What are non-paternal events?
The term non-paternal event has come to refer to any instance in which a male child ended up with a surname that is different than his biological father’s surname. Another similar term is mis-attributed paternity. Such events most frequently occurred as the result of adoption or instances in which a son took his mother’s surname (typically when the mother was unwed). If a boy’s mother was recently widowed, it could also be that the newborn son might take the surname of his mother’s next husband (i.e., the boy’s step-father). In some cases, grown men have been known to change their surname, for instance as a condition of receiving an inheritance from their wives’ relatives, as is known to have happened with the Pike, Tweed and Crouch families of Meldreth in Cambridgeshire. Finally, infidelity may also be a factor. However a non-paternal might have event occurred, the consequence is that some living members of the Pike family actually carry a Y-chromosome that at some point in the past b
