Ancestry DNA test

[littlebillie]

Has anyone tried this, I hear it's quite interesting

@Nanamilly - here are some of the reasons to take ethnicity results with a pinch of salt

My.... 2nd cousin 1x removed has a tiny percentage of Cameroonian heritage in her. Since we are both nominally 'white' and only known to be white, THAT's quite interesting as ethnic results go. Something she can hunt for in her tree.

Few months ago, via Ancestry.com test, I found a long-lost (unknown) half uncle. Seems my gran gave up a baby for adoption betw. her 2 marriages . She kept older & younger children. I made a load of overtures but uncle did not reply, seems doesn't want to know his birth family (fair enough). I told one reliable Cousin1 all about all this. DIFFICULTY: Cousin2 mentioned getting ancestry.com membership & I think soon will discover our shared uncle. Eek. Cousin2 is impulsive. I am trying to discreetly ask if he plans to get tested. As much as I am to meet lost uncle, I don't want Cousin2 to do something reckless.

You guys talk about uploading ancestry.com dna test results to other places & getting other types of info out of it about your health & so on.

Is there a Dummies version how to do that, what did you do, which other websites are most interesting to put one's DNA results onto?

ps: Looks like Cousin2 is getting the DNA test. Eek Eek. I really cannot describe enough what a bombshell it will be in our extended family to find out about long-lost uncle.

@yeoldetrout if you're after dna relative matches upload to gedmatch and my heritage. Not sure if you can upload onto 23&me from other sites. If health info is what you're after, use 23&me or upload to prometease. My heritage matches dna and tells you if there is a match between your tree and the one your match has uploaded (If they have). Both 23&me and my heritage will give you an estimate of where in your tree you need to look for common ancestors but it is sometimes way off.

I received my 23&me results yesterday.

65.7% British/Irish
12.7% French
4% Scandinavian

The closest relative on there is a third cousin but there’s loads of fourth cousins all over the world.

What I don’t get is that the breakdown of areas in England that match my dna do not include my actual ancestral areas.

The largest percentage was in Greater London when my grandparents are from areas in all four corners of England. I would have thought my maternal areas would have showed but there was only mention of my paternal grandfathers area, which was 10th on the list!

I can only assume that more people from the London area have taken the test?

BoundByBriars see link posted earlier re taking ethnicity results with a pinch of salt. As you say, they are comparing your DNA not with ancestral DNA (because they don’t have any) but with the modern DNA of their particular customer base, which I agree is likely to be skewed towards London.

YeOldTrout says a cousin has a small percentage of “Cameroonian heritage” which is unaccounted for by known family history. All that means is there is a tiny bit of DNA in common with the (probably small) Cameroonian customer base of that particular provider. Perhaps there is only one person in Cameroon who has submitted their DNA, and they or their recent ancestors were originally from England? Who knows?

I am supposedly a bit Argentinian according to one of these tests. That would have been very intriguing had I not already had a detailed knowledge of my family history. What in fact happened is that some of my Anglo-Scottish extended family moved to Argentina in the 1890s so I share some DNA with their moden descendants there. That does not mean I have Argentinian ancestry!

*modern descendants

Anyway, these databases are improving and will continue to improve as more and more people hand over their DNA, but it is important to be aware of their limitations when results are so dependent on the testing companies’ separate customer databases that we know so little about.

small percentage of “Cameroonian heritage” which is unaccounted for by known family history*

My husband has it also. As does his neice. But we know it came from the days of slavery when Arabs were involved in the slave trade and children were most certainly born.

Someone mentioned that ancestry results would be updated in May? Does that mean a better version of the test? I hope not because I just sent mine off yesterday. Also does anyone know how long I am likely to wait for the results?

MadSweeney: That's how many of us look in our family too. I often get called the Middle Eastern variant of my name by both westerners and others. Then we do have the Nordic looking people in the family too and their DNA came up with a much higher percentage of Scandinavian.Generally it's from a parent or grandparent who 'married in' though. It's so interesting. No, I am not distantly South Asian. No, I am not Jewish. No, I am not Spanish, Italian or Greek (who do often have high percentages of Arabic blood - my Sicilian SIL's results came up as 48% Middle Eastern). I am 98% European and just happen to look like a white supremacists worst nightmare

I'm interested in taking a test to try and find out more about my mum's ethnic origin. All we know is she was placed for adoption after her mum had an affair and her husband made her choose between the baby and staying married.

We have speculated about her origin, she was tiny and dark with loads of thick black hair.

I have got all the genes from my dad's side i.e. ginger, really fair skin and green eyes while my sister is much darker. I've no idea if that means I've got more of the Scottish genes and my sister's would possibly throw up more?

I did 23andme.

It was most interesting. I have French/German and Spanish/Portuguese ancestors from 1690s to 1830s that I never suspected and want to trace. I am 94% Irish and the rest is this European mix. My mum's haplogroup is more commonly found in eastern Europe from Romania to southern Poland than in Ireland.

The test also confirmed family lore that an ancestor on my paternal grandmother's side raped a slave or maybe more than one in Jamaica in the late 1700s, something I feel really, really sad about.

Does anyone know if any of these companies can test just for maternal dna?

longwayoff, by maternal DNA do you mean the 23 genes that you got from your mother out of your full set of 46? Or do you mean mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down from a mother to her children as a package with no swapping about?

user1497863568 my father used to tell a tale of the Spanish Armada coming to land in Ireland and us being descended from them. Transpires the point in Ireland I can pinpoint us to has similar rumour, but then surely I'd have had some Spanish in there as well.

My son favours my Dad, he's extremely olive skinned and dark haired so there must be a gene somewhere.
I got the very dark hair, though my skin could make a ghost look colourful 😂

Ive put MyHeritage dna on GED match
run the Eugenes K13 4 Ancestors Oracle. dont understand some of the results.
However Using 2 populations aproximation it was

1. 50% Cyprian 50% South west english

spot on as my DF was from Cyprus and my DM was from the welsh borders, I dont understand what it means by @3.115930 though

Interesting there was a lot of further breakdowns and it mentions Lebonese Druze a lot.

I had never heard of Druze until last night, when i was watching a programme on some researchers trying to find DNA of Jesus and they found Druze mitochondrial dna on the shroud of turin.

I think the lower the number the closer you are to that population. On 2 populations mine was 100% accurate on GEDmatch. Irish and south east England. On ancestry I have no Norwegian ancestry but my mums result did - this shows up on GEDmatch as well so I was really pleased to see that. It had the Dutch and German in about the same amount as my ancestry did. I love it! Thanks all for recommending!

I did out of general interest and discovered my father was not my father. Never had an inkling, it’s been a really challenging discovery for obvious reasons. There’s a Facebook community of 5500 of us NPEs (non-parental event/not parent expected) DNA uncovering things that would have easily stayed hidden only a few years ago. If you do one I’d just say be prepared for surprises, I was not. I’m ok though, my birth father is lovely and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to know him my whole life.

Iampicklerick

That makes sense , apparently using the least squares method for one population I was closest to a Tuscan!

The 4 population
is a mixture of Italian, Spanish ,Portuguese, Lebanese Druze and either Irish or West Scottish

That library. I think I mean mitochondrial dna, the female dna back to year zero

Longwayoff, according to this site you can get mDNA results from FamilyTree DNA, 23&me and LivingDNA. It'll tell you roughly when your maternal ancestor left Africa (if you're non-African) and the land route by which her descendants are likely to have got to you but not fine detail. It's cool but given that there's rarely any doubt about who a baby's mother is it's not going to throw up as many potential surprises as a whole DNA report.

Thank you thatlibrary, it's just for interest rather than chasing CSA

GED Match is confusing the life out of me. I ran one test, MDLP Modern and these were my results (I've blanked out my kit number)
Does this really suggest I have American Indian in there or am I doing something wrong?! 😯

You might be interested in this feature, from 23&me. It's not definitive - it just shows, statistically, where there are a lot of people who share some of your genes in the same combination as you. In DD's case it's missing an area that I know my family came from, perhaps because they themselves were incomers and my twig of the tree wasn't there long enough to pick up many local genes.

I had American Indian also but a tiny tiny amount. I suspect that is from centuries back when the continents were joined (total novice speaking here) as North America/Canada are very close to Greenland and the Scandinavian countries, which I also have in my chart. A much cleverer person will be along soon to explain properly I expect, I may just have made all this up!