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I have always known my family as Portuguese, Irish and a little bit of distant English ancestry. My dad's family actually comes literally from Ireland, while my mom's parents were both born in Lisbon, Portugal whom both were dark olive skinned people. My mom litterally looks like she is Italian or Turkish and is extremely dark sinned while my dad could pass for an Irishmen, so I always assumed I was 50% Portuguese and 50% Irish-English.
Now I decided to take my ancestry DNA test through Ancestry.com , and for $99 it told me very strange results, like this:
45% British
34% Irish
10% European Jewish
6% Western European
3% Italian/Greek
2% West Asian / North African
WHAT????!?! How can I be 70%+ British/Irish, when my mom is 0% Brit or Irish!!!! And where did the Jewish trace come from?????? Im not even remotely close to being Jewish to any of my knowledge!!!!!! 10% Is way too high!!! Is Ancestry DNA Legit!!???
Should I pay money to get a 23andMe test done?.. because it says I am 0% Iberian, which I know I am atleast partially Iberian, because my mom's maiden name is Silva!!!!!!
DNA/heritage testing not only considers your parents' DNA, but ALL of your DNA, including ancestors from years and years and years ago. That's why multiple ethnic groups came up. The same type of results would come up for anyone.
Anywho, I don't understand the anger in your post. Being or not being anything is nothing to be ashamed of. Many Spanish/Portuguese descend from Celts.
Interesting they can split the British and Irish. I didn't know they could do that. 23andMe can't tell the difference between British and Irish and French and German is also lumped together.
Perhaps the 10% Jewish comes from the fact that Sephardic Jews had a strong presence on the Iberian Peninsula at one time. So, that could explain the 10% that you see.
Perhaps the 10% Jewish comes from the fact that Sephardic Jews had a strong presence on the Iberian Peninsula at one time. So, that could explain the 10% that you see.
There was (and I think still is) a Jewish population in Dublin, also. I remember that from Who Do You Think You Are when Rashid Jones was tracing her Jewish mother's ancestry (actress Peggy Lipton). They went from New York to Dublin to Latvia, where they found that all the Jews in their Latvian ancestral town who did not move to Dublin had been murdered by the Russians.
Also, OP--let's do a little thinking here. What do you mean by "Where did the Jewish trace come from"???? Your mother's family came from a country where once upon a time you had to lie about your Jewish heritage to keep from being burned at the stake. Or you were forced to convert or pretended to convert to stay alive. It doesn't take a wild imagination to picture a Portuguese crypto-Jew marrying a Catholic somewhere along the way and the knowledge of the Jewish heritage being lost over time.
Your mother's maiden name doesn't mean squat. I have a fairly common English name that everyone on this board has heard before. I once met a Jewish man with my last name. It had been his grandfather's middle name, and Grandpa left Germany in the 1930s when Jews were being forced to wear stars and close their businesses. He moved to the US and dropped his Jewish last name, using his middle name as his surname, just in case it started to happen here, too.
Instead of being angry and upset over what you've just learned about yourself, why not see what else you can find? It sounds as if there are some very interesting stories in your heritage.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 06-07-2014 at 07:01 AM..
I have always known my family as Portuguese, Irish and a little bit of distant English ancestry. My dad's family actually comes literally from Ireland, while my mom's parents were both born in Lisbon, Portugal whom both were dark olive skinned people. My mom litterally looks like she is Italian or Turkish and is extremely dark sinned while my dad could pass for an Irishmen, so I always assumed I was 50% Portuguese and 50% Irish-English.
Now I decided to take my ancestry DNA test through Ancestry.com , and for $99 it told me very strange results, like this:
45% British
34% Irish
10% European Jewish
6% Western European
3% Italian/Greek
2% West Asian / North African
WHAT????!?! How can I be 70%+ British/Irish, when my mom is 0% Brit or Irish!!!! And where did the Jewish trace come from?????? Im not even remotely close to being Jewish to any of my knowledge!!!!!! 10% Is way too high!!! Is Ancestry DNA Legit!!???
Should I pay money to get a 23andMe test done?.. because it says I am 0% Iberian, which I know I am atleast partially Iberian, because my mom's maiden name is Silva!!!!!!
The problem is that what you thought you knew was incorrect. Your mom apparently DOES have other ancestry besides Portuguese. Lisbon's a port city. People from all over come and go there, and sometimes they stay and sometimes they go but they leave things behind, ya know?
My most recent ancestors mostly come from The Netherlands, and the other part from England. One family came here from Holland with a French surname, and another family came here from Holland with a Spanish surname. Our DNA shows 3% Iberian peninsula, along with the bulk being Brit/Scandinavian/Western European, plus there's a bit of Finnish and some Asia Minor. We have no clue who those latter people were.
It's only recently that we even discovered that g-g-grandma from Manchester was actually born in Dublin. Until then, we had no idea that there was any Irish in us at all.
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