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Hey forum readers! I'm catching up on email and may not be able to finish going through genealogy stuff (DNA or otherwise) for a few days but I wondered about this and thought I'd post. I was watching a little TV last night and noticed someone listed on a show I was watching with the last name of "Lea." I wondered if there has ever been any evidence of a McLea type name mutating into Lea?

Dear Keith I don't think we've ever confirmed a proven example of a change from MacLea to Lea, but we would certainly accept Leas in the DNA project. In English it most often refers to a field, and often appears in longer names: Bradley means Broad Lea and so on. You are right that Lee and Lea are just variant spellings, and obviously you are right there could be many origins for the name (or names with the same sound) in many languages - in fact it may be the world's common family name (because of China). After all it is only one syllable. Best Regards Andrew