Jewish DNA Can Predict Family Name: Study

A male’s DNA contains information that can help scientists guess his surname, American and Israeli researchers have discovered. The findings have serious implications for data privacy; intelligence services around the world are bound to be interested.
In the study published in the journal Science, researchers have developed a formula for an algorithm that can discover men’s surnames by looking at the Y chromosome, the male chromosome. The Y chromosome, which is transmitted from father to son from generation to generation, includes markers called short tandem repeats, which form a kind of fingerprint.
The researchers, headed by Dr. Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, fed 40 markers into a computer.
“Comparing a subject’s Y chromosome with information from existing databases could help locate his family,” says Israeli team member Eran Halperin, a professor at Tel Aviv University.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Ben Shapiro, Emily Damari among torch lighters for Israel’s Independence Day ceremony
-
Fast Forward Larry David’s ‘My Dinner with Adolf’ essay skewers Bill Maher’s meeting with Trump
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Communications The Forward Announces Gifts of Domains Yiddish.com and Yiddish.org by Elie Hirschfeld and his wife Sarah Hirschfeld, MD
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.