what reaction did you get when you shared your DNA results (native, search)

[topher5150]

My was so excited when she got her DNA results back from Ancestory.com, finally she had an idea about where in the world she originated from. So excited in fact that she shared with her family, who most decidedly didn't share in her joy. Her grand mother especially who wanted to hear nothing about it. What reactions did you get sharing your results?

[in_newengland]

I will get my DNA tested on Ancestry one of these days but so far I've only done 23andMe. I contacted a few people who had provided their surnames and were close matches but didn't get many people who cared very much. Of course they were all 3rd to 5th to distant cousins, nothing very close.

Maybe on Ancestry where people are more interested in their family history I might get better responses.

I know what you mean about the family not caring very much. My sister got a kick out of it, but she was the only one. We've had quite a few good laughs, lol. Of course my parents would have been interested but they are no longer living. I wish my mom could have known how far her family went back--to the first settlers of New England. She always just thought she came from poor farmers so it would have come as a big surprise.

The best result is that a couple of names that I had been wondering about kept showing up repeatedly. Not common names either, so that gives me some degree of DNA proof that the research is correct.

[yarddawg]

Mine had a high entertainment value but it was a very atypical case. I hope. I did it with a group of friends and they punked me as a practical joke. The sample sent in under my name wasn't mine, it was a coworker of one of my idjit college buds. They strung me along for over a year before owning up to it. During which time I confused a helluva lot of people at 23andme, fortunately no "close relatives" matches, that would've sucked, not sure what I would have done if my friend's friend had a half brother or something in the system. I'd have probably felt that they deserved some kind of explanation but since the closest "match" that had attempted to contact me was a predicted 3rd cousin I just had the account deleted and quietly walked away.

I may try the national geographic version someday to get real data but I'm not doing another one that tries to match you up with relatives. It was too weird, mostly because I was trying to come up with family tree matches to people who matched someone else's DNA but still, left a bad taste, not doing it again.

[SunGrins]

I wanted to talk about it much more than anyone wanted to hear. It's all more complicated than they expected so they tune out after a couple minutes. They are not very curious if they already "know' what they want to know.

[randomparent]

My father and I share the genealogy bug, so we talk each other's ears off about it. There were no great surprises in the results for either of us. It just confirmed what we already knew from paper sources.

[brownbagg]

i found hundreds of people that related to me from 300 years ago. had one guy in scotland that would text talk me daily , that was awesome. Im in the swamps of new orleans talking to a guy in scotland, thats wild.Then my grandmother sister family found me, never knew they existed. That was great. There a guy that fell out of my family tree in 1850 that contacted me, his brother a player for the red sox.

[IM90046]

Family didn't really care, both sides identify with their ethnicity far more than their race(s), I know, confusing.
How ever my co-workers and classmate were very curious because of my ambiguity.
Online I've had different reactions, on this site specifically, it started a discussion on whether or not I am Black, which I somewhat expected.

[Mightyqueen801]

Our DNA results showed pretty much what we expected: Scandinavian, British Isles, Western Europe. Tiny surprises--1 percents each of Finnish and Asia Minor--who WERE those people?

But, my sister recently had her daughter's DNA done. Her daughter's father was adopted, so his ancestry was unknown, and he's dead now. Her daughter pops up with more Western European ancestry, but some Jewish ancestry, as well.

[ChinLuv]

Bit of a surprise. There were many claims in our family that our ancestry contained strong connections to African and Native American DNA. Not the one I sent in. There was a trace: <1% of North Africa, but not even an indication of Native American. I know the very-very small bit of African is a relief to my mother. Lord, she's a racist. She didn't even want to know, but I couldn't contain myself from braying "don't worry Mom. We're not black!" She couldn't even differentiate that North Africa could mean Morocco or Libya or Egypt. She just hears "Africa" and gets all twitterpated.


Pretty typical otherwise: Western Europe, Great Britain, Scandanavia .. a few comments of "the hell?" at our 7% Italy and Greece. Not sure who that comes from. From the surnames, I can account for most of our geographic identity, but you never know what might have sneaked in from illicit sources

Thankfully, those of us who are under 60 mostly get a chuckle out of the hodge-podge mix. Some of those older than that have an "oh heaven forfend!" reaction at being told "Dude, you're 32% Irish. Top of the mornin' to ye!"

[aries63]

You have to take the ethnicity breakdowns with a grain of salt. They haven't worked it out yet very well as far as different European groups. Many people get lots of "Italy/Greece" and "Scandinavia" with no known ancestors from those areas.

I didn't get any strange reactions except for some laughter when I told a (white) friend of mine I was almost 2% African, and she laughed and said "You don't believe that, do you?" Actually I do and have a good idea where it came from. And I laughed myself when I told a Navajo friend that I was 1.4% Native American, knowing she was probably near 100%. We both had a good laugh over it.