Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Ethnicity helped me track down a non-paternal event in my maternal grandfather's line. On paper all of his ancestors trace back to English settlers in Colonial New England but Ancestry shows my ethnicity as 11% Jewish. It was very confusing because my paternal grandfather has distant Jewish ancestry but 11% seemed very high. I tested a maternal cousin and sure enough her results show 6% Jewish. I searched for matches who were Jewish or part Jewish and by tracing back their trees I was able to find that my cousin and I descend from a German Jewish immigrant who came to the United States in 1839.
Ethnicity also helps me categorize many matches as maternal or paternal. If a match has no Eastern European ethnicity chances are they are on my mother's line. Conversely matches with very high Eastern European results are probably paternal.
This update has been a step backward for me-- FTDNA is the only company that thinks I have Middle Eastern ancestry (7%), now "Magyar" ancestry (6%), Scandinavian (29%), Iberian (10%), Ireland (8%). They now say I have no German ancestry. My actual ancestry is British and German, but their estimates add up to over 60% outside Britain and Germany.
They also removed my trace Native American ancestry which other companies estimate between 1% and 2%. But they kept my 1% Subsaharan ancestry which appears in all tests.
FTDNA myOrigins 1.0:
Scandinavia 34%
Western and Central Europe 26%
Southern Europe 20%
Finland and Northern Siberia 3%
Asia Minor 12%
Eastern Middle East 5%
FTDNA myOrigins 2.0:
British Isles 54%
Southeast Europe 33%
West and Central Europe 6%
Finland < 2%
East Middle East 3%
West Middle East < 2%
FTDNA myOrigins 3.0:
Great Britain 48%
Scandinavia 11%
Ireland 5%
Greece & Balkans 28%
Italian Peninsula 8%
No German, but that's not surprising since no one can tell my British, Norwegian, and German ancestry apart - it's obviously DNA that covers all three areas and there's no reliable way to tell them apart. I just wish companies would be honest about that instead of trying to unreliably split it up.
Southern European ancestry is still relatively accurate but their attempt to break it down is obviously way off (should be Italian, not Greek).
Actual ancestry:
32% Italian
~ 32% British (English and Scottish/Scots-Irish)
~ 24% Germanic
~ 12% Norwegian
No German, but that's not surprising since no one can tell my British, Norwegian, and German ancestry apart - it's obviously DNA that covers all three areas and there's no reliable way to tell them apart. I just wish companies would be honest about that instead of trying to unreliably split it up.
Southern European ancestry is still relatively accurate but their attempt to break it down is obviously way off (should be Italian, not Greek).
Actual ancestry:
32% Italian
~ 32% British (English and Scottish/Scots-Irish)
~ 24% Germanic
~ 12% Norwegian
It seems they were able to separate your Northern vs. Southern European ancestry, but got the details wrong within each. I'm still trying to figure out how they can throw Middle Eastern, Iberian, and Eastern European ancestry into the results of someone who is all Northern/Northwestern European. Something is amiss. And it would be very misleading to someone who doesn't know their actual ancestry. Adding many more reference populations as they did seems to be complicating things that shouldn't be complicated.
OTOH-- I guess I can derive some satisfaction knowing that I've apparently stumped them.
Scandinavia 39%
West and Central Europe 36%
East Europe 17%
Ashkenazi 6%
Finland <1%
North Africa <1%
Southeast Europe <1%
Version 3:
Central Europe 38%
Scandinavia 37%
West Slavic 15%
Italian Peninsula 10%
Baltic<1%
I'm very shocked that they removed my AJ background. I'm assuming that it's in the Italian now. This is the first time I've had it taken away. It bumped up to 7% in the recent Ancestry update.
I just looked at my MyOrigins V3 again and the estimate is different than 3 weeks ago. The Sephardic Jewish was not there earlier. I am sure of that.
98% Iberian Peninsula
<2% Scandinavia
<1% Central Europe
<1% Sephardic Jewish
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
