Question of the Week: What are your DNA ethnicity estimates? [closed]

Question

If you have taken a DNA test, what does the testing company report for your ethnicity? Is it what you expected?

Please tell us about it with an answer below, or on Facebook or use the question image to share your answer with friends and family on any social media.

Comments

My heritage  DNA TEST

Scottish,irish,welsh.        52.3%

Scandinavian.                    35.2%

Italian.                                11.1%

English.                                  1.4%

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Mine was exactly as I expected from 35 yrs of genealogy

Scottish 64%

Welsh 4%

Cornwall, Devon & England 29%

Irish 3%

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OXFORD UNI ENGLAND SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS are the most interesting and accurate if you have British ancestry.  They studied people of white European background whose grandparents had been born near each other.  Caucasian Britons can be separated into 17 distinct genetic groups. AND there was no distinct Celtic group but some similarities with Basques - which sometimes gives people Iberian DNA.

The Welsh are the true Britons; Scientists were able to trace their DNA back to the first tribes that settled in Britain following the last Ice Age around 10,000 yrs ago

The Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish & Cornish were found to be the most different from the rest of England. People from Cornwall & Devon are markedly different (I have both) & the Cornish have fewer genes in common with the rest of the UK!

West Yorkshire people have their own genetic heritage

There is little genetic trace from the ancient Romans - because few were actually Italian.

The Vikings left little trace, simply because they did not stay in Britain in large numbers and also because they often brought their own women.  People in the Orkneys have 25% Norwegian DNA from 600 yrs of Norwegian rule.

Many people of English background (Anglo-Saxon) have 25% German DNA & 45% French /Belgium etc

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This is great! Do they have a website?

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Ancestry results

25% Ireland

20% Germanic Europe

19% Scotland

15% England and Northwestern Europe

11% Norway

4% France

3% Eastern Europe and Russia (Poland)

3% Wales

My results were more or less what I expected. With a few exceptions, my father always told me we were native American and exposed me to native culture, turns out not so much. I assumed the "Germanic" was my mother's side, but her test told me different, turns out its likely the Austrian on my father's side. I was always told we were Polish but after doing a little digging I found that I saw a lot more Austrian coming up in documents.

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Simply google it, that is how I found reports from Oxford & other unis

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I took an Ancestry.com DNA test and one for 23 and me about 7-8 years ago. I knew a lot about my ethnic background at the time. Neither results were very specific (no mention of my Scottish ancestry) but they were both technically accurate (mostly British isles) with a few random weird things at a small % thrown in.

The 23 and me results haven’t changed much over the last 7 years.I’ve given up on that site, it was way more expensive but very few DNA relatives have connecting family trees so it’s really hard to work out how you’re related. I think it’s more for people wanting a genetic health profile.

However the Ancestry dna results are updated regularly. In the past 2-3 years the results have changed to closely reflect my understanding of my family tree (I now have the missing Scottish genes) and it was getting more specific with Lancashire correctly named as a likely area of ancestral origin, and my mother was correctly identified as Manx.

But the last update appears to have taken the results backwards. For example my husbands paternal family is from Cornwall and they correctly pinpointed that about 2 years ago - now that’s gone and has been replaced with generic British. My mothers Irish county was correctly identified but has now disappeared.

so I’m hoping the next update gets us back to where we were last year, which was pretty close to the family tree data.

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Your comment made me check if my Ancestry DNA had altered, thankfully it hasn't.  Each update for me has made it clearer each time, same for my 3 kids.

Interestingly each of them has slightly different DNA which shows how DNA fragments with each person.  With Scottish DNA my children in order had reduced amounts; 85%, 80% then 76%.

 My daughter is the only one with Scandinavian DNA, 3%, the younger son has no Welsh at all.

However the reason I had them do DNA tests was to see if I was correct in thinking that one of their paternal ancestors was Jewish & yes, each of them have 1% Jewish.

My half-sister & I share the same maternal grandfather and whereas I have 4% Welsh she has 13% but there's none on her paternal side.  

I find it all very fascinating

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I had the Ancestry DNA test and was unimpressed with their interpretations, though it is w rock in progress. Ancestries groupings often don't show genetic markers from France. I have Huguenot ancestors documented from the West coast of France. Somehow they homogenize that into northeast France/Germany.

Who do you think you really are? A genetic map of the British Isles

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-19-who-do-you-think-you-really-are-genetic-map-british-isles

Also categorize your Western and Eastern heritage with this video that shows border changes over 1000 years.  Watch how 1000 years of European borders change. Time Lapse Map

https://youtu.be/gzXoc8y2G0k

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This reply got cut off midway. Here's the rest of the table:

Irish, Scottish, and Welsh   32.4%

English   25.0%

Balkan   15.0%

Iberian   15.0%

East European   7.6%

Italian   2.5%

North and West European   2.5%

The surprise was no mention of France even though I have three grandparents who hailed from Quebec. The fourth's parents were born in Lancashire, England.

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That was my finding as well. My mother was born in France and immigrated here to the US. My dad’s family is all from Canada. Yet, I am not French, but English/Welsh/Scottish, Iberian, Balkan, Italian and nearly every other nationality but France. I am tempted to try another DNA test forum.

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My DNA test results.
England & NW Europe 57%
Scotland 22%
Ireland 21%
Sweden & Denmark 2%
Wales 1%
I check it every few months because the results vary as they update their testing.

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23 and Me

DNA results is what I expected from what my family passed down.  The only surprise is that I have 284 variaents segments with Neanderthals.

British and Irish 36.6%

French and German 7.1%

Denmark 6.3%

Poland 38%

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Thanks for giving that website, that info is taken from the Oxford Uni study that I'd read

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Thanks for the 'genetic map of the British Isles' and time lapse links, Lewis!

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I heard sometime ago that the government of France was not allowing genetic testing, (but that may have changed) therefore I would think that none of the testing companies have a genetic pool to be able to accurately determine French Ancestry.

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WOWO... this is fabulous

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Just to add a bit to the discussion about the genetic history of the British Isles, the link referencing the Oxford University news article was about a research paper supervised by two researchers at the university and published in Nature 18 March 2015. The paper is paywalled, but the methodology used genotyped microarrays, like our common direct-to-consumer tests, that looked at approximately 500K SNPs, so about 100K fewer than your recent autosomal test. The UK data used included 2,039 samples from rural areas who had all four grandparents born within 80 kilometers of each, so the researchers felt this gave a good picture of geographic localization; the average birth year of the grandparents was 1885. The Oxford University news article does a good job of summarizing the findings.

The fly in the Celtic ointment is that while the study included some samples from Northern Ireland, it didn't include the whole of Ireland. I wrote about a subsequent study published in January 2018 that focused primarily on Ireland, but also included samples from England, Wales, and Scotland. The 2015 study found only modest genetic trails as a result of Norwegian Viking influences--those primarily in Orkney, northwestern Scotland, and only a fringe of the western coast of Ireland--and "no clear genetic evidence of the Danish Viking occupation and control of a large part of England." The 2018 study found "a much greater Viking influence than previously estimated..."

More recent research papers like "The Genetic Landscape of Scotland and the Isles" (Gilbert, et al., 2019; open access) and "Large-scale Migration into Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age" (Patterson, et al., 2022; temporary free access provided by Springer Nature) continue to expand and refine our understanding of how the British Isles were peopled.

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Thanks for all that, but of course every year DNA is being defined more & more & including more areas which is why it has to be updated as the info increases..

PS I have some ancient Viking-Irish ancestry but it is so far back the DNA has diluted to nil.

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My Heritage seems to see my French (and Acadian) as Iberian as well. All the other testing companies got it right.

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And the Charest has been in Québec since the sixteenth century.

And the french here had no one coming in for almost two hundred years. We started to  have new people coming  by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

So we have been sitting in the same french bath so the say with the same  families for hundred of years.

Is is impossible that nothing come out of it

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From FTDNA:

West Slavic - 24%

Magyar - 17%

Ireland - 25%

England, Wales, & Scotland - 15%

Italian Peninsula - 15%

Greece & Balkans - 4%

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unfortunately he doesn't regard some questions as worthy to respond to....  good luck

Answer 1

My Heritage DNA : 55.7 % North and West European,  44.3 % English. No surprises there!

Answer 2

Basque	1.4 Pct
Central_Euro	5.42 Pct
East_Balkan	1.9 Pct
East_Central_Euro	4.85 Pct
Eastern_Euro	2.71 Pct
Fennoscandian	8.96 Pct
French	8.23 Pct
Iberian	18.08 Pct
Italian	5.12 Pct
North_Atlantic	18.41 Pct
North_Sea	19.64 Pct
West_Caucasian	3.27 Pct
West_Med	2.01 Pc

GEDmatch Eurogenes K36 using superkit consisting of Family Finder, Living DNA, and AncestryDNA results.

Comments

To any who might be confused, the Eurogenes K36 admixture calculator model--as well as the several other Eurogenes calculator options--don't work the same way that the "ethnicity" results from the major testing companies do. And you can't really apply same-to-same comparisons between them.

For some background, should you choose to explore the Eurogenes utilities at GEDmatch, here is the blog post introducing the K36 calculator back nine years ago when it was introduced, written by the author and admin of the Eurogenes Genetic Ancestry Project. Also an interesting analysis at Eupedia of the K36 when applied to 20 different ancient genomes, which makes it clear that the inferred reach is far more distant than we'd ever consider relevant to genealogy, back to Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer components.

As the author of the calculator writes:

"An important point to keep in mind is not to take the ancestry proportions too literally. If you're, say, English, and you get an Iberian score of 12% this doesn't actually mean you have recent ancestry from Spain or Portugal. What it means is that 12% of your alleles look typical of the reference samples classified as Iberian, and this figure might only indicate recent Iberian admixture if it's clearly higher than those of other English users."

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Some more information about GEDmatch’s admixture (heritage) tools at https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/482481/have-you-seen-this-guide-about-ethnic-admixture-at-gedmatch

Answer 3

I originally took the Ancestry DNA test, results are 42% Scotland, England & Northwestern Europe 32%, Germanic 9%, Norway 8%, Ireland 7%, Sweden & Denmark 2%

uploaded it to My Heritage on there it says English 73.1%, Greek & Italian 15.2%, Irish, Scottish, Welsh 6.7%, Balkan 3.6%, Scandinavian 1.4%

My oldest daughter took the 23n & me test it shows a bit of the mtDNA which is K1a1b1a which says on Wikipedia that Ashkenazi Jews & other peoples are in this haplogroup

Comments

Sounds unhelpful. 

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MazelTov !!  Your daughter may be one of the Tribe :-)

Answer 4

*  Scotland 38% 

*  England & Northwestern Europe 22%

*  Sweden & Denmark 12%

*  Wales 8%

*  Ireland 8%

*  Norway 6%

*  Germanic Europe 5%

*  Baltic 1%

Answer 5

I tested with Ancestry and my ethnicity estimate there is:

Scotland 61%

England & Northwestern Europe 23%

Ireland 7%

Sweden & Denmark 7%

Norway 2%

I uploaded to MyHeritage and my ethnicity estimate there is:

English 89.7%

Scandinavian 6.4%

Irish, Scottish and Welsh 3.9%

Answer 6

Ancestry

England and Northwestern Europe: 52%

Scotland: 38%

Ireland: 6%

Other: 4%

Answer 7

AncestryDNA:

77% England and Northwestern Europe

11% Wales

9% Scotland

3% Norway

I uploaded my raw DNA to MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA

MyHeritage

52.8% English

46.4% North and West European

0.8% Middle Eastern

FamilyTreeDNA

96% England, Wales and Scotland

4% Italian Peninsula

<1% Amerindian-North Mexico

Answer 8

23 & Me Results

Finnish 29.7%

England & Irish 24.1%

French & German 14.7%

Indigenous American 12.1%

Broadly Northwestern Europe 13.7%

Southern European 2.9%

and how I wish I knew how all that Indigenous American came to me!

Answer 9

50.4 percent Southern European (Greek and Balkan)

49.0 percent Northwestern European (39.7 Scandinavian, 4.8 percent French and German, 4.5 percent broadly European.)

.6 percent Eastern European

That's from 23 and me, this is about the closest any of them have gotten to the right make up.I think their feedback system is helpful. I have one set of grandparents who never left their ancestral village so I was able to report that. Ancestry.com has no idea what to do with the Balkans, it's a shame.

Answer 10

Mine are all over the map depending on where the tests were done. Here's what I have:

Region	Ancestry	23 and Me
Ivory Coast and Ghana	1%
Ireland	4%
France	10%
Wales	14%
England and Northwestern Europe	30%
Scotland	41%
Broadly Northwestern Europe		7.2%
Spanish and Portuguese		7.6%
French and German		22.4%
British and Irish		61.9%

Comments

Region	FamilyTree DNA
Malta	3%
Iberian Peninsula	11%
Central Europe	19%
Ireland	20%
England, Wales and Scotland	41%

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Region	Living DNA
Ireland	22.1%
East Anglia	15.1%
Yorkshire	12%
East Iberia	11.9%
South Central England	10%
Cornwall	9.3%
Northwest England	6%
South Yorkshire	5.6%
Aberdeenshire	4%
Northumbria	2.2%
Central England	1.6%

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Gets weird in some of the others (e.g. GEDMatch and CRIGenetics):

Region	GEDMatch Eurogenes
North Atlantic	52.25%
Baltic	17.5%
West Mediteranean	15.57%
East Mediterranean	3.99%
West Asian	3.67%
South Asian	2.77%
Red Sea	2.27%
France	1.18%
Native American	0.64%
Siberian	0.17%

Answer 11

Ancestry DNA

• Scotland 39%
• Sweden & Denmark 23%
• Germanic Europe 16%
• Wales 12%
• England & Northwestern Europe 8%
• Finland 2%

Answer 12

My current results on Ancestry are:

33% French

28% Southern Italy

17% Northern Italy

8% Germanic Europe

6% England

5 % Scotland

3% Greece/Albania

I've been told to combine north and south Italy together and it comes out as 45%. It  still gels with my tree. I suspect I will always be hovering around 50% Italian because of the tree. Everything else meshes with it fine. =D

Answer 13

Ancestry DNA

1. Northern Italy - 20%
2. Southern Italy - 19%
3. Germanic Europe - 18%
4. France - 12%
5. Ireland - 11%
6. Wales - 9%
7. Aegean Islands - 5% (new)
8. Sweden & Denmark - 4% (new)
9. England & Northwestern Europe - 2%

My Heritage (w/Ancestry raw data)

1. Greek & South Italian - 51.4%
2. Irish, Scottish, & Welsh - 26.7%
3. Italian - 6.2%
4. Scandinavian - 5.8%
5. Ashkenazi Jewish - 2.2%
6. North African - 6.9%
7. Nigerian - 0.8%

23 and Me:

1. Italian (Sicily) - 52.0%
2. Spanish & Portuguese - 2.2%
3. Broadly Southern European - 0.3%
4. French & German (Germany) - 25.4%
5. British & Irish - 17.7%
6. Broadly Northwestern Europe - 2.4%

Comments

I REALLY wish they'd just mash North and South Italy together. =)

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My ancestors are from a small region in Treviso in northern Italy. I much prefer to have north and south separated, as it gives a better indication of where families are from.

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I find it interesting that my paper trail has my Italian ancestors back to the early 1700s in Palermo only. So what is with the Northern Italian? Also, if you add up North Italian, South Italian and Aegean Islands, you get more than 50%. That would mean that I got some of that from my mother's family. They were all English, Welsh, Irish, and German. That does not seem correct. I am guessing that perhaps some of the German family lines were originally Northern Italian people. Maybe that infamous Ferdinand Thoeny!

Answer 14

Well I am pretty much European, the testing companies don't agree on the percentages and locations. I look at these for fun, knowing people and their genes moved around a lot. 

FTDNA MyOrigins v.3

Europe  100%

Western Europe

Scandinavia 33%

England, Wales, and Scotland 24%

Ireland  14%

Central Europe  3%

Southern Europe  Iberian Peninsula  22%

Baltic  3%

My Heritage

English 77.0%

Italian 13.5%

Finnish 7.2%

Irish, Scottish, and Welsh 2.3%

Ancestry

Scotland 27%

Ireland 25%

England & Northwestern Europe 22%

Wales 12%

Germanic Europe 11%

Sweden & Denmark 3%

Comments

I had some changes over on Ancestry.com 2022 update:

Scotland 45%

England & NW Europe 16%

Germanic Europe 11%

Sweden & Denmark 10%

Wales 10%

Ireland          7%

Norway 1%

Answer 15

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Ancestry Autosomal DNA Ethnicity Estimate

September 2021 Revised Estimate

• 45% - Scotland
• 43% - England & Northwestern Europe
• 09% - Ireland
• 03% - Norway

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MyHeritage Autosomal DNA Ethnicity Estimate

December 2021 Estimate

• Europe
  • 42.5% - English
  • 41.5% - North and West European
  • 14.8% - East European
• America
  • 1.2% - Mesoamerican and Andean

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Comments

I have to say that I LOVE the formatting of your answer! 

Answer 16

England and Northwestern Europe  -  44%

As latest reconfiguring of data established-- though a great many of my ancestors have been on American continent since 1600s and 1700s including Mayflower and Jamestown.

Scotland  - 33%

Sweden and Denmark - 11%

Ireland - 7%

Germanic Europe - 3%

Wales - 2%

Answer 17

I have 2 estimates. I have discounted the one from Family Tree and I now only use the Estimate from My Heritage. Both are on my profile. My DNA test was done in 2018.

75% Scottish, Irish, Welsh, 22% Scandinavian, 2% Baltic, 1% Middle Eastern

Answer 18

Ancestry DNA test:

• 74% German speaking regions of Europe
• 22% Sweden and Denmark
• 2% Eastern Europe and Russia
• 1% Baltic States
• 1% Other Regions

No surprises. My mothers father is unknown, but with DNA we could locate a family in Berlin, who had ancestors in Silesia. That must be the connection to East Europe. And one of my mothers ancestors in Schmalkalden had the profession "Nallenmacher (sic!)" Nalle is swedish for teddy bear. It was right after the Thirty Years War.

Answer 19

23andMe gives me this report:

• Northwestern European

  95.5%

• • British & Irish

    91.1%

  • Scandinavian

    3.5%

  • Broadly Northwestern European

    0.9%

• Southern European

  4.5%

• • Italian

    2.4%

  • Spanish & Portuguese

    1.9%

  • Broadly Southern European

    0.2%

However, I disagree with its analysis. I have a pretty decent paper trail, and to my knowledge I have no Italian / Spanish / Portuguese ancestry, and certainly none at that level of percentages. Also, I have decent sized amount that, on paper, can be traced to Germany, yet it doesn't include that. It gives me much more percentage to British & Irish than I think is warranted. And I have no idea why it thinks I have Scandinavian, as my paper trail has nothing on it at all. So in my opinion, the whole thing is dubious at best.

Answer 20

I have done MyHeritage and 23andMe, and they gave pretty similar results.

MH:

* Iberian 45.4%

* Western and Northern European 37.1%

* Greek and southern Italian 13.2%

* Balkans peoples 4.3%

23andMe:

* Northwestern European 70.5% (51.9% French-German, 11.5% British & Irish, 7.1% Broadly Northwestern European)

* Southern European 29.5% (19.2 Spanish and Portuguese, 4.2% Sardinian, 3.6% Italian, 2.5% Broadly Southern European)

By paper trail, I'm only French on at least 2 or 3 centuries. I was pretty surprised at that high Iberian at first, but I guess France is at the center of all of these regions and maybe it's hard to tell them apart. + My paternal grandma was from Southwest France so that's not too far from Iberia.

One thing seems sure: I'm very white hahaha

Comments

• England & Northwestern Europe37%

• Wales17%

• Scotland14%

• Northern Italy12%

• Norway5%

• Cyprus3%

• France3%

• Senegal3%

• Southern Italy2%

• Cameroon, Congo & Western Bantu Peoples2%

• Indigenous Americas—Chile1%

• Northern India1%