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I have well-documented, multi-generations of my family history in Pforzheim, Germany area; however, Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHertiage and Gedmatch show no German in my ethnic breakout. Ancestry labels it as 21% Europe South.
I have read some articles on the ethnicity breakout but I feel the algorithms must have a logic error that made some assumption(s) on poor historical or family data or accuracy is effects by the number of people tested. I would love to read a good article on the subject and it is overall accuracy relative to well-documented trees.
I think this segment of Germany (Black Forest Region) has overlap with French, Swiss and Northern Italy heritage; thus, this is why I believe the algorithms are in error. I would love to see the results of others from Pforzheim region.
Yes, you are not alone. If you are on GEDmatch, try the Eurogene K36 and map with Taxe de Similitude.
They have some Southern German populations in their reference panel, and they are indeed a strong match to northern Italy.
I have no Italian ancestors that I know of, yet do sometimes get Italian populations too on ethnicity tests, I think it is because I have a lot of Southern German Ancestry, 48ers specifically.
MyHeritage is a scam
Not sure what kind of calculator they are using. I find more accurate the calculators found at Gedmatch, Ancestry or FTDNA.
MyHeritage really struggles with admixed individuals. It bombed out on me completely. Swedish and Italian were my main regions........I have no Italian relatives that I know of and one or two Swedes from the 1700s.
It works much better with non-admixed individuals. My wife is Greek and she her family are correctly pegged by MyHeritage as "Greek" much more often than not. Going into a bit more detail, cousin matches with deep ties to Asia Minor come back with high "West Asia" (the region that contains Turkey.) Other cousins come back as "Balkan" which includes Greece as well. I suspect this is showing traces of mainland Greek ancestry, but I can't tell for sure.
At any rate, it is free to download your raw file there, so always worth a shot, IMO.
Even natives might only get low % for "their" ethnicity region. Ancestry themselves say that the typical native person from the Europe West region - which includes France, Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, much of Czechia and Austria as well as parts of England, Southern Denmark and the North of Italy - only has 48% "Europe West" ancestry. So there would be major influences from other regions. It's a natural consequence of being in the middle and surrounded by other groups with whom you trade, make friends as well as fight. So that's two different ways of looking at it. A great-grandpa might be 100% German in your family tree because his name is Hans and he was born in Germany, but if he had taken a DNA test he may have been very much a 'mix' of different regional influences that aren't directly defined as "German" based on today's understanding of the term.
On Ancestry, Albania is covered under "Europe South". They used to call it "Italy/Greece" even though the area circled covered more than Italy and Greece. At the time, Ancestry said that these groups were lumped together due to similar DNA.
Interesting info re: MyHeritage. I just looked them up and came up with this link:
70% of Albanians are Muslims, 20% (my family) are Orthodox and 10% are Catholic. I mention this because of the prevalence of Muslim first names.
Here's some interesting info for you re: Albanians. They are divided into Ghegs and Tosks, with Ghegs living in the northern part of the country and the Tosks in the southern part. My family is Tosk.
I use the MyHeritage free service, and it works well for my wife's family. As mentioned above, much less so for me who is of mixed Western European + a bit of Jewish heritage.
Here are some of the surnames I am seeing:
Islami
Rexhepi
Kolgjini
Svilar
Huskaj
Gashi
They all have significant Greek results on MyHeritage, but the names don't sound Greek to me. As mentioned the other big part of their DNA is called "Balkan."
I use the MyHeritage free service, and it works well for my wife's family. As mentioned above, much less so for me who is of mixed Western European + a bit of Jewish heritage.
Here are some of the surnames I am seeing:
Islami
Rexhepi
Kolgjini
Svilar
Huskaj
Gashi
They all have significant Greek results on MyHeritage, but the names don't sound Greek to me. As mentioned the other big part of their DNA is called "Balkan."
A lot of people (today and in the past) who migrate to a different region will change their names in an attempt to fit in. They will give their children names that are common in the area they live, not necessarily names from the region they came from. So a Greek family moving to somewhere else may adopt names more common to their new home.
A lot of people (today and in the past) who migrate to a different region will change their names in an attempt to fit in. They will give their children names that are common in the area they live, not necessarily names from the region they came from. So a Greek family moving to somewhere else may adopt names more common to their new home.
Sure.
I'm not sure that is what is going on here though. All of those folks were only distantly related to each other in most cases, yet all had roughly 40-60% Greek and 30-50% Balkan. Mainland Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians and Kosovars are part of the same rough genetic cluster. I am wondering if many one of those other ethnic groups comes back at roughly those percents as calculated by MyHeritage.
While MyHeritage has a "Greek" designation, they don't have specific ones for those other ethnic groups, so their results have to a mix of the populations available on the site. Greek+Balkan would make sense, IMO.
Before Roman times, Greece colonized Marseilles, Eastern Sicily, Naples (Neopolis), and many other towns and cities in Southern Italy. This is where your Greek comes from. In fact there are isolated areas in the heel and toe of Italy where the people are called the Griko. These Griko speak a dialect of Greek. The K in Griko alone says a lot since the K is not in the Italian alphabet.
I use the MyHeritage free service, and it works well for my wife's family. As mentioned above, much less so for me who is of mixed Western European + a bit of Jewish heritage.
Here are some of the surnames I am seeing:
Islami
Rexhepi
Kolgjini
Svilar
Huskaj
Gashi
They all have significant Greek results on MyHeritage, but the names don't sound Greek to me. As mentioned the other big part of their DNA is called "Balkan."
Just by the spelling, I recognize some of those names as definitely being Albanian. Rexhepi, Kolgjini, Huskaj---are definitely Albanian. Many Albanian surnames have the "xh" and "gj" combo in them. The long-time Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha is a good example of such a surname. "Svilar" also appears to be Albanian. Some Albanian Muslims have arab surnames. "Gashi", I would also guess to be Albanian.
Since my maternal grandfather was born in a town by the Greek border, people in that region often do have Greek surnames even though they are Albanians.
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