Welcome to the Taken One-Name Study.

My interest in genealogy was initiated whilst I was working in a school library and had access to numerous historical volumes.

After adding what I had gleaned from relatives about my ancestors the next step was visiting St Catherine's House in London and collecting all the Taken names and close variants.

This led to the discovery that there were only two Taken families in England that the surname originated from, so I now wanted to know where these families came from.

After collecting all that I could in England and Ireland I started looking further afield and discovered that the name originated in the Netherlands and Germany.

From there and Ireland many Taken families emigrated to the USA and Australia where some of the surnames had their spelling changed.

I have now been researching the Taken surname and variants for over 30 years.

The One-Name Study includes the surname Taken and the close variants of Takon, Tacon and Takin.

My associated DNA project includes additional surnames beyond these such as Taaken, Takens and Tak as they include possible surname evolution.

The earliest references to the surnames Takon, Taken and Tacon in England appear in Norfolk and Suffolk from the early 1700s.

As there was a large influx of "Strangers" to Norfolk- the first Flemings were invited in 1338 and the Dutch and Walloon strangers first came over in 1565, it seems very likely that the Taken name originated in the Netherlands.

In America the earliest settlers were the Irish immigrants who came over during the potato famine.

After this came the Dutch and German, some of the surname spellings changing on the way.        

The earliest German records are mostly Catholic, whereas the Dutch records are mainly Protestant, with one prominent Jewish family who were living in Amsterdam.

In North and South Dakota there are also Native American descendants with the surname of Taken Alive and Taken Prisoner, the earliest of these being born in 1860.

In 2014 worldwide approximately 890 people had this surname, the largest population of Taken being in the Netherlands and after that the USA.

Of the Tacon surname there were approximately 1,712 people in the same year, the highest number of 228 living in Brazil. (Forebears)

The large quantity of data collected includes the GRO indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Census Returns, 1939 Register, Military records and IGI.

There are also several completed family trees and many more in the pipeline.

The DNA Project was started in 2018 and takes research on a new journey.

Participants take a harmless genealogy test where the result is 37 numbers representing counts of short repeats of DNA at locations on the Y-chromosome.

The result contains no personal information.

Since the Y-chromosome is passed from father to son, typically unchanged, it follows the path of the surname in most societies.

Therefore, this test is very powerful for genealogy.

Only males can take this test, since the Y-chromosome is found only in males.

Females have two x chromosomes, while a male has an x and a y chromosome

The Y-DNA result tells you about the direct male line,which is the man, his father, his father's father and back in time. You can compare the result for two men and determine if they have a common ancestor in a genealogical time frame.

As more family trees test you end up with groups of documented family trees that match, indicating they came from the same origin. Of course, you can't make a documented connection as far back as the information provided by the DNA result. Even so, these groups of family trees that match help our research into surname origins, and can be used to bridge continents and make a connection to the ancestral country.

Even those that have traced their family tree back centuries will benefit from testing, by finding other documented family trees to which they match, indicating that they share an origin.

For additional information please visit my DNA website below under links.

 DNA Website

http://www.familytreedna.com/groups/taken/about