I'm 47% French/German

[PupInAPram]

I got my DNA results back and I'm 47% French & German and 44% British & Irish. It's a complete mystery to me how!

@NightmareLoon

Yeah... I'm not sure those percentages mean very much. It just means that you have genes consistent with people on the continent. Given how close they are to us, maybe 40% of your forebears had European ancestry. Or it could all be a bit of guesswork.

Well exactly this.

If Jean-Luc Picard and Steffi Graf came to the UK in 1850 and got married, and their children similarly married children of other European immigrants and so on, then of course your DNA will show up as consistent with people living in France or Germany. Even if Jean-Luc and Steffi changed their names to John and Susan Pickford.

Also if you have used 23 and Me that is a primarily US based database/reference panel.

The ethnicity estimates give a broad indication of the region your ancestry is from. Without standard genealogical research thoguh it's fairly meaningless.

Out of interest, which DNA test did you do op , as I'm looking to do one soon ? Thank you 😊

I would always advise Ancestry testing in the UK - purely because tehy have the largest database meaning you are more likely to have close matches than on other sites like 23 and Me or My Heritage.

@BestKnitterInScotland thank you will keep that in mind

@echobeachsomeday I used 23 and me, which is US based. I wanted the health report which not all of them do. I'm vaguely interested in the ancestry angle, but only vaguely....

@MostIneptThatEverStepped

My daughter did this a while back. Was a bit baffling because although from my side there should have been approximately 12.5% of English there was none at all. Which presumably means that the English grandparent of mine was of non English descent? Impossible to work it out as on her dad's side it's a total medley of different European heritage anyway.

No it doesn't mean that at all.

In a small country like the UK there is no difference between the DNA of someone living in Chester or across the border in Wrexham. Similarly, many of my ancestors are from Kelso in the Scottish Borders, which is around 3 miles from Northumberland. I know many of my relatives were Northumbrian. I have seen their birth certificates, baptism records, census returns. But the Ancestry circle for "Scotland" also covers all of Northern England as far south as about Middlesbrough. And the Isle of Man, Brittany in France and half of Northern Ireland.

Similarly, DH's paternal side is from Liverpool. Lots of Irish, unsurprisingly. His circle for "Welsh" covers all the border counties like Shropshire, Merseyside and a chunk of Lancashire, and Somerset.

Not sure why Ancestry don't make it clearer that "Scottish" also includes a good chunk of English too.

Yes it's not like someone living in Alsace had alternating French and German DNA depending on which side his chunk of land belonged to at any given point in history.

I think they all use their own algorithms to differentiate between and define population groupings, so you may get different results from different companies.

You’re very similar to me on 23andme - 46.5% French and German plus 45.9% British and Irish.

I do have known French and German in my line and it does pretty accurately say which area it’s from which surprised me but actually it shouldn’t as a lot of people from Germany emigrated back in 1800s when the crops failed and they were given a loan to pay for boat tickets. Loads ended up in the US, some over here, you van see the name changing along the way.

@Volterra ah right. I did get lots of second and third cousins popping up in the USA and Canada, which was interesting.

I was the opposite, I am 79% Scottish, 20% Irish and 1% English. Boring!

I had this op, I’m 60% Irish! My Dad was not my bio Dad. A huge shock aged 50! Xx

@PupInAPram
Thank you , I will compare both and decide

Oh my goodness @GremlinDolphin4 that must have been a huge shock. I'm in my 60s now, so mine is all ancient history whichever way you look at it.