General Chat

Around 7 weeks ago and my results came through this afternoon. Some of the results were interesting because of the percentage and one because I have no idea where it comes from in my family tree even though it’s a higher percentage than areas I am aware of.

Scottish 43%
English and North Western Europe 24%
Irish 22%
Germanic Europe 7% - This one I’m not sure where it comes from
Cornwall 2%
Welsh 2%

Welsh also surprised me as I didn’t think my family were there long enough for it to leave a genetic marker. One great grandmother was born in Wales but she married my English great grandfather in England aged 20. Her mother was also born in Wales to Cornish born parents and spent much of her early life in England marrying a man who was born in England to an English mother and an Irish father.

Hi Tawny

If you don't already know you can see on Ancestry which parent you got your ethnicity from and the percentage, this might help to narrow down the Germanic Europe.:-)

Thank you Belle.

Don’t worry about your 2% Cornish & Welsh. These are so small they could be ancient. The Germanic Europe may just be a bit old too.

As Londonbelle suggests check how Ancestry have split your dna between your parents - hopefully you will have a clue as to which one is which. Ancestry don’t tell you.

Just for interest, if you were now to test with another company your ethnicity results would be different. It’s all down to the algorithms they use.

Have fun playing around with your matches. The function to allocated colour spots to various groups is very useful.

One of my great and great great grandmothers were born in Wales and 2x great grandmothers parents were born in Cornwall.

My grandfather was blonde haired and blue eyed. There was a pow camp for German soldiers where my grandfather lived. They were not supposed to speak to the soldiers but my grandfather aged 4 when WW2 started was a curious child. One of the soldiers told him he would make the perfect German child. It has piqued my interest and curiosity and I wonder now if there was more truth in that statement than anyone realised at the time.

Sometimes we have to look at history to explain certain results. The Celts moved west and that ancestry could have been put in several places which don’t always make sense.
I believe Irish & Scottish can intermingle and Northern English can be put on with Scots on Ancestry.

I have ( I think without looking) more Welsh than you but with no known connection, but I have Channel Islands, Irish & Cornish - so I think Celt & Norman.

OH has Germanic, which probably comes from his East Anglia family. You would think his Yorkshire ancestry would include the Vikings (Scandinavia). But they didn’t go there.

The whole thing is so difficult, but work through your matches, and if you find a load of Germans at a close level( a lot of cms) you will have your answer ;-) However, you may find links to your great grandfathers family, which lets your great grandmother off the hook.

Tawny
You saying about your blond grandfather reminded me that when OH had a full head of hair he was often taken for German when we were abroad, blond & blue eyes.

He is one of those Englishmen who resolutely refuse to speak another language so I am left struggling to be polite.

Poor you namelessone.

I spoke to my parents yesterday and my mum is now going to get a DNA kit too so we can hopefully narrow down if it is her maternal or paternal line that the Germanic Europe is from. My mum has a suspicion as to which side of her family it is but it would be good if we could at least prove it one way or the other.

Probably a good idea.
But have you started studying your matches as you can see there individual ethnicity amounts. If the match hasn’t been active the ethnicity amounts may not be upto date.

Ancestry redoes the ethnicity results about once a year.

Updated: I keep all my ethnicity updates and using Germani Europe as an example it has appeared then disappeared several time.s The last update in December last year suddenly upped me to 9% and highlighting it as from Belgium. I have no explanation for it at all. I have pretty good records and even where I can't go back too many generations it still takes me to the early 1800's.

I had a look at other relations online and it has just made me even more curious. It could be possible it comes from both sides of my maternal line. My half uncle shows 37% and a second cousin once removed from the other side of my mother’s family shows 5%. It will be interesting when my mum gets her results.

That’s interesting. If you consider that you get 50% from each parent his 37% is pretty high.