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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: QueenoftheWest on Friday 17 September 21 19:38 BST (UK)
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Well, it has arrived and I am... not very impressed!
Old ethnicity estimate for my mother:
England & Northwestern Europe 53%
Your communities with a connection to this ethnicity region:
- Central Southern England
- Yorkshire & East Midlands, England
- Lincolnshire
Scotland 27%
Germanic Europe 7%
Sweden 5%
Wales 4%
Ireland 2%
Norway 2%
The genetic communities were very accurate but I was hoping that the "Scotland" estimate would go down as my mother has absolutely no Scottish heritage; her mother was from Lincolnshire and had links to Yorkshire as well but that's a long way away from Scotland! The family of my mother's father was primarily from Somerset and Wiltshire, with a little bit of Berkshire (hence the central southern England).
New ethnicity update:
England & Northwestern Europe 47%
Your communities with a connection to this ethnicity region:
- Same as above
Scotland 37%
Sweden & Denmark 11%
Norway 5%
Well, the Scotland estimate got even worse! Clearly there is an issue around the north of England being conflated with the south of Scotland, which I suppose is understandable as I doubt people cared much about borders way back when. Wales and Ireland have disappeared, which is more accurate. Germanic Europe has been replaced by Sweden & Denmark and Norway.
For reference, all my mother's great-grandparents are English but one was adopted, with currently unknown parentage.
Would be interested to hear how everyone else's ancestry estimate has changed and whether it has become more or less accurate!
Queenie :)
Disclaimer: I know ethnicity estimates should always be taken with a pinch of salt as the technology is in its infancy and DNA databases are constantly growing and shifting but this is just for fun and interest.
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Well, my Welshness has gone up from 75% to 88% and my Scottish/Irish is now 12%. They also give me traces of Mid West US (Ohio) and England Midlands and NW. So that's over 100%, So, it's all +/-
In fact, the same regions but I've just got more Welsh ;D ;D ;D
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Well, my Welshness has gone up from 75% to 88% and my Scottish/Irish is now 12%. They also give me traces of Mid West US (Ohio) and England Midlands and NW. So that's over 100%, So, it's all +/-
In fact, the same regions but I've just got more Welsh ;D ;D ;D
That's interesting, do you know of any Scottish/Irish ancestors? Or are all your lines Welsh?
Queenie :)
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Not trying to outdo anybody, but mine are even less impressive!
To Summarise:-
Old Ethnicity
Irish 79%
Scottish 21%
New Ethnicity
Irish 80%
Scottish 20%
All that for a '1% swing'!! Though to be fair, I think that my estimates were and are likely fairly accurate, being, probably, nearly 100% Irish, but the Irish from the Ulster counties of Derry/Antrim/Tyrone etc., being pretty indistinguishable from those from Southwest/Cental Scotland, due to the mass movement from Ireland to Scotland in the 19th century, as well as movement back and forward for a millenium or two!!
However, without a doubt I am underwhelmed!
Jane
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My last estimate was closer to my known ancestral makeup than this one. (75 - 25).
It just reflects their database. I tend to stick to my sourced tree than Ancestry's ethnicity estimates.
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Not trying to outdo anybody, but mine are even less impressive!
To Summarise:-
Old Ethnicity
Irish 79%
Scottish 21%
New Ethnicity
Irish 80%
Scottish 20%
All that for a '1% swing'!! Though to be fair, I think that my estimates were and are likely fairly accurate, being, probably, nearly 100% Irish, but the Irish from the Ulster counties of Derry/Antrim/Tyrone etc., are pretty indistinguishable from those from Southwest/Cental Scotland, due to the mass movement from Ireland to Scotland in the 19th century, as well as movement back and forward for a millenium or two!!
However, without a doubt I am underwhelmed!
Jane
You may be underwhelmed but big swings from one ethnicity to another often indicate inaccuracy so looks like your estimate is rather good! Unlike my mother, who seems to have developed a Scandinavian great-grandparent overnight! ;D
Queenie :)
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It just reflects their database. I tend to stick to my sourced tree than Ancestry's ethnicity estimates.
Agreed.
Queenie :)
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, but the Irish from the Ulster counties of Derry/Antrim/Tyrone etc., are pretty indistinguishable from those from Southwest/Cental Scotland, due to the mass movement from Ireland to Scotland in the 19th century, as well as movement back and forward for a millenium or two!!
I think that's where the Scots/Irish portion comes from. They were mainly from Galloway, with the earlier ones having some Irish roots. My (insert- direct line) tree suggests approx 75% Welsh, 20% Scots/Irish and 5% Shropshire, Cheshire & Midlands.
Add - so is this the increased precision that they promised - cor, I'm really impressed (Not).
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Ohio would be what ethnic group? Shawnee? Kickapoo? Iroquois?
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Ohio would be what ethnic group? Shawnee? Kickapoo? Iroquois?
Goodness knows. They reckon that I match with some descendants of the early settlers, so they've used that!!
Their definition of 'ethnicity' is very different from mine.
Add - this is what they say:
Ohio, Indiana & Eastern Kentucky Settlers
1,379,017 AncestryDNA members
You, and all the members of this community, are linked through shared ancestors. You probably have family who lived in this area for years—and maybe still do.
The more specific places within this region where your family was likely from.
South Central Ohio Settlers
Southeastern Ohio & Northwestern West Virginia Settlers
Ross County, Ohio Settlers
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I've just remembered that I shared a flat with Beth from Ohio when I was at university. Do you think that's it??
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Gadget, only if you shared a toothbrush or took a sip from the same glass or bottle as Beth and hadn't brushed since you submitted the sample.
Don
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I've just checked my 23&Me distribution, which has been accurate for various health, etc. features and matches.
They reckon I'm 99.6% British and Irish, 0.2% Iranian, Mesopotamian. 0.2 North African.
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Well, I'm a bit Swedish again.
Still have a puzzle over Welshness. One great grandmother was Welsh; previous estimate was 14% and now it's 6%, but I remain part of the Wales ethnic community. Ggrandma was Mum's grandma. Mum's Welsh estimate has gone up to 44% from 23%, but she continues to be unadmitted to the Wales ethnic community.
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Would be interested to hear how everyone else's ancestry estimate has changed and whether it has become more or less accurate!
Going back two incarnations of Ancestry ethnicity estimate I was 95% English, 3% Scandinavian and 2% other European countries. Then came the last update. Suddenly my Englishness dropped to 73%, I lost my Scandinavian and, by some minor miracle, became 25% Scottish, retaining the 2% other European countries.
Having traced both my paternal and maternal ancrestry back to the 1600s in Warwickshire and Leicestershire without a hint of even a visit to Scotland by any family member I was utterly dismissive of such an estimate and had decided that Ancestry was 100% unreliable in such matters. Now I'm not so sure.
The latest estimate shows me with
England and northwest Europe 76%, with the strongest connections, as I would have expected, to the W Midlands.
Scotland 14%.
Sweden and Denmark 9%,
Norway 1%
It is interesting to note that the reduction in the Scottish element is almost exactly the same as the increase in the Norse content, leading me to wonder whether the earlier 25% Scottish estimate might have more correctly reflected Viking ancestors who arrived in the Midlands via Scotland. If so, where are their Scottish descendants and how did they migrate to the Midlands?
Keith
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My mother is, on paper, majority English, then Welsh, with some Scottish further generations back. According to her new DNA, she is now 43% Scots, 34% Welsh, 23% English. Got the countries right, but percentage-wise I call shenanigans.
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It's puzzling. My Scottish percentage has gone up to 49%, Irish 27% (similar) and English 14% (down). I have 4 English g-grandparents (with paper trail and DNA matches all firmly in England for earlier generations), one g-granddfather from Mayo and 2 g-grandparents from Antrim (probably included in the "Scottish" element) plus one "unknown", so it doesn't really add up for me. ??? ???
(My English families are from Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Somerset, so hardly the Scottish borders!) Apart from that, I have 6% Norwegian, 2% Swedish/Danish and 2% Welsh....
MyFamilyTreeDNA gives 53% England/Scotland/Wales, 44% Ireland and 4% Scandinavia.
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Seem to have gone from:
23% England & Northwestern Europe, 21% Sweden, 21% Scotland, 16% Norway, 12% Wales, 5% Ireland, 2% Baltics
To:
29% Sweden & Denmark, 26% Scotland, 15 % England & Northwestern Europe, 14% Wales, 10% Norway, 3% Baltics, 3% Ireland
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A motto from 40 to 50 years back concerning computers - GIGO
Garbage In Garbage Out. .
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I've had quite a leap from
50% England & Northwestern Europe
18% Germanic Europe
16% Scotland
8% Sweden
6% Wales
2% Norway
to
98% England & Northwestern Europe
2% Wales
My paternal grandmother's side is from Lancashire and Gloucestershire which might explain an overlap with Wales. There is also a 3GGM on that side from Glasgow. Apart from that everything in my tree is English.
My mother has gone from
84% England & Northwestern Europe
6% Germanic Europe
4% Sweden
4% Norway
2% Wales
to
99% England & Northwestern Europe
1% Norway
I was surprised by the previous update, which implied that if I am the average of my parents then my father was only slightly English. (He is no longer around to test directly.) This update has swung completely the other way. I wonder if through some trickery with the reference panel my mother has become Ancestry's definition of English. I had put her previous Germanic Europe, Sweden and Norway down to her majority East Anglia and Kent ancestry showing strong Angle and Jute influence. It is as if ethnicity definitions have gone from 1500 years ago to a few hundred years ago.
By contrast 23andMe says I have a German ancestor in the last 200 years and MyHeritage says I have 11.5% East European ancestry and my mother is 5% Finnish.
It is all a bit of fun but I wish Ancestry would spend more of their time on enhancing their DNA Matches functionality, reducing the 20cM lower limit and make it easier to identify match clusters.
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The previous update jumped mine from 8% Scottish to 20%, now it is back to 7%
I have no known ancestors from North of Birmingham (1 set of GGG grandparents), with most lines traced back to ca 1700
While my Scandinavian has risen from 3% to 10% and Irish up to 8%, again with no known connections
Despite my ancestors being almost exclusively from the South of England, I only come out as 72%
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43% English and Northwest Europe
33% Irish
18% Scottish
6% Sweden and Denmark
My English and Scandinavian has gone down. The Irish has gone up from 30 to 33%
The Scottish has gone up from 9 to 18%
The allocated regions for Munster and Essex follow my research but I haven't found anyone from Scotland yet. However, I do have two gt grandparents that are brick walls.
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Ah - genetic communities/groups. This explains my Ohio category.
Because I don't pay much attention to ethnicity, I'd not come across this categorization before. These are far more interesting and make more sense than the mega ethic groupings.
Links to Ancestry and My Heritage categories:
https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/DNA-Genetic-Communities
https://blog.myheritage.com/2021/03/new-view-the-genetic-groups-of-your-dna-matches/
https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/12/myheritage-launches-genetic-groups/
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DNA testing companies estimate ethnicity by comparing your DNA with a panel of DNA from people with known origins (I.E. their reference panel). The DNA company then looks to see which parts of the customer’s DNA are similar to those from people represented in groups in the reference panel/populations using their own algorithms.
This means in practice if the DNA company tests more people from South Africa than the USA their reference panel, will have a higher proportion of South African and by default you will have a higher chance of matching South African than USA in your results.
Simply because in their dataset you have more chance of matching with South African than USA.
It does not mean your ancestry is more South African than USA, that is what many people get confused about.
Cheers
Guy
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As I wrote on this thread a couple of week ago:
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=852614.msg7208574#msg7208574
Donna Rutherford places much more emphasis on genetic communities than ethnicity - she says it is where these companies are focussing all their scientific resources.
Pheno
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Quite pleased with the update
I finally have some Welsh dna which is good considering I was born there and have welsh ancestors
I have an irish grandparent so the fact the irish has gone from 6% to 25% is good
Scottish has gone down and english has gone up
My mother lost her 2% germanic and its now Swedish/Danish
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Pheno ~
It's much more useful to us than the broad categories that they tend to use as it helps with searching for our kin :)
My tree contains many distant relatives from US, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. They all descend from my ancestors in Scotland, Wales (including the border counties) and the Midlands. Some of the Scots and one Welsh line came from Ireland :)
Gadget
To this framework, we have to fill in the richer, social and cultural history of our ancestors' lives.
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Remember as well that the solid colour dots are meant to represent DNA from 300 to 1000 years ago.
The solid dot with a dashed line surrounding it is 50 to 300 years ago.
If you paper trail doesn't go back over 300 you may not know whether you had ancestors from a particular country or region.
Far more problematic if your unknown or surprising ethnicity result is within the 50 to 300 years category and your research does go back that far.
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I assume it's produced for those who haven't done a thorough tree. I have gathered this information over many years already ::)
add - And they then use our trees to work out the communities :
When we discover communities, we use information from family trees AncestryDNA members have linked to their test results to learn about the historical forces that may have brought their ancestors together
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My results were previously just a mix of English and Scottish but seeing some new trace regions appearing with this new update - Norway, Ireland and Sweden/Denmark. I’m assuming they’re mixed in with my Scottish which is all Highlands/Outer Hebrides?
Scottish is now my majority at 59%. I had a single Scottish great grandmother (who was from the Hebrides) and it all seems to stem from her!
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I get more and more Scottish with every update.
Was about 20% in 2015 and now 53% in 2021.
I will be wearing a kilt by the time I'm 30.
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newest update -
Scotland 88%
Wales 6%
Ireland 4%
England & Northwestern Europe 2%
previous update -
Scotland 84%
England & Northwestern Europe 14%
Wales 2%
So in the last two updates I have went from having no Welsh to 2% and now 6% despite having no Welsh ancestors that i can find. I do have Cornish in my tree which i have traced quite far back. I reckon this has been lumped in with their Welsh grouping.
In the original update I lost my 2% Scandinavian which i actually felt was more accurate. I think that went to my Scottish total.
The new Irish addition maybe slightly high although i have indeed found Irish on one line.
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My previous was 70% Scottish (Scottish Lowlands, Merrick and West Central Scotland) 30% Irish (Ulster and South Down & North Louth) but with new update it is 68% Scottish 30% Irish and 2% England and North Western Europe.
My mum got 85% Scottish, 8% Irish, 3% England and Northwestern Europe, 2% Wales and 2% Norwegian and my maternal grandmothers family who also did DNA tests, on one side they also got part Norwegian which makes sense given their surname is possibly Scandinavian in origin and my mum got a DNA match to at least one person living in Norway.
I knew I had ancestors that came from Scotland and possibly England but being from Northern Ireland I am finding it difficult to trace my ancestors back far enough beyond x5 great grandparents due to records not going back far enough to confirm anything (Marriage records started in 1845, Birth and Death 1864 onwards in Ireland) so before then I had to go on other records such as some wills and grave headstones and other records.
Even my x2 great grandparents on my dads side that I found out lived and got married in Scotland, originally came from Ulster (County Tyrone) but I do have reletives that live in Scotland. Many of my direct ancestors do have Scottish family names though.
I knew about the Irish side as that is mostly on my dads side and a small % on my mums side.
My family tree has my reletives in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, USA, Australia that I was able to confirm with records but I have not been able to confirm anyone in my family back further than in Ireland in the mid 1700s with will and grave headstones or early 1800s for marriage fathers names, death records post 1864 and grave headstones. I don't want to put anyone in my tree that I can't confirm in some way.
I have seen many peoples family trees often have the wrong information about people and no sources to back anything up such as the people who have my x3 great grandmother on their tree, all say she died in the USA in different locations but I have been to my x3 great grandparents grave and photographed it and posted it to my tree as she did not ever live or die in the USA.
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Ive become more English 8% up from 2% which makes far more sense as my mother is 17% English but ive lost some of my Scottishness 48% instesd of 56% which im sad about
My mother has gained back 2% of Scandinavian which.id have liked rather than my 2% inexplicable Italian
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How can I put this discretely. DNA is a record of the Ancestors you have, your Family Tree is a record of the Ancestors you think you have.
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How can I put this discretely. DNA is a record of the Ancestors you have, your Family Tree is a record of the Ancestors you think you have.
I think that you are confusing DNA with Ancestry's estimates of ethnicity. Their estimates are dependent on their reference group. In addition to different reference groups, each company seem to use slightly different measures to calculate ethnicity.
Also, it's important to look at the range for each %. It's likely that, for many of us, very little has changed . For example, 3% could be anything between 0-9%; 9% is 0-20%, etc. In my case, My Welsh portion has increased from 75% to 88% (range - 61-99). None of the regions have changed.
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Ethnicity is derived from DNA.
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Quite so
There is a huge difference between Ancestry and MyHeritage in their estimates for my ethnicity
English 72% vs 62.4% (both pick up on the Southern English)
Scandinavian 10% v 36.4%
Irish 8% vs none
Scottish 7% vs none
Welsh 3% vs none
Ashkenazi Jew none vs 1.2%
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Yes but they can only compare with their databases and Ancestry's is much bigger than that at My Heritage.
Ethnicity estimates are only as good as the size of the sample. It is why they are updated - the sample size increases as more people take tests.
Pheno
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Ethnicity is derived from DNA.
It is not.
I said:
I think that you are confusing DNA with Ancestry's estimates of ethnicity. Their estimates are dependent on their reference group. In addition to different reference groups, each company seem to use slightly different measures to calculate ethnicity.
Ethmnicity is a concept which can be defined in various ways. As petros says, different companies:
define ethnicity differently.
have different reference groups.
have different categories.
DNA is a physical attribute. Ethmicity is dependent upon socially constructed definitions.
add - rainy day reading
https://www.ancestrycdn.com/dna/static/pdf/whitepapers/Ethnicity2020_white_paperV2.pdf
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The latest ethnicity update convinces me more than ever that it's a waste of time - or that it produces an eye-catching headline, but when you dig deeper you find that it's a load of rubbish.
My wife's figures are:
England and NW Europe - 72%
Sweden and Denmark - 13%
Wales - 7%
Germanic Europe - 5%
Scotland - 3%
Another family member has:
England and NW Europe - 78%
Wales - 14%
Norway - 6%
Ireland - 2%
Ancestry's own DNA tools confirm what my wife has always known, that the other family member is her sister, who shares the same two parents and all other ancestors.
Consequently I don't see how the ethnicity figures convey anything useful.
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To quote from the AncestryDNA Learning Hub.
“When a customer takes an AncestryDNA test, our scientists compare their DNA, piece by piece, to see which reference group each piece of that customer’s DNA most closely resembles. The ethnicities assigned to each piece of DNA are then totaled up and the percentages are calculated.”
So Ethnicity is derived from DNA by Ancestry.
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We are just wondering if ethnicity plays any part in your makeup unconsciously?
Although I am always happy for England to win sporting competitions I really have no allegiance and often get moaned at for supporting the other side. My husband, on the other hand, is fiercely patriotic.
Our latest ethnicities have me as 49% England and him as 83% England, almost double my figure.
Wonder if this is reflective in our support for our country and where ethnicity might play a part?
Interesting?
Pheno
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You dont inherit all the same ethnicity genes as your siblings just as one may inherit different physical traits and not the others
Especially with distant relatives so I wouldnt expect to have exactly same ethnicity as a sibling or even exactly half of a parents ethnicity
It doesn't make the tests wrong or rubbish .
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You dont inherit all the same ethnicity genes as your siblings just as one may inherit different physical traits and not the others
Especially with distant relatives so I wouldnt expect to have exactly same ethnicity as a sibling or even exactly half of a parents ethnicity
It doesn't make the tests wrong or rubbish .
I'm well aware that siblings' DNA isn't identical, so at best this is only ever going to be an incomplete picture of anyone's ethnicity. What do these percentages tell you that's actually of any use?
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I keep pining over doing DNA testing but I would rather do it for cousin matches rather than ethnicity estimates as the latter of the two seems to be nothing but a waste of time.
I have a Scottish ancestor who moved to Northern England in about 1760, and quite a bit of French Huguenot blood, plus found a Welshman listed in a will of an ancestor as his late grandfather regarding land he owned. And a spot of Irish.
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The latest ethnicity update convinces me more than ever that it's a waste of time - or that it produces an eye-catching headline, but when you dig deeper you find that it's a load of rubbish.
My wife's figures are:
England and NW Europe - 72%
Sweden and Denmark - 13%
Wales - 7%
Germanic Europe - 5%
Scotland - 3%
Another family member has:
England and NW Europe - 78%
Wales - 14%
Norway - 6%
Ireland - 2%
Ancestry's own DNA tools confirm what my wife has always known, that the other family member is her sister, who shares the same two parents and all other ancestors.
Consequently I don't see how the ethnicity figures convey anything useful.
I've definitely found Ancestry's ethnicity formulations useful and impressive, particularly the region breakdown. Back when I first took a test and knew very little of my deeper family history it correctly pinpointed a specific Cornish region where I later found out a gg-grandmother of mine had been born - the ethnicity report was actually ahead of me on my own research and far from being the gimmick I expected.
My experience is that Ancestry's ethnicity reports are by far the most accurate if your makeup is predominantly British Isles based.
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I too found the ethnicity useful ;
my grandmother was adopted we.d already discovered that her birth father was jewish and his name .my mothers 24 percent jewish and my 12 percent confirms this ethnicity and by loiking at ethnicity of matches we always know when they are from this line even if they have clised trees or no trees
It also lead to discovering second cousins and more about the lineage.
Similarly with a great ggrandmother my mother knew nothing about some scottish ethnicity led to believe the only census that listed her birth place as scotland
As for English ethnicity im impressed that Ancestry can now pinpoint some to the Wirral area
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emeraldcity and brigidmac - I think you two must be among the lucky ones. If I've understood correctly, you've both been looking at relatively recent relationships (within the last 4 generations), whereas most of my wife's queries are rather further back.
However, neither of you has really addressed my point that two full sisters have very different ethnicity percentages. This situation leads me to one of two conclusions:
(a) in one of the reports (and who can tell which one?) some of the regions are wrong, in that they shouldn't be there - so one of the sisters could potentially be sent off on a wild goose chase
(b) regions that are currently reported in just one of the reports should really appear in both - so if only one sister had taken the test, she could potentially be missing out on what you say is a useful line of enquiry
Either way, any correlation between genealogy and "ethnicity" seems somewhat tenuous. Or am I misunderstanding what "ethnicity" actually means? Or are Ancestry using the word in a non-standard sense?
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So here's my attempt to answer your question...
It is quite normal for full siblings to recieve different ethnicity results - e.g. I've had multiple ethnicity estimates from different companies over the years and always had different results to my sibling.
One reason is that full siblings will receive different segments of DNA from different ancestors in their family tree - so they will get different 3rd/4th/5th etc cousin matches as well as different ethnicity results. This is why the more family members you DNA test the greater your chance of breaking down genealogy brick walls.
This article explains in more detail:
https://blog.myheritage.com/2018/08/dna-can-siblings-have-different-ethnicity-estimates/
The most detailed and useful ethnicity results I've had so far are from LivingDNA - e.g. I have one 5th Gt Gf from Exeter Devon - I got 3% Devon - plus I found a cluster of 6-8th cousin matches on my Ancestry matches list who all go way back in Exeter Devon - so I think I can say I've verified that ancestral line now.
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Great Explanation Carmelia
I suppose the more distant the ehnic origin the less likely the regional matches are to show .
I dont have a sibling to compare with but my cousin has a similar amount of jewish ethnicity to me thru our mutual Latvian great grandfather
What is surprising is that he matches some 3rd cousins who do not match my mother tho she is a generation closer !
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It is quite normal for full siblings to recieve different ethnicity results
Thanks, I'm fully aware of that, as I wrote before:
I'm well aware that siblings' DNA isn't identical,
But I went on to say:
so at best this is only ever going to be an incomplete picture of anyone's ethnicity.
That's my main point, really. If you're lucky, the ethnicity estimate might help you to work out where to look for a reasonably near unknown ancestor, but probably only if it's a region that you don't already have ancestors in - and many of the regions used are so broad that it may not help much anyway.
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I understand that so-called Ethnicity Estimates are partly based on reference panels and that they comprise people who can trace their lineage to a very specific part of the world for several generations i.e. that they are representative in theory of the type of DNA that people from that area carry. But is the creation of the reference panel entirely down to the DNA company or do the people included get asked or at least advised that they form part of it?
I ask because having spent many years assembling my family tree by conventional means and ascertaining, I thought, that both sides of my family come from a very tight part of the UK for several generations a recent DNA test has proved that half my tree are not genetically related to me. It would follow that if I unknowingly form part of a reference panel, my tree would confound the average DNA thought to be part of that panel.
The half of my tree that still seems valid is solidly English, going back to at least the mid 1700s, but my Ancestry Ethnicity Estimate says that I am at best 5% English! Go figure!
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it correctly pinpointed a specific Cornish region where I later found out a gg-grandmother of mine had been born - the ethnicity report was actually ahead of me on my own research and far from being the gimmick I expected.
Are you saying Ancestry narrowed down Cornish ethnicity to a distinct part of the county? And could this have been because it was using other trees that already had the 2x great grandmother born in a specific location?
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Are you saying Ancestry narrowed down Cornish ethnicity to a distinct part of the county? And could this have been because it was using other trees that already had the 2x great grandmother born in a specific location?
https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/DNA-Regions
Scroll down to Devon and Cornwall and you find these regions:
Devon
East Cornwall
Kerrier, Cornwall
West Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly
So I assume emeraldcity means one of these regions.
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Devon
East Cornwall
Kerrier, Cornwall
West Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly
They don't define these regions. What does East, West and Kerrier mean?
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"They don't define these regions ..."
Good grief, the whole thing is only about 115 km long [measured on the diagonal]. That's around half the size of Long Island, NY.
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There must be one of their maps somewhere.
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Good grief, the whole thing is only about 115 km long [measured on the diagonal]. That's around half the size of Long Island, NY.
Precisely. And Kerrier, in particular, is a small area whose boundaries have changed over the centuries. The most recent incarnation stretched to the north coast; previous incarnations didn't do this. How can Ancestry get so granular, and on what basis?
Our ancestry is Cornish back through many generations (based on DNA and paper research) and yet Ancestry can't pinpoint our ethnicity precisely, even though it seems to be able to do this for someone with just one 2x great grandmother born in the county.
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There must be one of their maps somewhere.
I'd like to see this. Can't find it myself.
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Visualise a map of Cornwall.
Kerrier is the part to the west of the middle
West of that is West Cornwall
East of that is East Cornwall
Note - I used to live in Plymouth once upon a time ;D
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Thanks, Gadget, very familiar with Cornwall having lived there for many years, and Kerrier, East and West are meaningless definitions. What does Ancestry actually mean by these terms?
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Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe emeraldcity could tell us.
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For what it's worth, my guess is they've identified locational clusters from various trees and given them arbitrary names knowing that no-one will challenge them on it.
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I understand that so-called Ethnicity Estimates are partly based on reference panels and that they comprise people who can trace their lineage to a very specific part of the world for several generations i.e. that they are representative in theory of the type of DNA that people from that area carry. But is the creation of the reference panel entirely down to the DNA company or do the people included get asked or at least advised that they form part of it?
They could use the number of recognised Common Ancestors as a measure of the accuracy of a tree. Having the Common Ancestors spread evenly throughout the tree would be better than having them concentrated in a few places. They could also use the number of DNA matches that you have connected (the icon with a blue circle with three connected boxes and a tick in a green circle) although that would be vulnerable to people being deliberately awkward.
I suspect that my tree has made it onto the panel. I haven't seen anybody else's ethnicities change as much as mine (50%->98% English, 95 Common Ancestors) and my mother's (86%->99% English, 140 Common Ancestors). Presumably somebody present on the panel will show up as nearly 100% as they will be an exact match for themselves. The main counter-argument is that it wouldn't make sense for us to both be on the panel.