The Origin of the Ashkenazi Jews

Interesting reading and links from Razib:

"Roughly the Ashkenazi Jews are a half and half mix of a Middle Eastern population and various European groups. The majority of the European ancestry is “Southern European,” probably something like Italian. But, a minority of the European ancestry is like “Eastern European.” Additionally, the former admixture pre-dated the bottleneck, and probably dates to ~1000 A.D., while the latter event post-dates the bottleneck."

*snip*

And from the comment section, Dx states:

"As to the 2nd wave, there is a curious onomastic tidbit. While traditional Ashkenazi male given names are a mix of Hebrew, German, and Romance etymologies, the female given names have an additional, and historically widespread, layer of etymologically Slavic names. The traditional given names are after a deceased ancestor, and thus show remarkable (albeit by no means perfect) persistence over time. The thing about these etymologically Slavic feminine given names is that they come from Old Czech, and are already attested in the old Prague records. It could be interpreted as a hint that Prague, hypothesized to be the earliest post-bottleneck population center, is also where the elements of the sex-biased admixture took place. Alas, no ancient DNA…"