Welcome to the Barry Surname Project.  Please review the privacy policy at the bottom of this page.

The Irish Barry family is commonly considered to be of Anglo-Norman origin, having arrived in Ireland with the 12^thcentury Norman-Welsh invasion, although recent scholarship indicates that the family probably originated in Flanders. In Ireland the family is associated primarily with County Cork where several branches developed:  Barry Mor (Great or Elder Barry), Barry Roe (Red Barry) and Barry Og (Younger Barry). Other branches of the family had variations on their names such as Barry Bhán/Barrivane (White Barry) and Barry Laidir (Strong Barry).  There were also compound names including the MacRobinson/MacRobston Barrys, the Mac James (FitzJames Barrys), the MacAdam Barrys and the Smith Barrys.

In later centuries this Barry family dispersed throughout Ireland and its members can be found today in every county, as well as in North America, England, Australia, New Zealand, France and in every location of the Irish Diaspora.

Some Barrys are native Irish, rather than Anglo-Norman or Flemish in origin, having descended from the O'Baire clan of West Cork, or O’Beare or O’Beargha families of Mayo and Limerick, respectively.  The variant Barrie may be of Scottish origin. In addition, some Barry families changed their name to Berry for various reasons.  If this was the case in your family, please consider joining both this project and the Berry surname project.

One of the major goals of this project is to sort out the various branches of the Barry family and confirm or refine the information on these diverse groups and their origins.

Eligibility

The Barry project is open to all women and men who have direct Barry ancestors on any line of descent. See list of surnames for all eligible name variations.

YDNA Testing Recommendations

Men who are, or suspect they may be, direct paternal Barry descendants should begin with YDNA testing. We recommend a YDNA test of at least 37 markers. If you have already tested with another company, you may be able to transfer and supplement your results at a low cost. 

We also suggest that you do additional YDNA testing to determine your haplogroup, or deep paternal ancestral group. The project administrators can advise you on testing options.

Autosomal Testing Recommendations

Women, and men whose Barry ancestors are on other than direct paternal lines, should begin with an autosomal DNA test, which evaluates all direct ancestral branches. (This is also valuable for men who are direct Barry paternal descendants.) Autosomal testing is available through Family Tree DNA's FamilyFinder test. Individuals who tested with other companies may be able to transfer their results to Family Finder for a fee.

Resources

A bibliography of print and online sources on the Barry family is available here and links to useful online resources can be found here. Additional resources are available to project members through the group Activity Feed.

Project Findings

The Results page summarizes the findings of the project to date.  Detailed DNA test results are available to project members on this web site.

Assistance

For questions or assistance with any aspect of this project, please contact the administrators, whose email addresses are on the project home page..

Privacy Policy

The General Data Protection Regulation affords certain privacy protections to residents of the European Union and United Kingdom. In compliance with this regulation, and following the recommendation of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), the following policies are in effect for the Barry project. They complement, but do not replace, privacy policies promulgated by DNA testing companies or Third-party sites.  For Family Tree DNA's privacy policies and informed consent for group projects, see:

https://www.familytreedna.com/legal/terms-of-service

https://www.familytreedna.com/legal/terms/group-project-participation

The administrators of the Barry DNA Project give priority to protecting your privacy and to the confidentiality of your personal data.  In particular, we will not publish your name, email address or other contact details, or share this information with other project members, or other persons or organizations without your specific permission.

The only personal data that we hold is that relevant to meeting the published goals of our Project, and which has been made available to us through DNA testing companies, by you directly to us through email or post, or through Third-party sites to which you have voluntarily submitted your personal information.  In accordance with Family Tree DNA's informed consent for group projects, we display certain information on our public web site, specifically your kit number, surname, most distant known ancestor, and YDNA results.  You may specifically opt out of such displays, although we do not recommend it as it greatly limits our ability to assist your research. We may also from time to time compile your information into specialized formats for the purpose of analyzing it to fulfill the goals of the Project.  These analytical records are not made public, and all reports published by the project exclude the identifying information of Project members.

We hold this data indefinitely or until you request its deletion.  You may see the current data on the Project web site, https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/barry/about/background or request such information from the Project administrators.  We will be pleased to correct any errors in youe personal data that you bring to our attention.

At your request, at any time we will promptly remove your data from our specialized Project files.  To request modification or deletion of data derived from testing companies, you must contact them directly as we have no control over the information held in their databases. 

In our aministration of this project we endeavor to comply with the most recent guidelines issued by ISOGG (https://isogg.org/wiki/ISOGG_Project_Administrator_Guidelines), and by Family Tree DNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/project-administration/gap-guidelines-ftdna-projects/) and with the Genetic Genealogy Standards (http://www.geneticgenealogystandards.com).

We will endeavor to respond promptly to any questions or concerns you may have about the handling of your data in this Project.  However, you should be aware that, because the data are ultimately derived from information held by testing companies, some of your queries may be better directed to them.  We will be happy to assist you in this regard.