variance) of the entire island was 4.7% in CG and PG, and 4.9% in GG. The comparison of those values to other previously reported for other isolate world populations indicates that Pag Island's population is highly inbred, with accumulated kinship over time. Genetic distance matrix determined from surnames revealed a good fit to Malecot's "isolation by distance" model only in PG (R2 = 0.176, p<0.05), and a good correlation with linguistic, genetic, migrational and female anthropometric distance matrices in all three generations. The results indicate that findings obtained by surname studies show good correlation with ethnohistorical and anthropological data.

surnames; genetic structure; island of Pag; Croatia; population genetics; anthropology

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