DNA ancestry research is still in comparatively early stages with low numbers participating compared with the total world population, but every day a clearer understanding of human relationships is being discovered.
My own Ancestry DNA results show a 9% Norwegian component, which is interesting considering the prevalence of the name Illman in Scandinavia. However, in common with most other English people with a south-eastern English county origin, this is the average for most people there. The map of Scandinavian DNA components indicates a concentration at around 13% in the east of England, the centre of the Danelaw governance of the period 800-1,000 AD when Vikings ruled the area (https://blogs.ancestry.co.uk/cm/are-you-part-viking/). Clearly they left genetic material behind that many of us have inherited today, the Hillmans being no exception. The question is, did they also leave the Illman-Hillman family name? It is not so far separated in time from the period when surnames began to be commonplace some 200-300 years later in southern England.
The FamilyTreeDNA projects (https://www.familytreedna.com/groups) list produces a number of projects that include the name Hillman. These all include the name amongst a wide variety of other likely variants, indicating the potentially infinite nature of the origins of such a name – these projects are the Devon project (all surnames from the English county), the Halpern Jewish Project (evolution of associated Jewish surnames), the Holman Project (Holman and associated family names), the Hileman Group Project (Hileman and associated names), and the Black Belt of Alabama Project (including the family name Hillman amongst Afro-American families).
At a more detailed level – two West Grinstead-descended Hillmans (Sussex, England), fifth cousins once removed to each other, have traced their Y-DNA to I-M223 a.k.a. I2a2a with a probable subclade of I2a2a1c1b aka 12-CTS6433 (Mori Hillman, pers. comm. 2019).
Clear relationships such as this need to be tested using DNA research in order to better establish the origins – plural almost certainly – of the people today who bear the surname.
Are you a Hillman (or Hillman-related) who has taken a DNA test? If it was a Y-DNA test please get in touch and we shall determine whether these offer further knowledge of relationships between Hillmans and their related variant surnames.
But if it was one of the more popular autosomal tests, and you are a male or you manage the DNA results of a male member of your Hillman family, you may still learn the haplogroup for free by following the instructions at https://antoniosdnaproject.de/y-haplogroup-from-atdna-raw-data/?fbclid=IwAR26xAgkX5O0jVb1-0g8Opha6tEDCX0wiB0vP3W2OEOfKXnk31ySz9EALgQ . Once you complete this process, you will have within your spreadsheet a green square with two pieces of information. Again, please get in touch and we can then sort the results of men carrying the Hillman surname to see if we can learn any patterns from this information.