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

Question

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

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Answer 1

Ancestry DNA

Scotland  47%

England and Northwestern Europe  40%

Ireland  7%

Germanic Europe  6%

My paternal ethnicity shows England and Scotland, which is true. My paternal grandfather has all English ancestors, and my paternal grandmother has all Scottish ancestors.

My maternal side is more mixed.

Answer 2

I have not identified any Irish ancestors going back over 200 years, yet my ethnicity from FTDNA came back a majority Irish. I wonder how that got in there. The rest was English, Scottish and Scandinavian.

Answer 3

From Ancestry.com my estimates are:

  34% Scotland

  24% England & NW Europe

  18% Sweden & Denmark

  11% Germanic Europe

    7% Wales

    6% Norway

From MyHeritage my estimates are:

   53.2% English

   31.0% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh

   11.2% Greek and South Italian

     4.6% Finnish

AND my mtDNA haplogroup is K1a13a

My biggest surprise is that my paternal grandfather's parents are both full German heritage (father Bavarian, mother North Rheinland and possibly distant Czech. I would have expected to be about 25% German from this line, but the results increasingly move away from that. MyHeritage shows no German at all. The discoveries are all fascinating for me.

Answer 4

Not interested in adding my information to social media sites. My computer was hacked multiple times via Ancestry’s messaging app! You should be more careful about encouraging this.

Answer 5

Both of my parents have done DNA tests and so I know my parents are correct, and I have verified my father's parents with DNA, and his grandparents, and even great grandparents (so back to my 2nd great grandparents): DNA Ancestor Confirmation Aid for Kirby (Mullenberg) Drake (wikitree.com)

The weird part?  I grew up believing we were mostly German based on family history.  His Y-line is supposed to be Prussian with French intermarrying (Baden is on the border).  The majority of my ancestors were early American settlers so there's a lot of mixed European heritage, but this was never what I expected to see. 

Ancestry

England & Northwestern Europe 54%

Germanic Europe 12%

Scotland 12%

Indigenous Americas - North 6%

Ireland 6%

Norway 5%

Sweden & Denmark 3%

Wales 2%

23andMe

British & Irish 48.9%

French & German 43.8%

Finnish 0.3%

Broadly NW European 0.9%

Indigenous American 5.5%

Family Tree DNA

Central Europe 66%

Ireland 22%

England, Wales, Scotland 7%

Scandinavia <2%

Finland <1%

Americas 4% (spreads it across various subgroups which are all incorrect)

MtDNA Haplogroup U2e1c1

Note:  My dad is also enrolled in the Crow Tribe, we know our exact tribal affiliation. 

Answer 6

I took the test in 2019.  No big surprises.  Dad's side was English & Scots and this side of the family has been in the U.S. since about the 1720s.  Mother was fresh off the boat from Germany in 1951 so I expected a lot of German and central/eastern European as well.  The 3% Basque was a bit of a surprise.  I understand they update the results periodically so the less than 5% Semitic disappeared.

49%  England, Wales, Scotland

37%  Central Europe

7%    Southern Europe

4%    Eastern Europe

2%    Baltic

Answer 7

My AncestryDNA says:

Germanic Europe         35%

Scotland                         31%

England & Northwestern Europe 11%

Ireland                 10%

Sweden & Denmark           6%

Eastern Europe & Russia   3%

Finland                   2%

Wales                   2%

Answer 8

Mine from ancestry.com is as follows:

Answer 9

Myself and [aternal cousin tested with FTDNA with the following results:

Eng,Wales & Scot           Him 56%      Me 75

Ireland                                      27              11

Scand                                       6                 -

Italy                                           4                2

Baltic                                         2                2

Nth India                                   3                 -

West India                                 3                3

East India                                   -                5

Myannmar                                  <1              -

This was interesting as we thought of our olive skin as  Spanish/Portuguese.

His y dna had mutations so we are none the wiser about our pateral line past our second GG.

Elaine Salvador/Hooper

Answer 10

Thanks, Eowyn.  It's always fun to revisit our ethnicity estimates, seeing as they change regularly.  My current estimates at ancestryDNA, which I consider to have the most accurate ones, are:

• Scotland - 37%
• England & NW Europe - 23%
• Ireland - 23%
• Germanic Europe - 8%
• Wales - 7%
• France - 2%

I have two communities assigned:

• Delaware Valley, Chesapeake & Midwest Settlers
• Early Georgia Coastal Plains & Northern Florida Settlers

Answer 11

         Great Britain    66%

         Ireland/Scotland/Wales   26%   

         France      4%

         Norway    3%

         Native American    1%

         Results from Ancestry.com

Answer 12

         Great Britain    66%

         Ireland/Scotland/Wales   26%   

         France      4%

         Norway    3%

         Native American    1%

         Results from Ancestry.com

Answer 13

I use Family TreeDNA and my results were different from Ancestry and 23 and me. The latter two showed me as 3% Norwegian and Family Tree had me at 29% Norwegian. Family TreeDNA dug deeper than the others. Apparently between 800 and 1100 AD our ancestor came to Southwestern Scotland and established our line there that went to the Ulster Plantation and my line then to the USA through Canada. Our Orr name was probably picked up in Scotland as surnames did not come around until the 1300's and we have a Hugh de Urre(many variations) signed the Ragman Rolls. There is a Lake Urr(Orr) and a River Urr(Orr)  and the name can mean dweller by a riverbank or stream or one of dun complexion. For those who are related there is an Orr Group on FamilyTreeDNA where we delve into all this and more.

Answer 14

I've done various tests including MyHeritage, FamilyFTDNA, Ancestry and 23 & Me. The results are fairly similar.

England and Northwestern Europe - 55%
Scotland - 26%
Ireland - 12%
Norway - 5%
Wales - 2%

MyHeritage included bits of Baltic, Sardinia and West Asia.

Answer 15

I used Living DNA

Result was:100% Great Britain and Ireland, of which Cornwall is 60%

Absolutely no surprises. I know from my genealogy research that all my four pairs of paternal Great-Great-Grandparents came from the West Cornwall Area (Redruth, Hayle, Penzance)

 

Answer 16

About what I expected as far as I can confirm via family tree surnames, but I was surprised by the Scandinavian influence; but given history of the British Isles I shouldn't be too surprised.  Along my yDNA path my paternal origins are southern Ireland (CTS4466/Southern Irish Type II) from long ago.  

Ancestry:

Scotland	33%
England & Northwestern Europe	27%
Ireland	16%
Germanic Europe	14%
Sweden and Denmark	4%
Wales	4%
Norway	2%

23andMe:

British & Irish	81%
French and German	18.6%
Finnish	0.3%
Unassigned	0.1%

FTDNA:

England, Wales & Scotland	73%
Ireland	16%
Central Europe	8%
West Slavic	3%

Answer 17

I knew my genetic origin would be boring, given that all known ancestors for the last ~500 years were farmers or artisans in Northern Germany, but I hadn't expected how boring my FTDNA results turned out to be: 100% Western Europe, split between 78% "Central Europe" (which basically centers on Northern Germany) and 22% "England" (an area which includes the southern North Sea coast, i.e. Dutch, Frisians and, yes, Northern Germans) 

Comments

If I had any interest in DNA mine would probably be similar. All four grandparents' lines came from Germany to Nova Scotia, Canada in the early 1750's.

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Well, I have some German ancestors from Pomerania, so I expected more Eastern European DNA but they obviously kept to themselves and just intermarried with other immigrants from the Northern German plains before migrating back West. Also, once you get south of Frankfurt in Germany, you can expect more genetic variety than what I got. So it really depends on where in Germany your ancestors immigrated from ... 

Answer 18

FTDNA says:

Central Europe

62%

Scandinavia

23%

Ireland

13%

Eastern Europe

Magyar                                                                            <2%

                                                                           
...Which fits my genealogy. Norman and bits of Burgundian and English from my father, Scotch-Irish with some English from my mother.

Answer 19

I tested on Ancestry and their ethnicity estimates correspond well with my research: England 31%, Scotland 24%, Ireland 19%, Norway 18%, Sweden 6% and Wales 2%. Ancestry also accurately identified communities including Scottish Lowlands, Northern England and Northern Ireland, Gaspe Peninsula, New Brunswick, Canadian Maritimes Acadian, Northern New England and 3 in Norway.

Answer 20

23 and Me

49% British & Irish

39.4% Scandinavian

1.7% Sub-Saharan African

.9% Western Asian & North African

The rest is European mutt - a bit of everywhere.

Answer 21

Trying this again ... from FTDNA Family Finder
 

Europe 100%

Western Europe

Central Europe 62%

Scandinavia 23%

Ireland 13%

Eastern Europe

Magyar <2%

Which all fits my genealogy. Norman, Loire Valley Burgundian, Scotch-Irish, bits of English on both sides.