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!

Ah sorry - yes - the statement thst there was more movement around Europe and less into and out of Britain. Seafaring and short haul trade were important in moving g people, products, and ideas around the western European coasts.

absolutely - huge amount of contact

I was specifically talking about movement of language

My DNA came back with ancestors who were boring as hell and never moved anywhere - gutted I was, dh's was much more interesting.

This whole thread is really, really interesting to me. I would love to be educated on it all. Mostly I am intrigued by the secrets surrounding the cheddar man @Nimbostratus100 . You seem to know alot and I wish you would share it with me.....sorry to sound stupid and ignorant but what are the implications you refer to? I really can't imagine what you mean. I'm sorry but genuinely would love to be enlightened!!

I read about or heard on the radio about a skeleton of a young female that was found on the western seaboard of Ireland, I think perhaps in Co. Kerry and they were able to match DNA from her very ancient skeleton to people living in the area at the moment. I just wish I paid better attention, got more details and could add a link here.

The link tot he adoption is interesting.

I have a cousin who was adopted from what was colloquially known as, "the naughty girls home".

She has recently traced her mother, who was Irish, got herself to England, 'working', gave birth and went home. She then married and had several children but told no one.

She is in touch with some of these half siblings but some don't want to know her, I don't know but I think there is some shame in their decision.

My cousin also found her father, not in Ireland and his other children have reacted positively to finding they had a big sister.

If she didn't know she was adopted her DNA could have been explained by the Irish ancestry of her adopted father.

"..... the naughty girls home..."
How terrible to name it that.
I know it was a different time but it was the woman who took all the flak if they got pregnant outside of marriage.
Where were the "naughty" boys ?

I'm sure a number of these children were born out of rape and incest.

I know when the Tuam babies scandal hit the headlines, society was blamed, the priests and bishops were blamed, the nuns were blamed for their behaviour towards the unfortunate women who gave birth there and rightly so but all those babies had fathers. Where were they ?

Yes, everybody colluded in the determination to present a veneer of respectability above all else. It sounds so shocking and shallow and cruel to us but my Mum told me that when she was a child (70 years ago) trades people's businesses may have lost custom if they were deemed by the locals to be ''not respectable''

The rules were not carved in stone but they were obeyed like they were.

And where were the girls parents?

That is fascinating. My family hail from the area where the O'Rourkes were chieftains. I'm ginger (well I was) pale and freckled but I had aunts/uncles who had jet black hair and a tanned complextion. We always joked that we must have had Spanish ancestors, maybe we did. Maybe the bit of African in my DNA came via Spain?

The shame and the shaming were so 'endemic' or entrenched in the mindset that people must have felt they couldn't have shown mercy to their own child. It's still incomprehensible to me, but if I had two other children and keeping a pregnant unmarried daughter and grandchild was going to impact on the opportunities available to the other children, I can't say with certainty what I would have done. Society was a harsh place.

My mother had a cousin born to her unmarried aunt, early 20th century Ireland, small town with church the centre of life even when I was a child, mid 20th century. Her parents kept her at home, brought up her child. People could do it if they were brave enough. I have no sympathy for the ones who didn't.

I lived near a religious home for unmarried mothers when I was a young mum in the 70s (it wasn't Catholic.) I often heard the girls crying in the local phone box while I was waiting my turn. Begging their parents to let them come home, I remember one who between her sobs was saying just come and see him, you won't make me give him away if you see him. It has stuck with me for 50 years. The other one I particularly remember was a girl of about 13 or 14. She was crying, mum was icy in the front of the car, dad was getting cases out of the car, her little brothers were in the back of the car. I particularly remember looking at her Clarks school sandals and thinking how tragic it was that this little girl was being abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her. No I don't sympathise with the parents dilemma. When people condemn society, the church, the government I can't get past the people I blame most, the girls parents.

Well said, @ancientgran

I was specifically talking about movement of language

@Nimbostratus100
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yola_language
An interesting Anglo Norman language that lasted many centuries in the far south east corner of Ireland.

It is probably related to the extinct Fingallian language of the coast north of Dublin.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingallian

Sorry but no. The Spanish who found refuge with O Rourke in Leitrim afterwards went to Derry where they were protected by the O Cathain chieftains. Whence they took ship back to Spain eventually.

O Rourke himself escaped to Scotland but , alas, he was handed on to the English and hanged at Tyburn in London ( basically Marble Arch). Looking after the shipwrecked sailors was treason to the crown of course. De Cuellar's record of his adventures is worth a read.

O Rourke's trial was conducted in Latin as he had no English.

Good point @ancientgran . Lots of children were brought up with the help of grandparents, aunts etc. People were even reared by neighbours if they were orphaned young. The detail about Clarks shoes is poignant - and telling. They didn't come cheap. And they had a car for God's sake. Unusual when I was a child mid 20th century.

Well maybe they got friendly with some local girls before they moved. I had one uncle who was working in europe, he said Spanish people were always walking up and talking to him thinking he was Spanish.

I was working in a big English city, my accent was local, the cleaner, an elderly Irish woman, looked at me and asked if my family were Irish and I said yes. She stared hard at me and said, "Leitrim yes? You have a definite look of Leitrim." Lucky guess or she is brilliant at placing people.

Yes the Clarks sandals nearly broke me. I don't know how they could do it, I couldn't have sent my kids off to the dentist on their own at that age. It is funny how somethings just stick in your mind. It makes me sad to think of her, she'd be in her 60s now, I wonder how it worked out for her.

The car was a white estate, I'm sure they normally looked like a lovely family.

The shame and the shaming were so 'endemic'

Shamed girls who’d had no sex education whatsoever.

I just think that many of those girls were pregnant because of incest or rape yet they were shamed- a double whammy of awfulness.

Well that wasn't true in my experience. I was a teenager in the 60s and we definitely did have sex education. Access to contraceptives was a big problem.

Some probably were but I have to say most of the teenage girls I knew in late 60s and early 70s were sexually active and enjoying it. I can't possibly comment on my own experience.

I'm thinking of earlier times- 30s, 40s and 50s

I think I am a bit younger than you but I have to say that most teenage girls where I grew up in Scotland were not sexually active and enjoying it in the late 60s and early 70s. I can in fact remember the 2 girls in my High School who had to leave pregnant and at the time we were horrified by the thought. It was Uni that was the time for sex - 4 of us arrived at Uni and spent those years together. We were all virgins on arrival and different backgrounds and discussed in which order we thought it would happen. Sounds like a book 😂

Speaking of the Irish and Catholic connection , one of the 4 of us was of that background. Her sex education was from the nuns -" when a light is turned off at a party shout out loud " I am a Catholic, put the light back on!" She was actually the first to surrender and to a man 30 plus years older than her!