Ancestry updated origins

[NorthWestWoes]

They’ve updated it all very recently. DM now shows as 22% Germanic, I think that was only about 4% before.

A large part of her family tree is south east England - Essex, Sussex, Suffolk. But nothing German or even from the continent unless you go back to 1680, And there are enough DNA matches with the right cousins/ 2nd 3rd cousins to be pretty confident a few generations back. So I’m guessing this is from a strong Saxon/ Angle / Jute ancestry matching quite closely with modern day native Germans.

I only come out as 4% Germanic so even more odd (I know we don’t inherit evenly but her 22% to me 4% is quite a German loss!).

I have a great grandmother from Africa but it doesn't show on my ancestry. I guess it's possibly none of that dna passed down to me 🤔 My update removed any Nordic dna and just invreased the Scottish so nothing dramatic. My Oh got a high amount of Germanic Europe.

It does but you have to have a subscription for it. It puts each percentage on whichever side of a 'pie' it came from. Then you can determine which parent is which side of the pie

You can sometimes work out which parent the outlier % came from without a subscription by looking at other matches who share it.

I'm sceptical. DH's family name is traceable back to a specific town in the Netherlands. Previously he had a good proportion of "germanic" which covered this. Now this has all been refined specifically down the Belgian, which doesn't make sense.

@Another2Cats I don't think you understand how it works. It goes back centuries and it depends on how much DNA you have from which parent.

But if neither parent has that DNA then how can I have it?

It's awful and makes zero sense we used to be uk wide so a touch of Irish more Welsh and Scottish and predominantly English which makes sense my family historically originated in Ireland on my dad's side passed through Wales and settled in England my moms side came down from Scotland and settled here too

Why am I suddenly German?

Same as two brown eyed parents can have a blue eyed child.

support.ancestry.com/s/article/Unexpected-Ethnicity-Results?language=en_US

I've gone from being 98% English to around 69% which seems a huge drop. I've gained a load of Germanic results and lost my Scandinavian ones.

My 4yr old randomly asked yesterday what it means to be English. DP told her there was no point asking mummy seeing as she's apparently German 😂

It’s presumably Anglo-Saxon heritage, it’s more specific

Yes, luckily for Me it was the same with my Parents on there

Only Me and my Dad had Welsh ancestors (Morgan, v Welsh) and I have the same as Dad. 2% Welsh DNA.
Deduced Dad was "Parent 2" on ancestry.

That analogy is incorrect and the Ancestry link isn't appropriate to this situation either (it shows the reverse situation, if anything)

To take the eye colour thing, yes, of course it is possible for two brown eyed parents to have a blue eyed child or two blue eyed parents to have a brown eyed child. But that is entirely different to the situation that we're talking about here.

In that analogy, (to keep things very basic) you look at your parents DNA and find that they each have a brown eyed gene and a blue eyed gene. So what you are depends on what you inherit from your parents. But that is not what we are talking about.

The correct analogy is, instead of having parents with both a brown eyed gene and blue eyed gene, you check your parents DNA and find that they both only have a gene for brown eyes (although eye colour doesn't actually work like that).

Ancestry then come along and say that you have the gene for blue eyes even though neither of your parents had that gene when they were tested.
.

Also, with the Ancestry link, that explains why you might not inherit some regions from a parent. It does not explain why you have regions that neither of your parents do.

If I have inherited a "Basque" region then, if it were accurate, that Basque region must also be present in one of my parents - otherwise I could not have inherited it.

Ancestry says that this region is not present in either of my parents.

Does your father have any % France or Spain?

That is often a half sibling, or could be an uncle/aunt ?

No, if a parent has no dna from an area then you can’t have it. That isn’t the same as eye colour which is to do with gene expression.

I gave the figures near the start of the thread, but no, neither of my parents do.

Father:

England & Northwestern Europe 77%
Germanic Europe 11%
Wales 9%
Denmark 3%

Mother:

England & Northwestern Europe 92%
Germanic Europe 4%
The Netherlands 2%
Cornwall 2%

Me:

England & Northwestern Europe 79%
Germanic Europe 13%
The Netherlands 6%
Norway 1%
Basque 1%

No, if a parent has no dna from an area then you can’t have it.
Obviously, the test results are a marketing tool to sell the product, rather than a complicated scientific paper. 🙂However, here's my theory.

Perhaps it's because in every test, a) some DNA won't actually be successfully tested. and b) 100% of the DNA isn't being tested for "nationality", just a few marker segments. If, say, that particular marker is in a segment from the dad that happens not to be tested successfully, but that marker is tested successfully in the child, that could explain it.

@Jaehee Just to add to my earlier comment, the previous origins before the update made more sense

Father:

England & Northwestern Europe 69%
Wales 20%
Scotland 8%
Norway 2%
Ireland 1%

Mother:

England & Northwestern Europe 79%
Wales 9%
Norway 8%
Germanic Europe 2%
Scotland 2%

Me:

England & Northwestern Europe 73%
Wales 15%
Scotland 10%
Norway 2%

Another2Cats
That's quite a difference, isn't it, even with the Netherlands. Perhaps they attribute it to "rounding errors" like maths problems 😂

Can you email Ancestry and ask for their view? I'd be interested to know their reply.

I’ve gone from

England 72%
Scotland 9%
Ireland 9%
Sweden & Denmark 7%
Norway 3%

to

England 83%
Germanic Europe 11%
Scotland 6% 🤔

This. I have both me and my parents tested, and my parental breakdown ethnicity estimate doesn't match up with their ethnicity estimates, which has me mystified. For instance, I apparently got my Scottish (9 per cent) from my mum. But her DNA test only estimates 1 per cent Scottish. And my dad only has 3%, so there's no possibility mixing up my parent 1 and parent 2 is responsible. The maths just doesn't work out any which way.

It's making me think there's a mistake in the algorithm. You would think that Ancestry would have made sure the program adjusted for that, to prevent it from happening. The results are total (gu)estimations, so their program could surely have taken this into account. 🙂

@Another2Cats I've just had a look at my own. According to Ancestry's boundaries, the England & Northwestern Europe region also covers (weakly) part of the Basque region. So it's possible some of yours has been calculated as Basque while your parents' DNA has been lumped in with E&NWE. I think what was my 'Ireland' has now been lumped in with Germanic Europe. I have also acquired 1% Basque.

The more I try to get my head around it the more I get confused.

My Scottish ancestry has gone from ludicrously high to strangely low. Before it was nearly 70 percent now it's 10. My grandfather was very Scottish with a family tree in one area going back centuries. All matches via him show as nearly all Scottish. No other Scottish ancestry. Other than that, this update does look more like what I might expect from my family trees.

I agree the new results don’t seem as accurate as the previous ones.