Which DNA testing company might be best for finding ancestors from Thailand?

Question

My son-in-law's mother is from Thailand and has been in the United States since the early 1970's and lost touch with her family during the turbulent times after the Vietnam War. My son-in-law would like to do a DNA test to see if he can find any maternal matches. Does anyone have suggestions as to which company would be best? I have experience with FTDNA and Ancestry but don't have an answer for this issue. Can anyone help?

Comments

Good question. I know I get a lot more German matches at MyHeritage than Ancestry.

Lots of sites let you import DNA results that you took elsewhere so where you take the test is probably not the important.

I hope someone can tell you who all the Thais use. Maybe tag the post with Thailand as well.

Answer 1

Hi Virginia,

If you have the $$$, I would test with both 23andMe and Ancestry. While my family is predominantly Eastern and Western European, I had autosomal DNA testing done for my brother, mother and sister at Ancestry. 23andMe and My Heritage. Later, I paid to have my brother's Y DNA and my mtDNA done at FTDNA (along with transferring our atDNA).

You might want to wait until there are sales for atDNA at Ancestry and 23andMe. Going with both may provide you with more information that can be checked between 23andMe given responders have suggested that this company has gotten more DNA from Asian populations, and Ancestry, whose data base is quite large and growing (hopefully with more diversity).

There are also user pros and cons with each of these companies as to what is available. For example, one company may not display chromosome matches, while another company does. This would be another value to having DNA done at both Ancestry and 23andMe. Hope this helps in the decision making process.

Comments

Thank you Carol! I tested and had some family members tested at FTDNA because of the chromosome browser - a number of years ago. Then I tested at Ancestry - just to see what results it would bring. I think we will have to try 23&me in this case but I will treat on the Ancestry test as I have worked on his paternal line and could use some matches. I appreciate your input.

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You are very welcome, Virginia!

Answer 2

I would say probably Ancestry.com since they have the largest database of DNA testers.

However, if you can, test with all of them.

Comments

Thanks Tommy. I was leaning toward Ancestry because of their test numbers so now will probably have him do multiple tests.

Answer 3

As Mark stated, start with Ancestry due to the large user database.  Once complete, this can then be transferred to both FTDNA and MyHeritage. You might also consider taking the autosomal test at 23&Me, and transferring to MyHeritage (you can only have one active AuDNA test active at FTDNA per account). Since each company "reads" the DNA in a slightly different way and has different reference populations, I would then upload each of these to GEDMatch (even the transfers) where you can compare with others from across all vendors.

One other option would be to take the Full Spectrum MtDNA test with FTDNA. This would identify anyone who has tested with the same mitochondrial haplotype, but this would be very narrowly focused strictly on the Mother's direct line (mother's mother, etc.) and may not pick up cousins, uncles or aunts.  Hope this helps.

Comments

Thank you Ken, this is all helpful and we will probably test him with at least a couple of sites and then transfer. Seems to be the best option.

Answer 4

My wife has ancestors from Thailand as well as the surrounding countries (China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia) and she tested at 23andMe.

While I wouldn't have high hopes for genealogical documents from Thailand you can find a reasonable (for a South-East Asian) amount of DNA matches via 23andMe.

She has now 897 matches, when she started 7 years ago it was around 20.

Ancestry is very much focused on the US alone, MyHeritage seems to have a much stronger footprint in Europe.

So I'd say go with 23andMe first and if that's not sufficient you can still choose if you want to Ancestry/MH next.

Keep in mind that 23andMe has a large number of people that bought the test for health reasons. You won't find them in any of the other DNA testing companies!

Comments

Thank you Andreas  for your 23&me experience - that helps.

Answer 5

Test at AncestryDNA, then upload the results to MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA, GEDmatch, and LivingDNA.  (Note: 23andMe has little to no genealogy support tools and will not accept your AncestryDNA upload).