Twins get “mystifying” DNA ancestry test results

[killarney rose]

I know. It’s ironic, I have twin cousins that have always been mistaken for identical twins. They look like it, but they aren’t.

 

[Amonet]

I got my DNA test results back! No major shocks, but there is Scottish in there that I can only hypothesise could be the ancestal line to my paternal grandfather that I could only take back to early 1800s London...so maybe the first one on that line died in London but was born in Scotland?

So many distant cousin matches but most of them I can't work out the common ancestor. So far the most distant from me that has numerous distant matches is a set of 5th great grandparents.

It hasn't yet answered my question about a Welsh ancestor from about 1840, but maybe the answer is in there somewhere.

Has confirmed my mum's dad was who we believed and I don't know if his family fully believed it, but it's in my DNA for sure.

Possible 4% Norwegian, but I don't trust that one... they've given 10% for Scotland and that should only be about 2%. But the Irish is spot on to what I estimated from my known family tree research at 9%

I'm really pleased I received it as a present, it's fascinating!

 

[Amonet]

You mean like the Anglo-Saxons (a German tribe) settling in the UK?

No, I see zero evidence anything prior to about 1600 would show up in these type of test results. I do not believe there was much germanic DNA coming into the UK though it did leave some language traces, probably through trade more than anything.

 

[Friday Fan]

Ancestry changes my ethnicity whenever they have an update. Same DNA sample. Same person.


In March 2019, I was 13% Italian
Then with an update it was 22% Italian
Then with the next update, I had no more Italian

I'm not Italian, nor is there a chance that I would be even part Italian.


I'm 1/2 British Isles (I'm able to trace it back far enough to know there were no Italians in that line. Most came before the Revolutionary War) and 1/2 Armenian. (all immigrated from southern Turkey between 1910 and 1925)

 

[Charlot123]

Interestingly, I repeated almost the same experiment. Sent my own DNA and my father’s one to Ancestry, 23@me and FTDNA and uploaded to MyHeritage.

The difference between the three companies is exceptionally surprising for dad and less so for me.
MyHeritage added, to his already puzzling results, Ashkenazi (1.6%) - I really doubt + 4 % Japanese/Korean. Same for his sister. Both groups highly unlikely as we have a tree.

I simply loaded their DNA into WeGene, a Chinese company, and according to them, all these Ashkenazi/Japanese/Koreans are gypsies. Which makes more sense, given that dad was born in central Russia, 4-6 % gypsy genome is not unlikely, the rest (Baltic/Eastern Europe), We Gene happily interpreted as “British”.

But to be honest, we do not dig out the skeletons of our long-departed relatives to compare with us. The geneticists make a group, of, say, 1000 people, who had all four grandparents born in Scotland, and draw the genomes for “Scotts”, What really this group has in unclear. Scots, English, Gauls. Go guess, We compare us with us. Some groups with high endogamy (Jews, Finns) can be more verifiable, but the rest? Probably, not, but the strength lies in big samples, so the results might get more close to reality with time.

 

[Friday Fan]

Interestingly, I repeated almost the same experiment. Sent my own DNA and my father’s one to Ancestry, 23@me and FTDNA and uploaded to MyHeritage.

The difference between the three companies is exceptionally surprising for dad and less so for me.
MyHeritage added, to his already puzzling results, Ashkenazi (1.6%) - I really doubt + 4 % Japanese/Korean. Same for his sister. Both groups highly unlikely as we have a tree.

I simply loaded their DNA into WeGene, a Chinese company, and according to them, all these Ashkenazi/Japanese/Koreans are gypsies. Which makes more sense, given that dad was born in central Russia, 4-6 % gypsy genome is not unlikely, the rest (Baltic/Eastern Europe), We Gene happily interpreted as “British”.

But to be honest, we do not dig out the skeletons of our long-departed relatives to compare with us. The geneticists make a group, of, say, 1000 people, who had all four grandparents born in Scotland, and draw the genomes for “Scotts”, What really this group has in unclear. Scots, English, Gauls. Go guess, We compare us with us. Some groups with high endogamy (Jews, Finns) can be more verifiable, but the rest? Probably, not, but the strength lies in big samples, so the results might get more close to reality with time.

Certain parts of Europe are so interconnected, that DNA doesn't differ much: Ireland, Scotland and England... Denmark, The Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany will often blend with the British Isles.

Ancestry always seems to shuffle those regions around with each update.

I assume Eastern Europe has crazy overlap.

My Heritage gives me 20% Jewish! I am not Jewish. Not coming from an Armenian family in Turkey...No way, would that ever happen! Too freak'n segregated. I don't think my grandparents met a single Jewish person until they left Turkey!

A tale of three DNA tests!
Currently: Ancestry is the most accurate

 

[Friday Fan]

No, I see zero evidence anything prior to about 1600 would show up in these type of test results. I do not believe there was much germanic DNA coming into the UK though it did leave some language traces, probably through trade more than anything.

Plenty of it!

 

[Charlot123]

Certain parts of Europe are so interconnected, that DNA doesn't differ much: Ireland, Scotland and England... Denmark, The Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany will often blend with the British Isles.

Ancestry always seems to shuffle those regions around with each update.

I assume Eastern Europe has crazy overlap.

My Heritage gives me 20% Jewish! I am not Jewish. Not coming from an Armenian family in Turkey...No way, would that ever happen! Too freak'n segregated. I don't think my grandparents met a single Jewish person until they left Turkey!

A tale of three DNA tests!
Currently: Ancestry is the most accurate

Probably, not, however, a Sephardic Jew (quite likely to have lived in Turkey) could have fallen in love with an Armenian beauty and converted into Christianity. Or, his parents could have converted.

Jews are one of the few groups where endogamy is high. But - if Torquemada, who brought Inquisition into Spain, was from Marranos family, anyone can have some Jewish ancestry. Given your area, I bet they were Sephardim, not Ashkenazi. Why don’t you run it through Gedmatch genetic analyzer, if you see “Moroccan Jew” or such as an admixture, this would prove my hypothesis. )

 

[Friday Fan]

Probably, not, however, a Sephardic Jew (quite likely to have lived in Turkey) could have fallen in love with an Armenian beauty and converted into Christianity. Or, his parents could have converted.

Jews are one of the few groups where endogamy is high. But - if Torquemada, who brought Inquisition into Spain, was from Marranos family, anyone can have some Jewish ancestry. Given your area, I bet they were Sephardim, not Ashkenazi. Why don’t you run it through Gedmatch genetic analyzer, if you see “Moroccan Jew” or such as an admixture, this would prove my hypothesis. )

Not where they lived! They were not allowed to date. Period...Full Stop...
All marriages were arranged. Lots of endogamy because relatives refused to marry anyone but a relative. Marriages were alliances which made the family stronger. (There were no "love marriages") Everyone lived with their inlaws and everyone knew everyone's business.

The area was so backward. They had no plumbing. The women would bathe the men and pick their lice off of them. (This was what my great grandmother did do her husband..LOL) Each dwelling was equipped with a pit, where they burned human waste.

Plus there would have been a huge language barrier.

Gedmatch does not show Jewish either.

 

[Eloise]

Not where they lived! They were not allowed to date. Period...Full Stop...
All marriages were arranged. Lots of endogamy because relatives refused to marry anyone but a relative. Marriages were alliances which made the family stronger. (There were no "love marriages") Everyone lived with their inlaws and everyone knew everyone's business.

The area was so backward. They had no plumbing. The women would bathe the men and pick their lice off of them. (This was what my great grandmother did do her husband..LOL) Each dwelling was equipped with a pit, where they burned human waste.

Plus there would have been a huge language barrier.

Gedmatch does not show Jewish either.

Just wait until another update and it might be gone. I went one or two Ancestry ethnicity updates with a significant amount of some kind of Eastern European (when no family tree indicated such, and nor did any other ethnicity estimate service). Then another update came and it was gone and its never come back.

 

[Charlot123]

Not where they lived! They were not allowed to date. Period...Full Stop...
All marriages were arranged. Lots of endogamy because relatives refused to marry anyone but a relative. Marriages were alliances which made the family stronger. (There were no "love marriages") Everyone lived with their inlaws and everyone knew everyone's business.

The area was so backward. They had no plumbing. The women would bathe the men and pick their lice off of them. (This was what my great grandmother did do her husband..LOL) Each dwelling was equipped with a pit, where they burned human waste.

Plus there would have been a huge language barrier.

Gedmatch does not show Jewish either.

Oy, I am sorry. I didn't notice it was "My Heritage". My Heritage is an Israeli- based company that is very smart (doing something unrelated to ethnic tests), but they do not test Israelis. Because of some law...if someone ends up out of wedlock, he has to leave his community for 10 generations. (Google "mamzer"). Anyhow, non-religious Israelis send their DNA to 23@me and then transfer to my Heritage. My Heritage has tons of transfers. They are doing cool things, in general. If you have old letters, with stamps, they can extract DNA from saliva and you can have your ancestors' DNA! With some imputations, but still.

And then, since MH gets so many transfers, they sometimes get small samples of rare genomes. This is how my husband once got 1% of Nigerian DNA. Then it disappeared. Meaning, MyHeritage probably got more Nigerians and realized that specifically this 1% was not necessarily Nigerian. Anyhow, my Heritage has good imagination. I was even hoping I could get something out of dad's 2%Inuit/1.2%Japanese/2.8% Korean/1.6% Ashkenazi, maybe Ainu, thought i, but WeGene who knows Asian DNA better, said, Sinti Romani. Since I don't have photos of my ancient relatives, and Romani at least could live where dad is from, I'd go with this. Btw, you, too, can run your DNA through WeGene. All Europeans are Brits to them, but Asian portion they know well, in contrast to our ancestry companies.

 

[Charlot123]

Just wait until another update and it might be gone. I went one or two Ancestry ethnicity updates with a significant amount of some kind of Eastern European (when no family tree indicated such, and nor did any other ethnicity estimate service). Then another update came and it was gone and its never come back.

Eloise, usually when they say, Jewish or Finnish, it is true. Except for MyHeritage, lol.

 

[PrairieWind]

Ancestry changes my ethnicity whenever they have an update. Same DNA sample. Same person.


In March 2019, I was 13% Italian
Then with an update it was 22% Italian
Then with the next update, I had no more Italian

I'm not Italian, nor is there a chance that I would be even part Italian.


I'm 1/2 British Isles (I'm able to trace it back far enough to know there were no Italians in that line. Most came before the Revolutionary War) and 1/2 Armenian. (all immigrated from southern Turkey between 1910 and 1925)

Keep in mind that the Romans invaded and conquered Britain a long time ago. So a lot of Mediterranean blood got mixed with British at that time.