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Haplogroup O-M175

O-M175 is East Asia's dominant paternal haplogroup, carried by the majority of men in China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, and by the Austronesian expansion across the Pacific. Explore the branch in the full Y-DNA haplotree: sub-branches, defining variants and where its testers live. Free, no account needed.

Paternal branch

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Paternal line

O-M175

Testers: 8,806; 719 on this exact branch
Strongest today: Korea, Republic of, Indonesia, Philippines
Formed
Oldest man on this line

See it on the map Explore it in the full tree

Origin and distribution of O-M175

What is O-M175? It is East Asia's dominant paternal haplogroup, carried by most men in China, Korea, Vietnam and the Malay world. Its Neolithic expansions gave a handful of founders an enormous share of living men, and one of its wings sailed with the Austronesian expansion.

Its Neolithic expansions: Sequencing 78 East Asian Y chromosomes found three star-like expansions around 6,000 years ago, implying that about 40% of modern Chinese men are patrilineal descendants of only three ancestors of that period.Source: Y Chromosomes of 40% Chinese Descend from Three Neolithic Super-Grandfathers (2014)
Its island wing: Among 1,658 individuals from Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia, O1a-M119, O1a1-P203, O1a2-M50 and O3a2-P201 decline from Taiwan toward western Indonesia, while other O branches decline in the opposite direction.Source: Taiwan Y-chromosomal DNA variation and its relationship with Island Southeast Asia (2014)
The voyage it joined: Early Austronesians reached Taiwan around 6,000 years ago, spread rapidly south, and left around 4,000 years ago to spread through Island Southeast Asia, Madagascar and Oceania.Source: Early Austronesians: Into and Out Of Taiwan (2014)
Where it is common: Most men in China, Vietnam, Korea and the Malay world, and a large share in Japan, with O2 densest in the Han heartland and O1a strongest in Taiwan and among Austronesian speakers.
What Ancestrify reports: The free Y-DNA Clade Finder places your paternal line on this branch from a raw DNA export, at the resolution your file supports. Ancestry proportions come from the Ancient Ancestry (qpAdm) and Ancestry Map (Global25) reports, never from a haplogroup.

O-M175 is, by carrier count, among the most common paternal haplogroups on Earth: the dominant lineage of East and Southeast Asia, carried by most men in China, Vietnam, Korea and the Malay world and a large share in Japan. It divided early into wings whose geographies still structure the region: O2 (M122) expanding with the Neolithic millet and rice worlds that became the Han heartland, O1b tracking the rice-farming and Austroasiatic-speaking south, and O1a strongest in Taiwan and among Austronesian-speaking peoples.

That last wing sailed: O1a and O1b lineages travelled with the Austronesian expansion from Taiwan through the Philippines and Indonesia into the remote Pacific, and westward to Madagascar, one haplogroup's children scattered from Easter Island to East Africa. In Europe and the Americas, an O result almost always marks East or Southeast Asian paternal ancestry within recent generations.

One line among many: your Y haplogroup traces a single paternal line, one ancestor per generation out of thousands, so it is a thread of deep ancestry, not an ethnicity and not a percentage of who you are. Two men in the same branch share a forefather, but the rest of their genomes can differ as much as any two strangers'.

The line through time

Each branch on this line from the root of the tree, oldest first.

Where testers are found

Counts of people who took a Y-DNA test and shared an origin. They describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.

China

753 · 32%

Indonesia

438 · 19%

Philippines

291 · 12%

Japan

283 · 12%

Korea, Republic of

176 · 7.5%

Vietnam

109 · 4.7%

Mongolia

84 · 3.6%

Taiwan, Province of China

83 · 3.5%

Plus 6,071 testers who gave no country. Shares are of testers with a known country.

Where this branch runs strongest

The share of each country's testers who sit on this branch.

Korea, Republic of

75%

Indonesia

71%

Philippines

70%

What defines it

The changes on the Y chromosome that every man on this branch carries. Positions are on the GRCh38 reference.

Is this your line?

If you have tested with a consumer DNA company, your own branch is already in your raw data file. The free Clade Finder reads it and shows you where you sit on this tree.

Find my branch, free

Prefer it read for you? The Ancient Ancestry report can carry your paternal haplogroup as an add-on, placed on this same tree beside your ancestry model.

Frequently asked questions

What is haplogroup O-M175?

O-M175 is East Asia's dominant paternal haplogroup, carried by the majority of men in China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, and by the Austronesian expansion across the Pacific. It is a branch of the Y-DNA tree: everyone in it inherits the same set of defining mutations from one shared forefather.

How do I find out if I belong to O-M175?

If you have already tested with a consumer DNA company, the free Y-DNA Clade Finder reads a raw DNA export (23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage or a VCF) and places you on the tree at the resolution your file supports. It is free, and the file is discarded after analysis. A dedicated Y-DNA sequencing test resolves deeper branches than a genotyping chip can.

Does belonging to O-M175 make me descend from one people?

No. A haplogroup follows a single paternal line, one ancestor per generation, while the rest of your ancestry doubles every generation back. It is a deep-time thread, not an ethnicity, and two members of the same branch can otherwise be as genetically different as any two strangers.

What does this page's tree data show?

The branch view on this page shows the branch inside the full Y-DNA haplotree of tested lineages: the line it descends from, the branches below it, the variants that define it, and the countries its testers report. Counts reflect people who have taken a Y-DNA test and shared an origin, so they describe the tested world, not ancient frequencies.

Keep exploring

Don't know your haplogroup yet? The free Y-DNA Clade Finder reads it from a raw DNA export. Or browse the whole tree in the Y-DNA Haplotree. Other major branches: