DNA testing accuracy

[Kloumann]

My DNA test with Ancestry did not throw up any surprises in terms of my ethnicity but my partner's test with Myheritage was extremely surprising. Although her mother was descended from French Huegenots & father descended from East of England, her ethnicity was 42% Scandinavian.

Can anyone explain that please.

[Craclyn]

MyHeritage have an overhaul of their ethnicity estimates planned for this year. Don't get too hung up in the discrepancies.

[Gadget]

There have been many threads on this topic.

Have a read of this thread:

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=820580.0

[stevemiller]

My Ancestry has variously shown
 12% Scandinavian  -  then 3% Norway -  and now 9% Sweden, 8% Norway, 8% Germanic Europe

The same data uploaded to MyHeritage gives me as 53% Scandinavian.
 
I think MyHeritage has a tendency to exaggerate Scandinavian!!!!

All to be taken with wagonloads of salt ....

[HughC]

It's incomprehensible to me why anyone would take any notice of those ethnicity estimates, which are a load of rubbish.

[Mart 'n' Al]

I was born in Kent, both my parents were born in West Hartlepool, all four of my grandparents were born in Hartlepool, and before that none of my ancestors were born in Hartlepool. Who is to say where my ancestry lies? As with the testing companies, it depends what rules you use.

Martin

[jamg68]

As someone else stated the accuracy changes as more people are tested. I do suspect sometimes several people might come up with the same DNA in Scandinavia but when new DNA samples are found it could actually be that that DNA comes from a family that emigrated to Scandinavia from another country.

If you go to https://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/history.html you will see some Huguenots did indeed emigrate to Scandinavia so you might find you have a DNA connection to them.

Also it's important to note that different DNA companies use different grouping for DNA, some might just put Scandinavian as just Scandinavian but some groups will group Norway, Finland and Sweden as a group Scandinavian. I know that Ancestry, 23andme and most companies will list what the groups consist of. They usually then inform you of the change in grouping like in ancestry Scandinavian then was divided in seperate grouping for Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Kind regards, Joelle

[BashLad]

People think autosomal DNA tests say where you're ancestors lived - they're actually telling you where people related to you now live. They inevitably depend on the size of the population sampled and the specificity of the test. Which company/test to choose depends on what you know of your own ancestry and what you're looking for. Personally as a Brit I would recommend LivingDNA because they got almost exactly what I expected. I have 8/128 GGGGG-grandparents (6.25%) from Cornwall -

[Craclyn]

LivingDNA is fine if all you want is ethnicity results. You will have a long wait to get any useful matches there. If you want to use your DNA for serious genealogical research then you should use one of the companies with a significant database.