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

[coombs]

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.

[emeraldcity]

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.

[brigidmac]

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

[arthurk]

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?

[Carmella]

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.

[brigidmac]

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 !

[arthurk]

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.

[TonyV]

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!

[Flemming]

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?