Testing isonymy with paternal and maternal lineages in the early Québec population: the impact of polyphyletism and demographic differentials.

Isonymy is an ingenious and useful approach to studying kinship in human populations. However, it relies on assumptions that are difficult to verify. In this study, we provided a way to assess, in the early Québec population, the impact of factors such as polyphyletism, unbalanced sex-ratio among founders, and age differentials between spouses. All data were taken from the Population Register of Early Québec, which contains births, marriages, and deaths (>712,000) recorded in parish registers from the beginning of colonization (in 1608) to 1800. More specifically, using the 70,869 marriages recorded during that period, we compared kinship estimates given by genealogies, surnames, and paternal and maternal lineages. We also calculated a fifth coefficient of kinship by combining paternal and maternal lineage, thus providing a new way to test the isonymy method. The results show a good agreement between genealogical and isonymous estimates. However, this good correspondence is due to counterbalancing biases. Some of the implications of our results are discussed in the context of colonial America.

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