The Times wants your views: DNA ethnicity results

[Malcolm33]

My father's YDNA -- male-line ancestors in Wiltshire back to earliest records in 1500 -- is I-M223, rare in England (3-4% in that part of England).
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_I2_Y-DNA.shtml

It is associated with the pre-Celto-Germanic people of north-Western Europe, such as the megaliths builders (5000-1200 BCE). Its age has been estimated between 21,000 and 13,000 years old, which corresponds to the Epipaleolithic period.

I2a2 is found in most of Europe and could have had a continent-wide distribution before the arrival of Neolithic farmers. Although it hasn't been identified in the few Mesolithic Y-DNA samples available as of 2016, I2a2a was found in Neolithic Spain and in southern Russia during the Yamna culture, at each extremity of Europe...

   I'm a rarity too, Janey.   I have the R1a 'Viking Strain' and this is only about 4.5% of males in England, but as high as 57% in Poland and over 40% in Russia - only 13% in Norway.

    BUT I have a distant cousin who has the usual R1b1a2 ydna and so can add that lot as ancestors.  I'm reasonably certain that your father would have ancestry through maternal lines covering most other dna found in the British Isles.

    Think of it all being the same as a kitchen delicacy which has mainly one spice but a dash of this and a dash of that.     Or a kind of cocktail.

[hurworth]

I'm English and had my DNA tested at FTDNA last June, I uploaded the results to Gedmatch but in spite of having loads of 'matches' to 2nd -remote cousins I only found one in Canada whom I knew before anyway!
My ethnicity is 65/35 GB/European and it seems as though most of the people tested are from the USA, they seem to be unaware of their 'Old World' ancestry so we in the UK have very little chance of finding anyone to match with there?
CR

I'm always delighted to find a match from the British Isles, so thank you for testing. 

The known ancestors of people whose kits I manage are all from the British Isles from two to four generations ago, so UK/Irish matches are very useful for us.

[JaneyCanuck]

    Think of it all being the same as a kitchen delicacy which has mainly one spice but a dash of this and a dash of that. Or a kind of cocktail.

Absolutely! It's quite a drag that maternal lines can't be traced with anything like the kind of fine-tuning that is present with male lines.  But the autosomal may help. If I get around to finding the kit and doing it ...

I does just happen that my mother's father's male line is the one of mystery, with the fake surname, so the YDNA was the clue (and he's plain old common or garden R1b-U106).

Some people (cough men cough) are interested only or mostly in researching their surname line. I'm completely ecumenical. It makes for one heck of a lot of ancestors to be keeping track of once you get back to 1800 and beyond, though!

[JaneyCanuck]

I'm always delighted to find a match from the British Isles, so thank you for testing. 

The known ancestors of people whose kits I manage are all from the British Isles from two to four generations ago, so UK/Irish matches are very useful for us.

Although I'm in Canada, I'm really in the same boat as Cockneyrebel - grandparents all born in England and emigrated without extended family -- so I'm not really looking for relations in the US (or Canada).

But with a surname as common as the one I had discovered my great-grandfather was born with, I had hoped that a match in the US would solve two birds with one stone -- I would confirm that my gr-grfather really was the son of his registered father, through a match with that surname, and at the same time, some lucky people in the US would finally know where their male-line immigrant ancestor came from, because I do know about my gr-grfather's ancestors in Cornwall back to the 1700s generally.

Since his father was connected with mining in Cornwall, and mining-related emigration to the US from Cornwall was common, I felt sure I would find a match among the many hundred people in the project for his very common surname. Nope. Not a sausage. Not a remote match. I was almost as disappointed for the people his DNA could have helped as I was for me!

But the very close match I did find gave me yet another surname for my gr-grfather (or his gr-grfather, or whoever), and confirmed for the match in the US that her father (who knew his grandfather had emigrated from the same part of Cornwall circa 1850 in connection with mining) was legitimate despite the family rumours, and despite the lack of an actual surname match.

The fact that people in the US, in particular, are unaware of their Old World ancestry doesn't matter when it comes to DNA matching -- that is exactlly what they are trying to find out. The matches, if there are any, will be made (e.g. at FTDNA) regardless of surname or family history knowledge. And then the people who match get to figure out where their trees converge. Whether that is helpful to the tester in the UK depends on what they are wanting to learn.

So I absolutely encourage it too!

[hurworth]

I'm always delighted to find a match from the British Isles, so thank you for testing. 

The known ancestors of people whose kits I manage are all from the British Isles from two to four generations ago, so UK/Irish matches are very useful for us.

Although I'm in Canada, I'm really in the same boat as Cockneyrebel - grandparents all born in England and emigrated without extended family -- so I'm not really looking for relations in the US (or Canada).

For one kit there could be all sorts of possible explanations for various matches around the globe (via NPEs).  So when I said they were from the British Isles two to four generations ago it didn't actually mean that no one had had the chance to spread their genes elsewhere. 

In the family there were sailors (some involved in the Baltic flax trade mid-1700s, others in whaling and others transporting goods across the Atlantic), plantation managers in the West Indies before slavery was abolished and merchants involved in tobacco in Virginia etc.  They were crossing the Atlantic by the mid-1700s but in many cases had a wife back home.  Others were on the tea-clippers to China.

And there were soldiers involved in various campaigns - Rosetta in Egypt, or with HEIC.  Any of them could have fathered children while they were away - we know of two children in India that weren't spoken of until their father died (when they are mentioned in his will).

Another ancestor would travel to Virginia in the 1700s as he had business interests there (tobacco).

So, there could be matches from anywhere!

Although it hasn't been proven by DNA we have recently made contact with a branch of the family from the Middle East.  They're descended from a cousin who was in the region in the late 1800s that everyone thought never married.

[Finley 1]

!! uhm  !!

changed my mind about that then..

I will stick with what I knows as fact....   I am ME and not at all unhappy about that

Xin 

[Julz1211]

I would do a DNA  If my mum could honestly give me the truth of who my sperm donor were. instead I have some guy on my original birth certificate that I know - 1 million % didn't do the deed. My adopted father told me the truth in August 2016 before he died 😢 that me & my step sister had the same sperm donor which I do have to say we are a mirror image of each other - everyone says we are twins ...I just wish the man who died in August that adopted me at the age of 2 could of been put on my original birth certificate he was the one that deserved the title of " FATHER" but the only reason i would want DNA testing is for my health reasons as I can't do nothing about changing the original birth documents the best of it is my mum even put herself down - As married to the guy using his surname wow how you could just write what you want back then, was a joke & they took your word for it ...

[DevonCruwys]

I would do a DNA  If my mum could honestly give me the truth of who my sperm donor were. instead I have some guy on my original birth certificate that I know - 1 million % didn't do the deed. My adopted father told me the truth in August 2016 before he died 😢 that me & my step sister had the same sperm donor which I do have to say we are a mirror image of each other - everyone says we are twins ...I just wish the man who died in August that adopted me at the age of 2 could of been put on my original birth certificate he was the one that deserved the title of " FATHER" but the only reason i would want DNA testing is for my health reasons as I can't do nothing about changing the original birth documents the best of it is my mum even put herself down - As married to the guy using his surname wow how you could just write what you want back then, was a joke & they took your word for it ...

An autosomal DNA test could potentially identify your sperm donor father. An autosomal DNA test will give you matches with genetic cousins. If you are lucky enough to have a match with a close cousin, such as a first or second cousin, then it is simply a question of tracing the tree forwards to identify a likely candidate. There have been people who have had matches with half-siblings in the genetic genealogy databases. Ideally you need to be in all three databases (23andMe, AncestryDNA and Family Tree DNA).

Have a look at the resources listed on the ISOGG Wiki page on DNA testing for the donor conceived:

http://isogg.org/wiki/DNA_testing_for_the_donor_conceived

[billjackson100]

my wife is a McNamara from Co. Clare and seems to be related to the  blood line of some on this chat forum.
her family moved to Keokuk, Iowa.
here's the obit from CHIC TRIB for the Judge in the family, whose father came from Co Clare:
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1939/10/25/page/27/article/obituary-1-no-title
can we compare notes?