Дробњаци - Новљани I1>P109>FGC22045>FGC22061

[abmunteanu]

This is a two part message. The first part analyzes an etymology for the name Drobnjak that was not discussed previously. Those that don’t like like speculation about surnames, can skip to the second part, which presents some new genetic information.

----
Aca, you are right about the assimilation process. But at this time we don’t know if the Balkan ancestor with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup was a Vlach or an Albanian. If he was born in North Macedonia he could be a Vlach or an Albanian, but if he was born in Albania he could be an Albanian or a Vlach. This is why we must find the contemporary person who has the oldest haplogroup that belongs to the I-FGC22045 branch. And then we can compare his haplogroup with the haplogroup of Nikola Rašković Drobnjak. Discovering the Balkan man with the oldest haplogroup and his place of birth (inland or close to the sea) can offer a clue about the identity of the Scandinavian ancestor, Varangian or Norman.
----

The surname Drobnjak does not exist in Rumania, where it could have been written as Drobniac. The Rumanian family name that most closely ressembles Drobnjak is Drob.

https://www.locatefamily.com/D/DRO/DROB-1.html

The etymology of the surname Drob is given by Iorgu Iordan in his dictionary as coming from the word “drob”, which is the popular name of a plant (from the family Genisteae) that ressembles a broom. He mentions two other possible etymologies, namely “drob” (a piece of something) or “drob” (lamb inner organs).

In the current Rumanian language “drob” is used mainly for the dish named “drob”, which is eaten only at the Orthodox Easter and is made using internal organs from the lamb. It is hard to believe that the surname Drob comes from a dish that is eaten only once a year.

https://ro.wiktionary.org/wiki/drob

The word “drob” used in the sense of “piece of something” is not used today anymore. The exception would be for a piece of salt (“drob de sare”), but today salt is not sold in big pieces anymore. The connection with the salt is interesting, as can be seen below.

In the dictionary of family names written by N.A. Constantinescu the surname Drob is not present. His place is taken by the surname Droc, which is presented as coming from a plant, or as a variant of the name Drob. He then gives some other variants of the name: Drocea, Drocan, Droici. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NQiAhsW7b0-Zaef6VtBiytE598i-WNbT/view?usp=sharing

The plant named “droc” in Rumanian is the same as the plant named “drob”. These two names appear to be used interchangeably. Apparently the plant name comes from the Russian "дрок”.

https://dexonline.ro/definitie/droc
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA

Now to the genealogy. My father has no autsomal matches named Drob, but has two distant (6-7 cM) autosomal matches on Ancestry named Droc. Both have ancestors named Droc from the county of Sibiu, which is next to the county of Brașov, from where the I-FGC22061 ancestor of my father originated. On Ancestry.com there is a third match with ancestors named Droc, but this is a match only with me, not with my father. This could be a false negative result, it happens a lot. His Droc ancestors were also from the county of Sibiu. As you can see in the screenshot below, he has a male ancestor named Aleman Droc, who lived in the 19th century. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l6qQfzJUBZgeh92G-GQvbqS3MtsNfiyU/view?usp=sharing

I have never heard of the first name Aleman before, because today it is not used at all. However, I searched it and found that there are Rumanian families with the surname Aleman. The majority are in the Sibiu, Alba and Brașov counties, but there are 2 families with this name in the county of Mehedinți, where my father was born. In the page below it is said that Aleman is the same name as Alaman.

https://www.namespedia.com/nume-romanesti/ce-inseamna/Aleman

In the dictionary of N.A. Constantinescu the surname Alaman is presented as coming from the name of a Germanic tribe. There are also the following surname variants: Alăman, Aloman, Alman, Aliman.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iXZ1FyigeVq9wj8aHrbkhkJtOPvXSqvV/view?usp=sharing

Iorgu Iordan says that the name Alaman comes from the Turkish word “aleman”, meaning “German”. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-LLEwV9LrAtmQfRVnKAHe5wezLm-zaBc/view?usp=sharing

The Turkish word for German is actually “alman”.

https://tureng.com/en/turkish-english/alman

Now let’s go back to the post made on page 53 of this thread by Amicus. In it, he shows a screenshot from a book about Albanian families from the region of Mat, one of which was named Oloman. An admin of the Rrenjet project has told me that one Albanian with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup is from Mat.

Could it be that the Oloman family from Mat is related with Aleman Droc from the county of Sibiu? We don’t know, but it is possible. I told you about the connection of the word “drob” with the salt. Vlachs were transporters of salt all across the Balkans. You can see below a photo of a Vlach salt caravan from 1931. In the county of Sibiu there is an important salt mine in the town named Ocna Sibiului.

https://pinterest.com/pin/241716704985133461/
https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocna_Sibiului

The Albanian name Oloman and the Rumanian name Aleman most likely were at first nicknames, given by Turkish speaking people to men that were of German descent. They actually could have been of Scandinavian descent, I doubt that the old Turks made the difference between them. For example, in the past, the men who came from Bulgaria and settled in Rumania were named Sîrbi, which means Serbs. The Rumanians just considered the Bulgarians Serbs, because for a non-speaker of a Slavic language, the two languages sounded the same.

[abmunteanu]

The town of Gacko from Bosnia-Herzegovina, seems to be linked with the Drobnjak tribe. So, I wanted to see if my father has autosomal matches that have ancestors from Gacko. There is indeed one match on 23andMe, named D. Bukvic, who has the paternal grandmother born there. She shares with my father a 12 cm DNA segment. There are almost 100 shared matches, but I will present only those that have the same DNA segment shared with my father and D. Bukvic. Of course, I will list only those matches that have added details about their grandparents. None of the male shared matches has the I-P109 haplogroup. The orthography of the names is the one used by the matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PWskvmYEXexXdqMx5zo6B_JmaduSd7Iw/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TJKzkEwdinZCEewNWV8t2iP0HnUwxFNm/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K0OIdDeAHcRlA-JgkyQRJY2wuJ_vHYXv/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nuBFnBZB_Cz3FwiiRtkSuuj96URv8v9k/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PFIaHcmhmDHpQlqzcX5GDlRz9t3xRhMf/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vD5SiuHrXtNwc1Tp9u0yGgcMSfA5d9WG/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b4964nO-tqDfvZ90qpeme1lwmOKM2xZ3/view?usp=sharing

Shared matches:
- N. Karlovich: has all 4 grandparents from Croatia. Ancestor names: Karlovich, Smiciklas
- S. Savic: has 3 grandparents from Kolašin, Montenegro and 1 grandparent from Gornji Gajtan, Serbia. Ancestor names: Bulatovic, Golubovic, Savic
- C. Barbir: has 2 grandparents from Podprolog, Općina Vrgorac, Croatia.
- A. Lacevic: has all grandparents from Montenegro.
- B. Stupar: has 1 grandparent from Lovska, Općina Novska, Croatia and 3 grandparents from Vojvodina, Serbia. Ancestor names: Poznanovic, Jozanov, Beck, Vesic, Zrnic
Zurzulov, Sustran, Markov, Dilberov
- P. Zotovich: has 4 grandparents from Serbia, but names only 2 towns (Kruševica and Konjevići).
- N. Smyth: has 4 grandparents from Croatia (Lokve // Velika Lešnica, Primorsko-goranska županija // Doljani, Lika-Senj County). Ancestor names: Burcar, Dragel
- D. Cicak: has 3 grandparents from Croatia.
- D. Domenichetti: has 1 grandparent from Slovenia and 1 from Austria. Ancestor names: Stanich, Modrich
- B. Andes: has 2 grandparents from Serbia. Ancestor names: Vucelich, Carapunja
- D.Dosenovicova: has 1 grandparent from Slovakia. Ancestor names: Koma, Dosenovic, Basta, Rosa
- N.Siv: has the maternal grandparents from Bosnia-Herzegovina and the paternal ones from Vojvodina, Serbia. Ancestor names: Sivacki, Kukolj, Jerinkic, Novakovic, Romcevic, Rackov.
- S. Ivans: has 4 grandparents from Croatia (Grubišno Polje, Bjelovar-Bilogora County // Batinjani, Općina Đulovac // Kuzma, Voćin, Općina Voćin). Ancestor names: Ivanović, Dragojević, Dobrić, Stanisavljević, Malečić
- N. Vidovic: has 2 grandparents from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ancestral names: Bukic, Kuzmic, Mesinovic
- L. Kucish Ritz: has 2 grandparents from Austria. Ancestor names: Kucish, Cicci, Fugera, Ludage
- Z. Popovic: has 4 grandparents from Croatia (Slabinja, Općina Hrvatska Dubica // Ruševac, Križevci, Općina Križevci // Povelić, Općina Križevci). Ancestor names: Skvorc, Srnec, Habianovic, Lalic, Obucina, Popovic, Simic, Gacic
- L. Adams: has 1 grandparent from Croatia and 1 from Slovenia. Ancestor names: Bubeck, Solo, Schola, Novak

The matches that have the biggest amount of shared DNA with D. Bukvic are Savic, Lacevic, Zotovich. There are also Albanian shared matches (Topllari, Berisha, Husenaj, Abrashi, Beshi), but none has the same segment shared with my father and D. Bukvic.

It is interesting that S. Ivans has a grandparent from Batinjani, Croatia. I remember that one of the first records of the Drobnjak tribe was about a man named Bratigna Drobnjak. Yes, there is an R in Bratigna (pronounced like Bratinja) which is not present in Batinja, but the names seem close enough.

https://muzejpljevlja.com/dr-marica-malovic-djukic-prilog-istoriji-drobnjaka-u-srednjem-veku/

Finally, something about the Albanian branch of I-FGC22045. I have donated 18 dollars to have Zeqiri (from Kičevo, North Macedonia) tested at YSEQ for FGC22052, the SNP just above FGC22061 on YFull. He is negative. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19EGPpwxPm40vVCV543oBWqPblzdnfpgH/view?usp=sharing

[RajkoK]

Je vous felicite pour votre generosité pour avoir payé le snp mais sans etre mechant il a donné le resultat logique NEGATIF .
Je me demandais , avais vous des nouvelle de l'autre roumain TATARLIOV ?

[Aca]

This is a two part message. The first part analyzes an etymology for the name Drobnjak that was not discussed previously. Those that don’t like like speculation about surnames, can skip to the second part, which presents some new genetic information.

----
Aca, you are right about the assimilation process. But at this time we don’t know if the Balkan ancestor with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup was a Vlach or an Albanian. If he was born in North Macedonia he could be a Vlach or an Albanian, but if he was born in Albania he could be an Albanian or a Vlach. This is why we must find the contemporary person who has the oldest haplogroup that belongs to the I-FGC22045 branch. And then we can compare his haplogroup with the haplogroup of Nikola Rašković Drobnjak. Discovering the Balkan man with the oldest haplogroup and his place of birth (inland or close to the sea) can offer a clue about the identity of the Scandinavian ancestor, Varangian or Norman.
----

The surname Drobnjak does not exist in Rumania, where it could have been written as Drobniac. The Rumanian family name that most closely ressembles Drobnjak is Drob.

https://www.locatefamily.com/D/DRO/DROB-1.html

The etymology of the surname Drob is given by Iorgu Iordan in his dictionary as coming from the word “drob”, which is the popular name of a plant (from the family Genisteae) that ressembles a broom. He mentions two other possible etymologies, namely “drob” (a piece of something) or “drob” (lamb inner organs).

In the current Rumanian language “drob” is used mainly for the dish named “drob”, which is eaten only at the Orthodox Easter and is made using internal organs from the lamb. It is hard to believe that the surname Drob comes from a dish that is eaten only once a year.

https://ro.wiktionary.org/wiki/drob

The word “drob” used in the sense of “piece of something” is not used today anymore. The exception would be for a piece of salt (“drob de sare”), but today salt is not sold in big pieces anymore. The connection with the salt is interesting, as can be seen below.

In the dictionary of family names written by N.A. Constantinescu the surname Drob is not present. His place is taken by the surname Droc, which is presented as coming from a plant, or as a variant of the name Drob. He then gives some other variants of the name: Drocea, Drocan, Droici. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NQiAhsW7b0-Zaef6VtBiytE598i-WNbT/view?usp=sharing

The plant named “droc” in Rumanian is the same as the plant named “drob”. These two names appear to be used interchangeably. Apparently the plant name comes from the Russian "дрок”.

https://dexonline.ro/definitie/droc
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BA

Now to the genealogy. My father has no autsomal matches named Drob, but has two distant (6-7 cM) autosomal matches on Ancestry named Droc. Both have ancestors named Droc from the county of Sibiu, which is next to the county of Brașov, from where the I-FGC22061 ancestor of my father originated. On Ancestry.com there is a third match with ancestors named Droc, but this is a match only with me, not with my father. This could be a false negative result, it happens a lot. His Droc ancestors were also from the county of Sibiu. As you can see in the screenshot below, he has a male ancestor named Aleman Droc, who lived in the 19th century. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l6qQfzJUBZgeh92G-GQvbqS3MtsNfiyU/view?usp=sharing

I have never heard of the first name Aleman before, because today it is not used at all. However, I searched it and found that there are Rumanian families with the surname Aleman. The majority are in the Sibiu, Alba and Brașov counties, but there are 2 families with this name in the county of Mehedinți, where my father was born. In the page below it is said that Aleman is the same name as Alaman.

https://www.namespedia.com/nume-romanesti/ce-inseamna/Aleman

In the dictionary of N.A. Constantinescu the surname Alaman is presented as coming from the name of a Germanic tribe. There are also the following surname variants: Alăman, Aloman, Alman, Aliman.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iXZ1FyigeVq9wj8aHrbkhkJtOPvXSqvV/view?usp=sharing

Iorgu Iordan says that the name Alaman comes from the Turkish word “aleman”, meaning “German”. See the screenshot below.

The Turkish word for German is actually “alman”.

https://tureng.com/en/turkish-english/alman

Now let’s go back to the post made on page 53 of this thread by Amicus. In it, he shows a screenshot from a book about Albanian families from the region of Mat, one of which was named Oloman. An admin of the Rrenjet project has told me that one Albanian with the I-FGC22045 haplogroup is from Mat.

Could it be that the Oloman family from Mat is related with Aleman Droc from the county of Sibiu? We don’t know, but it is possible. I told you about the connection of the word “drob” with the salt. Vlachs were transporters of salt all across the Balkans. You can see below a photo of a Vlach salt caravan from 1931. In the county of Sibiu there is an important salt mine in the town named Ocna

The Albanian name Oloman and the Rumanian name Aleman most likely were at first nicknames, given by Turkish speaking people to men that were of German descent. They actually could have been of Scandinavian descent, I doubt that the old Turks made the difference between them. For example, in the past, the men who came from Bulgaria and settled in Rumania were named Sîrbi, which means Serbs. The Rumanians just considered the Bulgarians Serbs, because for a non-speaker of a Slavic language, the two languages sounded the same.

Drob is a archaic Slavic word for intestines. There is a consensus among the scholars and the tribe itself that the name Drobnjak stems from the aforementioned word.

[CosicZ]

Finally, something about the Albanian branch of I-FGC22045. I have donated 18 dollars to have Zeqiri (from Kičevo, North Macedonia) tested at YSEQ for FGC22052, the SNP just above FGC22061 on YFull. He is negative. See the screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19EGPpwxPm40vVCV543oBWqPblzdnfpgH/view?usp=sharing

Тренутно има два припадника I1-FGC22045 на http://www.gjenetika.com/rezultatet/ и четири на https://rrenjet.com/databaza-publike/ , као и шест који се воде као I1-L22. Да ли је неко поредио њихове STR маркере, ако су их тестирали? Ако су разлике мале, вероватно су блиски сродници, па ако још неко међу њима уради BigY или WGS тест, то неће значајно унапредити наша сазнања о миграцијама ове хаплогрупе. Веће разлике би указивале на то да нису блиски сродници и да је I1-FGC22045 присутна дуже време међу Албанцима, а BigY или WGS тест би показао прецизније колико дуго и помогао нам да одредимо када је дошла из Скандинавије и са којом популацијом.

[abmunteanu]

The article written in 1999 by the historian Marica Malović-Đukić from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade offers the key to solving the enigma of the Drobnjak name etymology. This is why I emphasized the use of articles and books written by specialists. Their argumentation is based on historical documents, not on hearsay. And in this case the historical document contains the original name of the Drobnjaks, which was not Drobnjak.

Marica Malović-Đukić writes the following (in automatic translation) :
===================
From the territory inhabited by the Drobnjaci, people started very early to come down to Dubrovnik and were involved in the caravan trade as pride and primicuri between Dubrovnik and the Serbian medieval lands. Drobnjak was mentioned for the first time in the documents of Dobrovac in 1285. In the same year Bratigna Dobrognago and eight other Vlachs were in debt in Dubrovnik to a Dubrovnik resident for the sum of 10 perper.

https://muzejpljevlja.com/dr-marica-malovic-djukic-prilog-istoriji-drobnjaka-u-srednjem-veku/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kj4rceQYrm4uczavUuM12b_aByhlQ160/view?usp=sharing
===================

Marica Malović-Đukić has published the name of the first Drobnjak man recorded in the archives, as it was written in the documents from that time. And this is extremely important, because we now know how it was pronounced then. That name written in original in Latin is “Bratigna Dobrognago”. I searched this name with Google and it turns out that it also appears in articles written by other historians.

The first name “Bratigna” is pronounced exactly like the name “Bratinja” in Serbo-Croatian. I searched for Bratinja with Google and found the name Bratinja Luka, which is a beach on the Croatian island of Korčula, which is very close to Dubrovnik, the town where Bratigna Drobognago was mentioned in 1285. Maybe his first name is an indication that he was from the island of Korčula.

https://www.adriatic.hr/en/guide/beach-bratinja-bratinja-luka-korcula-croatia/beach-1152

My father has many Croatian autosomal matches. Among them there is a distant match (7 cM) who has ancestors from Blato on the island of Korčula. Below are a screenshot with the match and his genealogical tree (2 PDF files). The names of the ancestors from Blato are: Bosnic Solo, Sardelic Servo, Marinovic, Martinovic Rovinjez, Cetinic Pensa, Loletic Cikata, Bosnic Glavor, Xacnich Maricic.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13020RSDLlhJPi9M77fV8OJQH_e0sLo_3/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UPeCbWKk9sZ0dJWmOGN82NP6UinYutKO/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S5PxRwIdZafjlfrzqH1qwTnpynnaYYbT/view?usp=sharing

But the most interesting part is about the family name Dobrognago. It is pronounced in Latin (or in Italian) exactly like “Dobronjago” (Доброњаго) in Serbo-Croatian. This surname is purely Slavic and is formed from the words “Dobro” and “Njago”. I know this because in Rumania there are two very common surnames, “Dobre” and “Neagu”.

https://www.locatefamily.com/D/DOB/DOBRE-1.html
https://www.locatefamily.com/N/NEA/NEAGU-1.html

They have originated from their Slavic counterparts “Dobro” and “Njago”. This is accepted by all the linguists and was known for a long time. See the screenshots below, the first from N.A. Constantinescu’s dictionary, the second from Iorgu Iordan’s dictionary of family names.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lOO2r73C7-xh2zd73PLJESCg4Rm7j1rM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16V5QbgUIzl8NigrwP76la2k1Ek7PwtJj/view?usp=sharing

Now, one may say that the writer from 1285 has modified by mistake the name Drobnjak in Dobrognago. Firstly, this is not very probable, because the name Dobrognago is present in a financial document, and in financial documents the names are always written with the utmost precision, so there is no confusion regarding the persons involved. And secondly, there is indirect evidence that proves this is not the case. Since Bratigna Dobrognago was a Vlach, I transliterated his surname in Rumanian and it is “Dobroneagu”. I searched this name with Google and the only instance of this name on the internet is a river in Rumania named exactly like this, Dobroneagu. This river and the area named after him, are in the Făgărași Mountains. This is exactly the place of origin of the earliest known paternal ancestor of my father.

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A2ul_Dobroneagu

Below is an article in English about a reforestation initiative for the Făgăraș Mountains where the Dobroneagu ecological area is mentioned:

https://www.carpathia.org/100-hectares-of-new-forest-in-the-fagaras-mountains/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIYGpQDBnnmagFsshHt7o1DYGicMYxrL/view?usp=sharing

In conclusion, my opinion is that the original name of the Drobnjaks was Dobronjago, as it is mentioned in the document from 1285. The name means “good care” in English and this was probably a reference to the trade activity of the Dobronjagos. One of the Vlachs having this name settled in the Făgărași Mountains and a river was named after him. Then in the place of origin the name changed gradually from Dobrognago > Drobognago > Drobgnag > Drobnjak. For the transformation of the final G in K, I don’t know how it’s in Serbo-Croatian, but in Russian the final G is read as K, that is “друг” [drug = friend in English] is read as “друк” [druk].

[abmunteanu]

RajkoK, in genealogy the things are not always logical. So, they must be verified. It seemed logical that the Albanians are on a different haplogroup branch than the South Slavs, but until now this was only a supposition. With only an 18 dollars investment, that supposition was verified.

In English there is a saying: “time is money”. But the opposite is also true: “money is time”. With money you can buy time, make things speedier. We can wait for Albanians to take a more thourough Y-DNA test, which may not happen for years. As you can see from the screenshot that I have posted in my previous message, Zeqiri was tested for I-FGC22045 in September 2020. Nothing has happened since then. This is probably also the case with the other Albanians, who for a reason or another are not interested to pay for a Dante Labs or Big Y test. So, there is the option that we can pay 200 euros for an Albanian to take a test that will create an Albanian branch on YFull. This way we will find out the time when the split of the Albanian and South Slavic branches occured in the past. However, nobody else has been willing to financially support this initiative, which will actually advance our knowledge about the I-FGC22045 branch.

Regarding Tatarliov, the things are very simple. He cannot be contacted, because his e-mail address is no longer valid. Any message sent to the address from his FTDNA account will be bounced back with the error message “Address not found”. Judging by the termination of his surname, he is of Bulgarian or North Macedonian origin. Tatarliov’s paternal ancestor was born in Timișoara, so he may have been descending from the Paulician Bulgarians that settled in Banat. Being Catholic in the Balkans, they had some religious and linguistic connections with Croatia and Bosnia, as can be seen in the article below. So, it is possible that there were also genetic connections.

==================
After they settled, the Banat Bulgarians began to take care of their education and religion. The Neo-Baroque church in Stár Bišnov [current name Dudeștii Vechi, Timiș county, Rumania] was built in 1804 and the imposing Neo-Gothic church in Vinga [Arad county, Rumania] in 1892. Until 1863, Banat Bulgarians held liturgies in Latin and "Illyric". Illyric was a strain of Croatian which had spread in the communities before they migrated to the Banat.
[...]
The Banat Bulgarian language until the mid-19th century used Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet due to Bosnian Franciscans influence, since then it uses its own script, largely based on the Croatian version of the Latin alphabet (Gaj's Latin Alphabet), and preserves many features that are archaic in the language spoken in Bulgaria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banat_Bulgarians
=================

Aca, if there is a consensus among scholars about the origin of the Drobnjak name, then the etymology must be present in an article or a book written by a linguist or an historian. Put a link to the article or make a photo of the page where this argument is present. My impression from the books that I have read in automatic translation is that there is no consensus about the origin of the name. This is why I researched the etymology myself and I may have demonstrated that the first mention of the name in official documents recorded the original name that later changed in the current one.

CosicZ, I have forwarded your question to an admin of an Albanian DNA project. I will post his response when I receive it.

[Aca]

It is a well known fact that Latin speakers used to adjust Slavic names by adding vowels or by rearranging order of the consonants so a word becomes easier to pronounce in Latin, hence Srbija/Serbia, Belgrad/Belgrado, etc. Bratigna Dobrognago is just a latinized form of Bratinja Drobnjak.  As for the origins of the Novljani branch of the Drobnjak clan there are different hypothesis how Normans/Vikings/Varyags left their offspring in the Balkans. Historically they were present as the mercenaries or guards hired by the different Byzantine or Serbian kings or a soldier was left behind by a retreating Norman army during the conquest of Epirus. There have been cases of Serbs or Slavs being assimilated into Albanians and vice versa but Vlachs contributed to all of the modern Balkan nations so i see them as the most probable initial bearers of the P109 in the Balkans.

The article written in 1999 by the historian Marica Malović-Đukić from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade offers the key to solving the enigma of the Drobnjak name etymology. This is why I emphasized the use of articles and books written by specialists. Their argumentation is based on historical documents, not on hearsay. And in this case the historical document contains the original name of the Drobnjaks, which was not Drobnjak.

Marica Malović-Đukić writes the following (in automatic translation) :
===================
From the territory inhabited by the Drobnjaci, people started very early to come down to Dubrovnik and were involved in the caravan trade as pride and primicuri between Dubrovnik and the Serbian medieval lands. Drobnjak was mentioned for the first time in the documents of Dobrovac in 1285. In the same year Bratigna Dobrognago and eight other Vlachs were in debt in Dubrovnik to a Dubrovnik resident for the sum of 10 perper.

https://muzejpljevlja.com/dr-marica-malovic-djukic-prilog-istoriji-drobnjaka-u-srednjem-veku/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kj4rceQYrm4uczavUuM12b_aByhlQ160/view?usp=sharing
===================

Marica Malović-Đukić has published the name of the first Drobnjak man recorded in the archives, as it was written in the documents from that time. And this is extremely important, because we now know how it was pronounced then. That name written in original in Latin is “Bratigna Dobrognago”. I searched this name with Google and it turns out that it also appears in articles written by other historians.

The first name “Bratigna” is pronounced exactly like the name “Bratinja” in Serbo-Croatian. I searched for Bratinja with Google and found the name Bratinja Luka, which is a beach on the Croatian island of Korčula, which is very close to Dubrovnik, the town where Bratigna Drobognago was mentioned in 1285. Maybe his first name is an indication that he was from the island of Korčula.

But the most interesting part is about the family name Dobrognago. It is pronounced in Latin (or in Italian) exactly like “Dobronjago” (Доброњаго) in Serbo-Croatian. This surname is purely Slavic and is formed from the words “Dobro” and “Njago”. I know this because in Rumania there are two very common surnames, “Dobre” and “Neagu”.

https://www.locatefamily.com/D/DOB/DOBRE-1.html
https://www.locatefamily.com/N/NEA/NEAGU-1.html

They have originated from their Slavic counterparts “Dobro” and “Njago”. This is accepted by all the linguists and was known for a long time. See the screenshots below, the first from N.A. Constantinescu’s dictionary, the second from Iorgu Iordan’s dictionary of family names.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lOO2r73C7-xh2zd73PLJESCg4Rm7j1rM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16V5QbgUIzl8NigrwP76la2k1Ek7PwtJj/view?usp=sharing

Now, one may say that the writer from 1285 has modified by mistake the name Drobnjak in Dobrognago. Firstly, this is not very probable, because the name Dobrognago is present in a financial document, and in financial documents the names are always written with the utmost precision, so there is no confusion regarding the persons involved. And secondly, there is indirect evidence that proves this is not the case. Since Bratigna Dobrognago was a Vlach, I transliterated his surname in Rumanian and it is “Dobroneagu”. I searched this name with Google and the only instance of this name on the internet is a river in Rumania named exactly like this, Dobroneagu. This river and the area named after him, are in the Făgărași Mountains. This is exactly the place of origin of the earliest known paternal ancestor of my father.

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A2ul_Dobroneagu

Below is an article in English about a reforestation initiative for the Făgăraș Mountains where the Dobroneagu ecological area is mentioned:

https://www.carpathia.org/100-hectares-of-new-forest-in-the-fagaras-mountains/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nIYGpQDBnnmagFsshHt7o1DYGicMYxrL/view?usp=sharing

In conclusion, my opinion is that the original name of the Drobnjaks was Dobronjago, as it is mentioned in the document from 1285. The name means “good care” in English and this was probably a reference to the trade activity of the Dobronjagos. One of the Vlachs having this name settled in the Făgărași Mountains and a river was named after him. Then in the place of origin the name changed gradually from Dobrognago > Drobognago > Drobgnag > Drobnjak. For the transformation of the final G in K, I don’t know how it’s in Serbo-Croatian, but in Russian the final G is read as K, that is “друг” [drug = friend in English] is read as “друк” [druk].

[abmunteanu]

Aca, you say that the name Drobnjak was altered in writing as to be more easy to pronounce by a Latin speaker. But there were no speakers of Latin in medieval times. In the Middle Ages, Latin was only a literary language, being used for official documents in some countries, or for writing books. Nobody spoke it anymore since Antiquity. And even then, the spoken Latin, today named Vulgar Latin, was different than the written Latin, today named Classical Latin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Latin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Latin

But the problem with your argument is the fact that you imply that Drobnjak was harder to pronounce than Dobronjago for a speaker of a language derived from Latin. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Drobnjak is shorter and easier to pronounce for anybody, and this is why Dobronjago has been transformed in time in Drobnjak. The group “dr” at the beginning of Drobnjak would pose no problem even for a Latin speaker from Antiquity. There were Latin words that had this group (quadrus, cylindrus, etc.), like you can see in the page below:

https://www.ezglot.com/words-containing.php?l=lat&w=dr

There were even names that had the “dr” group, like Hadrianus, or that began with “dr”, like Drusus or Drusilla.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusus_Julius_Caesar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Drusilla

So, there was no need for a writer in Latin to modify the name Drobnjak. He could write it in Latin like Drobniac or Drobniaco and it would pose no problem for someone reading the text. To change it in Dobronjago would make no sense whatsoever, it is longer and harder to pronounce. Not to speak of the fact that the first name Bratigna was not changed, even though it starts with the double consonant “br”. So, if there was no need to add a vowel between B and R in Bratinja, there was no need to add a vowel between D and R in Drobnjak.

The fact that Srbija is written as Serbia in English is due to the fact that between the S and the R from Srbija there is a vowel that doesn’t exist in the majority of languages and in Serbian it is not written, although it is pronounced. This vowel, named “close central unrounded vowel” (written as ɨ in IPA), was replaced in writing with another vowel that exists in the majority of languages, in this case “e”. This is why Srbija (pronounced Sɨrbija) became Serbia. What is hard to understand is why languages that have this vowel have also adopted the form with “e”. For example in Rumanian the close central unrounded vowel is one of the most used vowels, and is written as “î” or “â”. But instead of writing Sîrbia, the name of the neighbouring country is written Serbia. However, the name of the people is written correctly from a phonetic point of view, as Sîrb (sg.) / Sîrbi (pl.). The same thing happens in Russian, where the language has the close central unrounded vowel written as “ы”, but the name of the Balkan country is written as Сербия instead of Сырбия.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel

Belgrade is written like this in most European languages, with an L, because the original name was Beligrad (Белиград), like it is mentioned in the Serbian article from Wikipedia. The name entered like this in the European languages and it was not changed when the Serbs dropped the L from the word.

https://tinyurl.com/belgrade-wikipedia

Now let’s get back to genealogy. We don’t know the ethnicity of the first mentioned Drobnjak in official documents. We only know that he was named Bratigna Dobrognago and was in Dubrovnik in 1285. Both his first name and his surname are Slavic, but he is mentioned as being a Vlach. His genetic ethnicity is unknown. Maybe the autosomal DNA test of Nikola Rašković Drobnjak will offer some clues about the genetic ethnicity of the members of the tribe in the Middle Ages.

And speaking of Dubrovnik, Ancestry and 23andMe have a search function that allows finding which matches have ancestors from a country, a county, a city or a village specified by the user. I wanted to see if my father has matches with ancestors from Dubrovnik and discovered one match on Ancestry and two on 23andMe. There are many other matches with ancestors from Croatia, including from places close to the sea coast.

1) J. Kusianovic (18 cM shared DNA). His paternal grandfather was born in Mokošica, which is a district of Dubrovnik.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEJfOAdRTI7RYIxuWToDuV8MI250yD-r/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_c--Bv92pwTQMMwJo1QxjxOTQe9UFht3/view?usp=sharing

2) F. Radović. (19 cM shared DNA). His paternal grandmother was born in Metković, a town very close to the Adriatic coast, just opposite to the island of Korčula. Ancestor names: Radovic, Albu, Garbini, Patrantasevic, Martinovic, Bibovic, Zaric, Petrovic, Vukman, Dimitrijevic, Vasojevic. His Y haplogroup is R1b.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DlpDFGoCacs-XEqbL68zSPmWKuLbCmdc/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BHinyT776IKCnV1q_jFAZz35h-ACgpws/view?usp=sharing

3) D. Bukvic (12 cM shared DNA). Her maternal grandmother was born in Dubrovnik. I already spoke about her, as she has a grandparent from Gacko, but she has updated the places of origin of her grandparents and added the name Lazovic as an ancestor name.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GVUoXuWhHZ7ZGj27_LQcV-fd-2Sd7Uhl/view?usp=sharing

[НиколаВук]

Заправо, ова Мунтеанова хипотеза око дробњачког племенског назива делује логично. Видим да заиста постоји топоним Dobroneagu са јужне стране Карпата, у округу Арђеш, западно од Кампулунга и северно од Куртее де Арђеш; тај простор је иначе био језгро из ког се развила средњовековна Кнежевина Влашка, близу се налази и прави замак Влада III Цепеша Дракула, Појенари (за разлику од оног туристичког код Брашова, у ком је Дракула ваљда само једном преспавао). Зор је такође спомињао да је Neagu чест источноромански (влашки) антропоним, а средњовековни Власи су били познати по комбинацији два елемента у једно име (као што имамо овде, Dobro и Neagu), често су ти језички елементи били словенског порекла. Код нас би се ово изговарало отприлике као "Доброњаг", заправо је прилично логично да то у каснијем развоју може да доведе до назива "Дробњак".

[abmunteanu]

Two part message again.

In the Wikipedia article in English about the Drobnjaci it is said that in the 14-15 centuries they were called Vlachs and Morlachs. In the Wikipedia article about the Morlachs it is said that this name ”has been an exonym used for a rural Christian community in Herzegovina, Lika and the Dalmatian Hinterland”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drobnjaci
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlachs

As I already said, my father has many autosomal matches with ancestors from Croatia. By looking at their genealogical trees, it appears that the majority of these ancestors are from the contemporary Lika-Senj county, which includes the historical Lika-Krbava region. So, I searched for an article about the Vlachs from Croatia and found it. I post below some fragments from it:

========
The term Vlachs (Croatian: Vlasi) was initially used in medieval Croatian and Venetian history for a Romance-speaking pastoralist community, called "Vlachs" and "Morlachs", inhabiting the mountains and lands of the Croatian Kingdom and the Republic of Venice (Venetian Dalmatia) from the early 14th century. By the end of the 15th century they were highly assimilated with the Slavs and lost their language or were at least bilingual, while some communities managed to preserve and continue to speak their language (Istro-Romanians).
[...]
During the 14th century, Vlach settlements existed throughout much of today's Croatia, but centres of population were focused around the Velebit and Dinara mountains and along the Krka and Cetina rivers. The Vlachs were divided into common Vlachs from Cetina and royal Vlachs from Lika.
[...]
J. W. Valvasor, in his 1689 work which described the Carniolan–Croatian area of the Croatian Military Frontier and the Maritime Frontier, differentiated between Croats and Vlachs (whom he also called Uskoks and Morlachs)[...].
[...]
The majority of nobility in Lika consisted of Catholic Croats, while the vast majority of population were Vlachs (Serbian Orthodox). By confessional affiliation the Serbian Orthodox (Vlachs) numbered 71% of the total population in Lika and Krbava while Catholics overall 29%. According to the dual model of ethnic structure, 87% of the Lika-Krbava population belonged to the Vlachs of social and cultural history. According to the five nations model of ethnic structure, Orthodox Vlachs numbered 71%, Bunjevci (Catholic Vlachs) 16%, Carniolans 6%, Croats 4% and Turks (Muslims converted to Catholicism) 2%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs_in_the_history_of_Croatia
==========

One of the sources quoted in the Wikipedia article is “Pre-modern ethnic groups in Lika and Krbava according to the census from 1712/14”, an article written by Marko Šarić. You can download it as a PDF file from the link below:

Predmoderne etnije u Lici i Krbavi prema popisu iz 1712./14.
https://www.pilar.hr/wp-content/images/stories/dokumenti/lika/lika_1_mail_r_325.pdf

The article has hundreds of surnames that existed in Lika-Krbava region, so it is a treasure trove for genealogical research. For example, on page 373 it has a table with 45 surnames of the most numerous families as recorded by the census from 1712-1714. I searched the names on my father’s lists of autosomal matches from Ancestry and 23andMe. I found 16 surnames that appear as ancestor names of the genetic matches. They are: Rukavina (from Croatia), Ćuk, Kovacević (from Kordun, Croatia), Devčić, Šegan, Knežević, Jarić, Radaković, Dukić, Blažević, Plečaś (from Gospic, Lika-Senj), Basta, Obradović, Tomljenović, Repak, Ognjenović (from Croatia), Brkljacić (from Trnovac, Lika-Senj). In the list appears also the name Krtinić, who is confirmed as having the I-FGC22061 haplogroup. You can see below screenshot with some of these matches.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zvvl1--in-urFCFNAJ7dbQjSAFjpRAUG/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YxmCro6U66qIf5-DHjD7gEim1ak9yt6l/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPGNTFGfLqGJAztNraa-JdKiOytTHF5c/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OQg--dEMTJjROFzCX9ObqWTmrj32-OKW/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14z3khGicTA79fFjXKJTwAmC2X1UG0pTx/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VGPAAptq0V9scawMGuoYVkE7apIvyauQ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FHd2w_6CegpMPSK2x02k1xfhJXILTKHH/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17NA00l2tccyF9Cze-ptUe9VC4m4Uvklg/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Pu3pN4ccSIl1VKneI9GT1QGNBZF3UNw/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12WZbfFxfExlpU8Y15YudsxTM9bXXbqZd/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ODkizQ9mATOpAWCKeKO39Jup-ynKATq/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jv2ABHFNW64IFuWu4iYWVbz5r7KY_28d/view?usp=sharing

There are many more names in the article, and I searched maybe half of them on Ancestry’s list of matches (I did not search them on 23andMe or MyHeritage). The following are other names that appear as ancestral surnames of my father’s autosomal matches: Busija, Pozderac, Skender, Besic, Music, Kulas, Malnar, Cvitkovic, Bosnic, Uzelac, Saric, Starcevic.

[abmunteanu]

In the article written by Marko Šarić there is another interesting information. It says that in Lika-Senj was also settled a population that came from Carniola, a historical region from Slovenia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carniola

This population was already linguistically Slavicized, but was of mixed ethnic origin, including of German origin. The article gives some of the surnames of German origin. I searched them on Ancestry and found matches with the following ancestral surnames: Rožman (from Vinica, Slovenia), Sterk (from Črnomelj, Slovenia). This has solved a genealogical enigma, because until now I had no idea what was the connection with the matches from Slovenia. See the screenshots below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxYdCjyyAkTTB0wNNnsuiRvmQ8qWQ95D/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W5ZEEy-2T5EVMifSMBU5B5nAAmwD8Z0x/view?usp=sharing

Another interesting thing. In the Wikipedia article about the Uskoks, irregular soldiers from Habsurg Croatia, it is said:

===========
The [Uskok] pirates and their families were, accordingly, transported to the interior [in 1618], where they gave their name to the "Uskoken Gebirge", a group of mountains on the borders of Carniola now called Žumberak. They were also settled in the nearby White Carniola and Kostel in what is now Slovenia. Their presence has also been traced near Učka in Istria, where such significant family names as Novlian (from Novi Vinodolski), Ottocian (from Otočac) and Clissan (from Klis, older orthography), were noted by Italian historian Carlo de Franceschi in 1879.

Determining the exact national or ethnic composition of the Uskoks from Senj is extremely difficult since it is rarely recorded nationality of the Uskoks, (most commonly terms for Uskoks are "Croats", "Slavs", "Morlachs") Venetians are described Uskoks as Croats, Habsburg sources also identify Uskoks as Croats. The observers and same Uskoks used terms national and ethnic identity as a way to describe the origin of Uskoks. They use terms Croat, Slav and Morlach to connect the Uskoks with the rest population of the islands, the coast and the hinterland, but also to show difference between those Uskoks which belonged to other nationalities, Vlachs, Italians, Albanians, Germans and others. Venetian Republic at the end of the 16th century are concerned about the excellent relations between the Venetian Dalmatian peoples and Uskoks. According to them such relationships existed because of belonging to the same people. There were many Albanians among Uskoks as well and many islanders from Krk, Pag, Rab and residents of other Dalmatian islands. All Uskoks were Catholics, while newcomers to Senj Orthodox or Muslims immediately became Catholics. Uskoks marrying women from Senj area and much less from area of Venetian and Turkish Dalmatia. The arrival and occurrence of the Uskoks cannot be identified with the migration of the Vlachs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uskoks
==========

So, we have the name Novlian as an Uskok family name, meaning that this family came from Novi Vinodolski, Croatia, a town on the Adriatic sea coast. It is very similar to the Drobnjak family name Novljani. Also it is mentioned that the Uskoks had a mixed ethnic heritage, Balkan, Italian and German. An new hypothesis can be issued: the I-FGC22045 haplogroup could have arrived in the Balkans from an Uskok man of Italian/Sicilian (Norman) or German origin.

[Vidak]

Mr Abmunteanuy, In Durmitor area in Montenegro, that is Homeland of Drobnjak tribe, there is also tribe Uskoci. The migration went from Hercegovina (west Montenegro) towards north Dalmatia(Venetian Republic) not the other way around. Most important do not take literally the Croatians sources about Vlahs-Morlaks (Serbs) of North Dalmatia, Lika etc.  as their intention is deserbistation of this population as side effect of genocide in Croatia of the this population trough killing, expelling, assimilation and deserbistation by calling them Morlacks, Vlahs, Orthodox Croats etc. Uskoci in Krajina Croatia do not have to be all related to those in Montenegro but tendency to show historical facts in manner suiting political agenda is very present in Croatia as the core of their history and nation is based on deflection and manipulation. The vlah pastoral population moved to Venetian and Austro-Hungarian territory spoke Serbian language and we're mostly Orthodox or Catholic from western part of Hercegovina.

[abmunteanu]

Vidak, there is indeed a village name Uskoci in northern Montenegro, near Žablak. The original migration may have been from Herzegovina to Dalmatia, but then there was another migration, after 1618, from Dalmatia (Senj) to the hinterland (inland) of Croatia. The accepted opinion is that the Uskoks were a multi-ethnic group, united by their fought against the Ottomans and Venetians.

My father actually has a match named V. Cirilovic, whose mother’s maiden name was Uskokovic (Serb-Montenegrin from Vraka, Albania). On her strict paternal line she has ancestors from Lika-Senj county (Vrpile and Korenica). The Prica name of her paternal ancestors from Korenica is mentioned in Marko Šarić’s article as being a Vlach name (pages 364, 367, 377, 379). The Varićak name is also mentioned. She also has ancestors from Serbia, near Kruševac. See the screenshot and the tree below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vraka (good article for genealogy puropses, has many surnames at its end)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qf1EpKZu9m6ZPjM9rdVvV9rhCBP1REjj/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sa1JhWNT9PcFFkZneD1hQk3JzmHy0amS/view?usp=sharing

The most important part from the English article about the Uskoks is the mention of the family name Novlian as coming from the Novi Vinodolski town. By looking at the map, I noticed that in the region there is another town with a similar name, Novalja, on the Croatian island of Pag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Vinodolski 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novalja

If it’s true that the I-FGC22061 haplogroup is characteristic for the Novljani family from the Drobnjak tribe, and this family is related to the Novliani Uskok family, we may have found the place of origin of the first man with the I-FGC22061 haplogroup.

On Ancestry and 23andMe, my father doesn’t have matches from Novi Vinodolski or Novalja, but he has matches with ancestors that lived close nearby.

McNair (11 cM): has ancestors named Antonich, Drazic, Spoja, Doric, Mandic from Bribir, a village that is just next to Novi Vinodolski.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rHB25qBAH_FA2-hBDD1U8QDgBowUdnZ-/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rfDhvEvSlF4yloIeBl8QYK1w_eowv0OB/view?usp=sharing

Mataya (9 cM): has ancestors named Mataya from Ledenice, a village that is just next to Novi Vinodolski.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OuFRXmNm02folmLfZBxw15cSdOq42paB/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oBaHkyV22BhBovZCZARj3_vskcQpiPA3/view?usp=sharing

Erlandson (8 cM): has ancestors named Benić from Crikvenica, a village very close to Novi Vinodolski.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Ldxeq2-LEFHfD6sH2piLrWZz3BtTJUA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jbJNoAZJmW3fRTdOhxN6OKsPUBZAFXaG/view?usp=sharing

Holsted: (7 cM) : has ancestors named Jovanović from Donji Zagon, a village very close to Novi Vinodolski. Has many other ancestors from the region, named: Mataja, Skender, Tomic, Budiselic, Radosevic, Brozovic, Tomljanovic, Gasparac, Tomac, Kovacic.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mSxW6eGdunxd4UaqvIMK92ecLPm0lcNz/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GBsiCw3dapSFJ16Oz9fOoE5nC8-LXK-F/view?usp=sharing

Plecas (11 cM): has ancestors named Plecas and Grbic from Gospic, a village on the sea coast next to the Pag island, where Novalja is located.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jv2ABHFNW64IFuWu4iYWVbz5r7KY_28d/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1crQBPxCKM5KMN6KeHfL4bi9VQhUzah1P/view?usp=sharing

Simurina (10 cM): has ancestors named Simurina, Garic, Martinovic, Medanovic from Posedarje, Razanac and Mali Iz, all very close to Novalja.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPGNTFGfLqGJAztNraa-JdKiOytTHF5c/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GtRsXG_TW_i22yg0TbbP_eLwXX3QIvI6/view?usp=sharing

Cacic (8 cM): has ancestors named Tomljenović and Brkljacic from Trnovac, a village on the sea coast next to the Pag island, where Novalja is located.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12WZbfFxfExlpU8Y15YudsxTM9bXXbqZd/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AKYgBnqwz1k_GY8NnVXpoP1n7jGYk8ds/view?usp=sharing

Ugarak (8 cM): has ancestors named Ugarak and Dragosavac from Vrebac, a village on the sea coast next to the Pag island, where Novalja is located.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sf7HUDrqJfD5xu7lt-h9YlRLf3vEgQ1p/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-otdS3HTk4iL5KeBR66vhLdGdwFdF7Vg/view?usp=sharing

These are just a few matches, there are many other matches from the region, and it would take me a lot of time to make screenshots and put links to them.

[barbarylion]

The Uskoks were not a multi-ethnic group, in the era that is being discussed here, they almost all had a Serbian identity.
I don't understand why it's hard to understand.  Those so-called Vlachs are nothing but Serbs

[Vidak]

If you think that Novljani in Montenegro has origin i Novi Vinodolski than I think you are wrong as there was no migration from there to Drobnjak area. Word Novi(New) is very common Herceg Novi, Novo Brdo, Novo selo etc., so can be a coincidence or that his conclusion is wrong and the surname is brought from the place of origin in Montenegro.

[CosicZ]

 An new hypothesis can be issued: the I-FGC22045 haplogroup could have arrived in the Balkans from an Uskok man of Italian/Sicilian (Norman) or German origin.

Зашто не са немачким војницима у Другом Светском Рату? Они су били присутни на свим територијама где се данас јавља I-FGC22045.

[abmunteanu]

Barbarylion, we don’t know how the Uskoks identified themselves hundreds of years ago. National identities are modern constructs and to project them in the past is a mistake. Moreover, it actually doesn’t matter in this case. We are not searching for a national identity, but for a genetic identity, that of the I-FGC22061 haplogroup, which is truly multi-ethnic.

Vidak, we must take into account all the possibilities. At this time, the etymology of the surname Novljani is not clear. It could have been originated from another place than Novi Vinodolski or Novalja. I only presented the opinion from the Wikipedia article in English about Uskoks. That opinion is based on the book “L'Istria: note storiche” [Istria: Historical Notes] written by Carlo de Franceschi, that you can download from the link below:

https://archive.org/details/listrianotestor00frangoog

On the page 330 of the book, de Franceschi speaks about the relocation of the Uskok population after the Uskok War. He mentions the Novlian family (from Novi, internal Croatia, very probably today’s Novi Vinodolski). The relocation had the purpose to make sure that the Uskoks are not close to the sea, so they cannot act as pirates anymore, because they used to pirate the Venetian ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uskok_War

Vidak, if you know an old document or a book written by an historian that mentions the name Novljani, just put a link to it if it’s available on the internet. If not, take a screenshot and post the screenshot here.

I have discovered another Uskokovic, who is an autosomal match (17 cM) with my father, this time on 23andMe. His haplogroup, as reported by 23andMe, is I-CTS5966. Of course, 23andMe doesn’t do a thorough Y-DNA test, so the actual haplogroup is very probably under the reported one in the haplotree, maybe on a new branch. But there is something interesting. YFull has an ancient sample which is positive for the CTS5966 SNP and the sample is from Lika-Senj county, Croatia. It's in the tree just under the I-CTS10228 haplogroup.

https://www.yfull.com/tree/I-CTS10228/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kcV2e6K9gdihdhv81O5bD7mExuSSZf7c/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UeSvWx_NnG3H7NXs5vzmGX_z-omkdfaV/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kjwq1S9GKab7l5N1SXtYa93KFoYvWeWw/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DGAYrepQIChcAoMSo76WZclel8TXuKu3/view?usp=sharing

CosicZ, you are joking, right? Nikola Rašković Drobnjak, confirmed as I-FGC22061, lived well before the 20th century.

[Vidak]

To make it simple Novljani were called the ancestors of Drobnjaci. Drobnjaci were mentioned several centuries before the show up in Dalmatia. By basic logic the first ancestors of Drobnjaci cannot be from Dalmatia as there was no migration from there to Drobnjak area.

[barbarylion]

If you think that they identified themselves as vlach, then something is wrong with your thinking...I see that you insist on some things even when you are pointed out that you are wrong, that's why I would not waste my nerves and time anymore.  Maybe it's best to watch the Croatian series about the Uskoks or Croatian kings and take it as fact.