Explore the Family Name Watanabe

Possible origins of the surname Watanabe

Your DNA provides clues about where your recent ancestors may have lived. Having many distant relatives in the same location suggests that you may all share common ancestry there. Locations with many distant relatives can also be places where people have migrated recently, such as large cities. If a large number of individuals who share your surname have distant relatives in a specific area, it could indicate a connection between your surname and that location, stemming from either recent ancestral ties or migration.

Based on 23andMe data, people with last name Watanabe have recent ancestry locations in Japan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

What Watanabe haplogroups can tell you

Haplogroups are genetic population groups that share a common ancestor on either your paternal or maternal line. These paternal and maternal haplogroups shed light on your genetic ancestry and help tell the story of your family.

The top paternal haplogroup of people with the surname Watanabe is D-Z1504, which is predominantly found among people with East Asian & Indigenous American ancestry. Haplogroup D-Z1504 is descended from haplogroup D-M174. Other common haplogroups include O-CTS713 and D-M116.1, which are predominantly found among people with East Asian & Indigenous American and East Asian & Indigenous American ancestry. Other surnames with similar common haplogroups are: Yamamoto, Takahashi, Sato, Yoshida, Suzuki, Nakamura, Nawrocki, Duron, Durocher, Durfee.

The most common maternal haplogroups of people with Watanabe surname are: H, M7a1a, D4a1. These most commonly trace back to individuals of East Asian & Indigenous American and European ancestry.

Your paternal lineage may be linked to the ancient Jōmon people of Japan

Haplogroup D-M125 is a branch of D that arose over 12,000 ago, and was likely carried into Japan with the initial wave of migrants. Who were these first men to walk across the land bridge to Japan? Today, we call them the Jōmon. For thousands of years, the Jōmon lived by fishing, hunting and gathering the rich resources of the islands. They also left behind distinctive coiled pottery. In fact, their pottery was some of first in the world!Meanwhile rice agriculture was making quite an impression in mainland China and soon spread throughout eastern Asia. These rice agriculturalists arrived in Japan about 2,300 years ago, quickly taking over many parts of the archipelago. As they introduced new paternal lines, haplogroup D-M55 appears to have been mostly replaced. It did, however, survive in the descendants of the Jōmon in more isolated areas of Japan, including Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the south.

Your maternal lineage may be linked to Marie Antoinette

Because it is so dominant in the general European population, haplogroup H also appears quite frequently in the continent's royal houses. Marie Antoinette, an Austrian Hapsburg who married into the French royal family, inherited the haplogroup from her maternal ancestors. So did Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose recorded genealogy traces his female line to Bavaria. Scientists also discovered that famed 16th century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus traced his maternal lineages to haplogroup H.