To think these DNA ancestry tests make no sense

[CarolineFields]

So you get back a score of 40% Nigerian. Meaning out of the tiny scrap of DNA tested - less than 0.1% -40% of that matches the average population in Nigeria. But if those Nigerians are tested, they won't come back as 100% Nigerian, so 40% of 0.1% matches people who are likely to be told they are 50% not Nigerian?

And if you are in Iceland when you have that test, you are told you are 40% Nigerian, but someone in Australia can be told they are 80% Icelandic due to being compared to you and you cohort?

I thought you could only be Jewish if your Mother was Jewish, so would be measureable by DNA .

My understanding is that Jewish is both a religion and a distinct genealogical race due to geographical constraints of historical populations and the effect of hundreds of years of marrying into the faith.

So you may not regard yourself as Jewish from a faith perspective, but you can have significant Jewish genetic heritage.

I assure you millions ( literally millions) of places on your family tree are taken by Vikings

Yes, you can look at just the maternal line in DNA - I am not sure that any of these gimmicky test kits do it, but it is easily done by professionals

I think you are confusing history with propaganda. "The celts" were bigged up by the tudors, but they never really existed outside the PR machine.

They were people who made a certain type of art. Some people who made this type of art invaded Britain, but never really had much interest or investment in it. They ruled over the Brits, but they didn't really inhabit much of the country - they stayed in the West.

So the Tudors wanted to emphasise their right to the throne, and so being Welsh suddenly became the true indigenous Brit - they weren't they were invaders. The Brits are directly descended from a population here thousands of years before the Celts.

Henry 8th didn't destroy Abbeys in Wales, because he needed to preserve family graves to prove his heritage.

No real genuine history talks about the Celts, just the children's histories, older Victorian histories, and those based on the tudor fairy tales.

So, no it wasn't language, religion or geography, and no, not every history says so, only some poor quality ones

easily done by professionals

Professional scientists? Or professional genealogists?

Still sounds like scientists resent having "their" kit muscled in on by other professions. OP clearly doesn't understand what genealogy is about.

Mine dna kit shows Ashkenazi Jewish split into 24 ethnic groupd. think they all do.
My test was quite accurate considering im a bit of a mix with half my heritage from a tiny country which was invaded a few times . But i dont have any viking in me😀

Ultimately, we all come from bacteria really.

Geneologists should go back to the early humans if they really want to look at ancestors and where we "come from"

Since you have given this some thought OP, do you have any suggestions as to what we should be calling Celtic languages? You say the term Celt / Celtic should be used only to describe a type of art. The term Celtic has been used to describe a group of related languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish Gaelic, etc.) since the early 1700s so it's well established. According to you however it is incorrect. What would the correct term be?

TIA

Reported. Let Mumsnet sort it out. Maybe they’ll do nothing, but at least I didn’t sit by while you insulted real, existing people, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, in Cornwall and Brittany, on the Isle of Man AND in Wales, who are fighting to protect their original languages.

Geneologists should go back to the early humans if they really want to look at ancestors and where we "come from"

Who are you to tell genealogists (correct spelling) what they should be doing? Genealogists explore the branches of their own family trees which they are interested in investigating, using records to do do. Or help clients look into their ancestors' pasts. Nobody has ever ever asked me to explore the life of their most distant ancestor, living in a cave in Africa.

Stop being deliberately obtuse.

Thank you.
Some people's bonnets are so full of bees they can't hear what anyone else is saying... 😏

See, I thought the ‘you can only be Jewish if your DM is Jewish’ was more of a cultural thing rather than scientific. Both my DPs were Ashkenazi Jews, as were all 4 dDGPs. So I did expect the results to show a high proportion of Eastern European ethnicity.

I just had no idea it would show what % Jewish I am. That really surprised me as I didn’t realise it could be scientifically measured. I still wonder if you can be 100% of anything though . I have cousins who have a South East Asian eye shape with mono lids and some are very fair skinned. My DBs have very olive complexions and (did ) have thick curly black hair. They look very Middle Eastern. I’m very pale. But there was no mention of any other part of the world, just Lithuania and surrounding countries.

My son has a y haplotype that is a mutation that likely occured in Ulster in the 5/6th century AD (M222). Problem is, his dad's family down the male line has a knightly Norman surname and they all thought the family came over with the Normans (previously Vikings of course!).

Clearly they are descended from a chap named Niall in Ireland long before the Norman conquest/Viking raids whose descendents blagged themselves a posh surname somewhere along the line 😂

Having done my own genealogy as far back as is possible, it is safe to say we will all have rouge genes. That is to say the real father is not the person on official records, births and marriages etc.

Care to address my earlier point about many Brits being descended from more recent immigration?

I’m fairly sure that my neighbours who came to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s regard themselves as British, as do their children and grandchildren who were born here. I’m also fairly sure they don’t have any Viking DNA.

Estimates are about 1% to 2% of births are not the father expected. You'll see much higher percentages quoted, I've seen people say up to 25% but there really is no proof for that. DH's g grandmother was 7 months pregnant with her first child (DH's grandfather) when she married, and her new husband was stated as father on the birth certificate when the baby was born. DNA has proved that he was not the father, and has indicated a specific surname and area of the UK where the father was from.

And of course before 1855 in Scotland and 1837 in England/Wales there was no such thing as a birth certificate anyway.

I think the poster has read Simon Jenkins who has a book about a sceptical history of the celts. Its an intersting read. Although i didnt get to the end.

So many interesting takes being made by the op 🙄

@ChaosAndCrumbs your post was excellent. As an adoptee I have always been on the "search" one way or other to know about "where I came from" and I am currently waiting on results from one of these tests. Certainly for me I'll take any small chance of finding out something about myself. It's hard to imagine if you're not adopted how it feels.

I’ve done my ancestry, there is no Viking ancestry in my DNA. Why don’t you understand that? It’s very odd.

No all. The Basques and Catalans don’t. The Swiss don’t. Occidental French don’t. Piedmont Italian don’t. Greeks don’t. Sardinians, Corsicans and Maltese don’t. Much of Eastern Europe don’t, although Russia does.

I don’t know if this will help, but take heart - I know I can’t imagine how it feels, but I do know answers can happen with these tests. My best friend’s father was adopted. He took one of these and it popped up a relative he didn’t know who would have had to be I think cousin level? (It was really his only chance as there was no paperwork about his adoption or something was wrong with it - long before computers). He finally contacted them, and they responded and he now has the identity of his mother and father, knows that he has both full and half siblings, understands how he ended up being adopted. It’s been a huge act of fulfillment for him.

“Viking” isn’t an ethnicity anyway. It was an occupation held by many Scandinavians of different ethnicities. Similarly, not every Scandinavian was a Viking.