Searching for "Father" CHRISTMAS

Didn't we discuss this a week or two ago or did I see it on another
list?

Anyway, I will repeat my view of Prof Sykes, for what it's worth! He
worries me, since I tend to regard him as what in my newspaper days
we called a "rentaquote", i.e. someone prepared to say virtually
anything that the press wanted to hear. He may well be a brilliant
scientist for all I know, but as a genealogist I think his Sykes
results were flawed. The number he tested was tiny, compared with the
number of Sykeses littered throughout the world, and I seem to recall
he got a lot of them from one of those rubbishy Burkes Peerage "World
Books of...[fill in any old surname you like]" published by the late,
unlamented, Harold Oily Double-Barrel. How do we know he didn't
manage to land by chance on one particular branch of the Sykes family
who were in fact all related?

I also thought his book and theory about everybody being descended
from seven women in Africa, to whom he gave Earth Mother names like
Ursula and Racquel, was just a blatant piece of publicity-seeking,
probably to ensure more funding for his project. I remain unconvinced
that DNA testing is anything more than an interesting meander down a
side-track of genealogy.

However, as the editor of the GOONS journal I mustn't let my
prejudices get in the way of a potential article, especially since
Christmas is a Guild-registered surname! I will certainly be
interested to see what results eventually appear. Until they do, it
will remain my opinion that Christmas is probably a name with
multiple origins.

Roy Stockdill

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde