Ancestry's Ethnicity Update Is Finally Here - Share Yours!

[Spelk]

A motto from 40 to 50 years back concerning computers - GIGO
Garbage In Garbage Out. .

[cbowley]

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.

[Petros]

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%

[Jill Eaton]

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.

[Gadget]

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/

[Guy Etchells]

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

[Pheno]

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

[sirsimon]

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

[Gadget]

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.