The fun of adoption...

[sathor]

It brings up another useful point, clans were blood and by joining by marriage, if the paper trail shows it going back, even with the NPE in play, that child was still part of the clan, even if not by blood, and carries on downward.

[O'Callaghan]

It brings up another useful point, clans were blood and by joining by marriage, if the paper trail shows it going back, even with the NPE in play, that child was still part of the clan, even if not by blood, and carries on downward.

Not only that, but other people who were not blood often became part of a clan. In Scotland this gave us many of the septs, i.e. other names that are considered part of a clan, and in Ireland I have been told that they took the clan name as their new surname instead.

Not that any of this is new information for most people here, but I think a lot of the interest in genealogy here stems from looking for clans in the family tree. I think you can claim to be part of a clan either through adoption or through blood, so perhaps those who are adopted have twice the opportunities to claim a clan.

It also means that if you have the name but not the right DNA you may belong to an entire family that was adopted by the clan, rather than having an ancestor who was adopted by step parents or whose father was misattributed.