Are DNA kits to test ethnicity mostly accurate or a rip off!

[QueenArnica]

So backstory is...

This is long as it contains statistics...

DS (now 13) asked for one of these kits for Christmas a couple of years ago. His results came back as follows:

North and West European 73.5%
Sardinian 13.2%
Irish, Scottish, Welsh 6.4%
Iberian 4.5%
Italian 2.4%

We were pretty impressed as my DH is half Italian, my FIL is from Sardinia.

Now me... all my life people have assumed I’m either Italian, Spanish, Portuguese due to my colouring. My DC have Italian names and again the assumption is because I have Italian roots. My DF has the same colouring as me and never knew who his father was so I always curious as to my background.

So my results came back:

English 70.6%
North and West European 14.2%
Scandinavian 5.8%
Finnish 1.7%
East European 7.7%

So my AIBU is looking at the 2 sets of results is the whole thing a scam as they lack similarity? Also AIBU to be sad that it didn’t come back identifying me as a Spanish Princess?!

Congratulations if you got to the end of this and apologies if it bored you to tears!

Since my ancestors were German and Belgian, why would they show up as south Asian?

AlternativePerspective
My husband found a half sibling - you don’t need extra DNA tests when the stories add up. Turns out DH’s mum was right about her awful allycat of an ex husband. New brother even has the same first name as DH’s dad! 123 and me seem pretty convinced enough to fly DH out to US to meet brother as a surprise but due to corona they have had to cancel (Were meant to be going on June). They are currently negotiating ‘media opportunities’ so keep and eye out for them both and then tell me they are not related!

@thegreenlight I’m fascinated that 23 and Me have made such a big deal of this? I’m in a group with thousands of people who’ve discovered different parentage and with it new half siblings through DNA tests, it’s really not that unusual I’m sure!

“Gypsy blood would show up as South Asian”

No, that’s a common misconception. It was started by some Victorian ethnographer who visited India and decided based on appearance alone that gypsies were from S Asia.

Genetically the Romany are from Eastern Europe. They share similarities with S. Asians because both their ancestors originated on the Asian steppes. The gypsy tribes went west into Europe and the Indians went south over the Himalayas.

@Pangur2 can I ask which test it wa that allowed you to use your brothers spit as I'd really like to do this

BuffaloCauliflower they had a conference Skype interview type thing with the both of them and they are both such fun, happy guys (Who look and sounds the same even though they had never met) that they thought people would like to know about the positive stories. Neither brother has approached this with any negativity or self pity and I think that has resonated with them. Originally DH’s brother was going to talk to 23 and me staff at their annual conference in California and then they were going to bring DH out as a surprise on camera. They have recently contacted to say that the world needs positive stories like theirs at the moment and will look at ‘wide reaching media opportunities’ as they cannot bring him over just yet. All of this was initiated by 23 and me. Don’t know why they are pursuing this particular story but they are.

@Purplegorilla it was Ancestry.com. People on here explained the x and y thing better than I could. He was delighted as he got all the info too and didn’t have to pay, haha.

I found it to be v accurate. It matched me with a relative, who I already knew of. (Mam’s aunty’s son). He remembered me from being a baby. The heat map also showed areas of Ireland I know my Mam and Dad’s families have lived for years, along with a bit of Spanish, Eastern European Jewish and Melanesia. I already know about the Spanish (relatives running off with Spanish sailors on both sides in the 1900s) and the Jewish ( a relative married a Jewish lady in Wapping in 1850) but the Melanesian stuff was a surprise! It was only 1 or 2% though.

Ps Melanesia is the Solomon Island, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea. I had to look it up, haha!

@thegreenlight well sounds good! Glad to hear they’ve both been really positive about it. Initial trauma aside finding new family has been pretty positive for me too.

Mine was quite painful (dad) once it became apparent, after the initial excitement, there wasn’t going to be any sort of relationship between us but it’s still much better than not knowing.

@grimdamnfanjo absolutely and it wasn't very expensive either

To be fair anything less than 5% is classed as ‘noise’ and probably not significant

Really? DNA testing cannot distinguish someone who has no non-African ancestors from someone whose only African ancestors left Africa 50,000 years ago?

Bear in mind apartheid had a category for people who had mixed heritage.

Have a read of, "when she was white", an interesting story of a woman born to white parents who was 'classified' and 're classified' as different races. Fascinating story.

The rules kept changing and at different times depended on:

What your parents' classification(s) were
What you ate for breakfast
Whether your neighbours considered you to be white

Then there was 'hoourary white', Japanese people fitted into this catagory, Chinese people didn't, except for the Chinese man who got a letter signed by all hius neighbours who declared they considered him white.

It's not as simple as a catagory for 'mixed heritage', virtually every South African has mixed ancestry, the catagory you are refering to is probably the people who call themselves, "Cape Coloured".

Several countries have sealed adoption laws. Women who gave up babies decades ago on the understanding they could never be traced can now be tracked down. Tha’s an ethical minefield.

Be careful though, they link you to others with the same dna (usually second cousins twice removed) DH did the test as a Christmas present and found out he had a half brother conceived and born when his mum and dad were still married!

Only if you chose that option

Was shocked it could pinpoint the exact part of England my mother comes from

I would love to have it done as I have such a mixed bag of relatives. Everything from North African to West Indian.

I also have a condition that is associated with Asia.
No idea where that comes from.

I am NC with the whole of my family so the idea that family no matter how far removed would be able to contact me really puts me off.

I watched a Canadian documentary where they tested identical twins with the same companies. The results were amusing as their ethnic backgrounds were different.

Forgive me I've read most but not all of the thread. There's something I am not sure I understand about how these tests work. Am I right in thinking that the reason for the above "anomaly" is because the different companies match your DNA back to the DNA of people that they have on their database, which will be the DNA of others that have previously completed the test? So company A will have a certain genetic profile of people living in say Ireland, but company B's profile may well be slightly different (because different people have complete their tests?)

And that the DNA samples they are matching you to are current/ recent samples not "historic" (for obvious reasons). Thanks

@PlanDeRaccordement do you know of any literature/studies on eastern European origins of the Roma?

Daisy, yes I think so but they were not hugely different (the twins) on the tests and there is no doubt that if you have a second cousin one removed or something who also has DNA up there or a parent you don't know about it will match it so it si not junk science and it does work. My great granny's sister's descendant still in the same village was definitely the right person and the right family and we have the same family tree except I had got back a couple of generations further.

About 3 weeks ago I made someone's day as she found her great grandfather (and my great uncle whom my father knew loads about and had a photo of and the father of that man whose 1860s letter I hold). She had never known the name even of her ancestor because he died when his 3 small children were very tiny and his wife remarried and had another child.

If you want DNA back 25,000 years then you would need the other sort of test I did. www.oxfordancestors.com/ I have also read a couple of books by Professor Sykes which are very good.

I really don't think it is racist or nasty to want to know where we are from. Loads of people from the Caribbean have been so pleased to learn which bits of Africa their ancestors came from. I don't think most people use family tree work, DNA tests, collecting their granny's old photos and letters to divide societies up - we just want to know facts about the past and the stories of our ancestors and where they moved from.

Mine came back as 100% European Jewish. Which didn’t surprise coming from an Orthodox Jewish family. But I was surprised at the 100%? I was expecting a teeny bit of something else somehow. I have a list of over 1000 cousins ranging from 1 second cousin to mainly 3rd and 4th ones.

Forgot to say mine was with Ancestry.co.uk

I would never let any of these companies have my DNA. As someone linked to the article upthread, it makes you the product, not the consumer.

I thought gypsies fled from India when the Muslim invasions started.

microzilla I think that’s because Ancestry dna is aimed only at the last few generations - maybe 5 or so? - so you can identify specific ancestors. Much further back than that and it’s less useful (don’t Mormons have to baptise their ancestors in some kind of ritual?). 23andme will give you additional information about your ancient origins, as will familytreedna and then there are sites like mytrueancestry which compares your dna to ancient relics - which is just for fun really.