Dna and ethnicity

[Jaslima]

Ok, i know this is going to sound really sad :-D

I'm Northern Irish, have Irish parents, Irish grandparents, Irish ancestry as far as I knew etc but there has always just been something about my mother's side that I just couldn't put my finger on. It's a certain look: dark eyes, dark hair, certain features...not tanned skin but definitely a certain vibe that made me think maybe our distant ancestors weren't European. I always suspected Middle Eastern but had no way of knowing. This was a lineage I invented in my head.

I remember being about 20 and looking in the mirror and thinking 'I just know there is something in my blood from somewhere far away'. My husband used to joke that people from Arabic countries were 'my people'. All my friends knew my crazy theory.

Anyway, at Christmas I decided to do one of those dna tests to see if we had any Middle Eastern heritage. I know they are based on an algorithm, aren't an exact science and can be misleading but the kit was on sale so I did it.

Anyway, the results came in yesterday. It was exactly what I thought.

93% of the Ethnic group of the Irish/Northern Irish/Scottish/English/Welsh (as expected),

5%Finnish (makes sense being so close to the above).

1.2% West Asian and 0.8 Middle Eastern! I can't tell you how not surprised I was by this. In my heart it made perfect sense.

I only know one Irish person who did a dna test and hers was pretty much 100% British Isles, more or less. I told someone about my results and she said that everyone probably everyone has some Middle Eastern dna somewhere. I felt a bit deflated!

Is this true? Again I know that these are just estimates and should be taken with a pinch of salt. I just can't help thinking how strange it is that my totally unfounded hunch that my family has Middle Eastern roots was backed up by the DNA test, even if it was just 0.8%. I feel like this has kind of validated a feeling I've had all my life but am wondering what the chances are that it's not true.

If you got your dna done, what did it come back with? Did it line up with any research you did? I find it all insanely interesting!

I did this and got largely English and Irish, North and South which I totally expected .
But also got 6% Scandinavian, 7% French and 5% German which was a surprise. Oh and 1% Indian ( I forget the region).
It certainly was a conversation point over Christmas dinner with my family!

finding or confirming close family relationships is completely different, DNA can be used for that quite easily, but that is not what this thread is about -

My reply was to your comment @Nimbostratus100
"........I find it difficult to believe how many people PAY to have their intimate details handed over to a commercial enterprise ....."

I don't have any arabic dna @Jaslima so don't feel deflated!

My kids' results far more interesting than mine and that was why we did it really. x's mother was very vague about her ancestry, she was adopted at about 2 but the answer changed every time the subject came up. My kids' results came back with about 22-24% dna from a region of India that had gone (or been sold??) to work in sugar plantations in surinám and suddenly it made sense. She had said she was from Venezuela once, but when I asked more she became vague and then kind of denied being from Venezuela. I think she She had said she was from Surinam on another occasion. I wonder was she embarrassed that her ancestors had been bought as slaves even though she had a very comfortable life after her adoption. The adoption was informal and she did seem to have some details and was in contact with a few relatives with Indian names so I was always confused by the Venezuela claim which was made, then denied, then made again. But now it makes sense. Surinam has a big indian population from the region where the kids' dna is from.

And the two countries border each other

Roman auxillary soldiers in the UK came from all over Europe, and Africa, Vikings mixed DNA from Europe, Asia and probably America, Russia and Alaska are neighbours,

We are all mixed

10 thousand years ago all UK inhabitants were black. paler genes were favoured, because white skin and blond hair in women and children increased survival rates

Having the genes from a "darker ethnicity" is meaningless, Brits were that "darker ethnicity"

This whole "DNA and ethnicity" thing is just a huge social construction, nothing scientific about it at all, and people have just made spread sheets about it.

Any of you could do that, start a spread sheet right now and ask for some sort of information, ( any - doesnt have to be biometric) about the population around you, then say "Ahhh - you use brown flat shoelaces.... there is a 10 % match between this habit and the population living in Southeast Ville, 10 miles away"

also, you could charge a lot of money to people to go into your shoelace spread sheet

@Onnabugeisha fascinating thread. But Elizabeth I's great grandmother was not the famous Isabella of Castile/Spain. Nope, Isabella was mother to Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII (Elizabeth's father of course and her mother was Anne Boleyn).

Elizabeth's great grandmothers included Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort, and, umm some Boleyns?

@Jaslima wow, that's so interesting that your blood group is AB with B being on your mother's side.

My two kids are B which is not really common in Ireland I don't think. I mean, it's not rare, but pretty sure the usual blood group is 0

My results matched what I had discovered about DGPs.
Except about 30% Irish. No Irish connection that I know of. However DMs family were Cornish - and I imagine in the days before motorways and railways any travel was by boat or ship along the coast. So the Irish contingent might have sailed to Cornwall.

OP’s relatives might have sailed from the Med to the Atlantic coast then northwards. Or might have been Spanish or Portuguese with Moorish roots.

Ancestry. Be aware, they update their results from time to time so your results can vary.

My dad has helped me loads with my family history. He has taken an ancestry test - autosomal and a full YDNA test as part of an international male only surname study. This revealed Viking descent. Probably as part of William the Conquerors army.

His dna is a lone haplogroup in the database at the moment but I'm hoping that eventually we may get some closer links as the study continues. The people who run the research study have uncovered some fascinating history. Some whole branches of dna can be traced to one ancestor went to Ireland and stayed there, eventually leading to Canadian and American men sharing similar dna after emigration in the 1800s to North America.

Anyway, that type of test is more complex and gives different information to the Ancestry or similar tests.
When my dad did this one, his results came back with around 40% dna in common with people living in Connaught, Ireland. Which was a surprise as at that point only a distant Irish ancestor from Galway was in the tree.

An previously unheard of second cousin matched in Ancestry and some further research confirmed my dads grandfather was one of three brothers from Mayo living near his grandmother around 1915!

I am now a couple of years in trying to connect all these new dna matches up before I visit Mayo for further research.

Trinny, see my post - that's a lot of dna shared by people from one area in your results!
Do you have a lot of unexplained matches in your results?
Is it one area in Ireland?

Here's a link explaining the different tests livingdna.com/blog/difference-autosomal-ydna-mtdna

Mine's A+

you dont need a DNA test to "reveal" viking descent... if you are a brit, you have Viking descent, if you are European, you have Viking descent.

The British Isles? Not really an appropriate term to use on Craicnet. Ireland isn't a British Isle.

@xJoy
Sorry but i got very confused with your post. Who has ancestry from Surinam. Your children or your mother or your children's mother?

Interesting OP you got exactly the same result as 3 unrelated Irish people I know. What company did your testing.

but we are talking genetically, not politically, so yes

@Nimbostratus100 I've paraphrased the research. It places a timeline and a location for the Viking ancestry which is very specific. It's YDNA so very detailed.

I'm Irish and did a DNA thing - turned up east Asian ancestry (tiny percentage and would have been 8-10 generations back). It explained a lot about eye shape and cheekbones on my mum's side.

Interesting

Ireland is one of the British Isles though?

for those who are interested, both direct male and direct female lines can be followed, through genes, ( but not through these commercial companies who are simply running very basic machine based PCR type testing and referring to a spread sheet)