General Chat

Do the instructions not say anything? Would the assumption be that you didn’t do the test until around the time you could get to the post and isn’t it freepost so all you need is ( for someone) to get to the post box?

Question....when you have done the test, is there a time limit to get it off in the post?

nameslessone yes could well be so, and there's a massive gap to fill where any number of factors might account for the darker looks ( and height!).

Trouble with that one is that unless you can actually trace them back you can’t prove it.

A touch of Spanish in your Irish ancestry could just come from sailors who were on trading vessels. I’m still pondering on the touch of Basque that Ancestry has given me on my Dad’s side. Possibly from trade with Cornwall ? I seem to remember a note saying they gave it 1% as they can’t show less. I might have just made that up but I definetkey remember a dna tv show that explained the Spanish results in a Cornish person being explained as ancienttraders.

One of the reasons I was more interested in the ethnicity result was the family story that there may have been some Spanish in the Irish side ( from shipwrecked Armada sailors, historically unlikely but just possible) due to the darker hair and skin tones of some relatives.

I do know that the surname is Anglo-Norman.

Either way I doubt I shall get back past early 1800s. :-)

All comes to nothing in the end ;-)

I think people can take their ethnicity results to0 seriously. Unless you are looking for a specific area Or you find you are 50% something unexpected ( then questions to be asked of your parents) then you should accept them with tongue in cheek and wait for further updates which might make more sense to you.

Ethnicity results raise so many issues, such as I know where my Irishness comes from but why am I more than double that in Scottishness - execpet that I do know that it is difficult to difereniate between the two. Yet Livingdna say i have no Scots. :-S

Names, me, my sister and nephew (sister's son) all had our DNA tested by 'My Heritage' at the same time.
Sister and I were similar, but she has more 'Northern and Western Europe' than me,
I have slightly more Celtic, and a lot more Iberian than her - but I am a lot darker than her. I had black hair - she had brown with fair bits, and skin-wise, before my hair went silver, I had dark olive skin.

My nephew - Irish father - has about 1% Iberian. He has got Northern and Western European, and Irish, Scottish, Welsh, like his mum and I, but a vast percentage of his DNA is Roman! :-S

Nephew's Irish grandparents had the very 'Roman' surnames of Murphy and Kelly!! :-S

It's interesting to hear what everyone has done.

I just went to have another look at my livingdna and note that Findmypast is no longer in partnership with them, which is not particularly a problem, but I believe some people were hoping it would eventually be linked to their FMP trees.

A good example of how difficult this all is.

I’ve been away so have just checked my matches.

I have a new match, not shared with my sibling But shared with a 1st cousin, 3 2nd cousins and a much more distant relation so I can see exactly which line it is.

Sometimes I wonder if he really is my brother ;-) ;-). Ancestry tells me he is ;-) ;-)

I believe they take DNA from people in different areas whose ancestors have lived there for a number of generations, and it is this DNA that we are matched with re ethnicity. I suppose the reason they are able to tweak the ethnicities from time to time is by taking more samples to compare your DNA with.

That’s a shame , as Ancestry
has the biggest database. You cannot upload any test TO A ratty but can upload to your Ancestry test to other sites.

Rose - I have a whole
Batch that I call the Ver…… group. They match with each other but not one of them match to any of my many close relations ( inc. a sibling) I think they are false matches.
I also have matches that I share with one or other cousin but not my sibling!

Jonnie - we all know who is descended from a Viking warrior, I am just content with knowing I have Viking ancestors because of where some of my family came from. Never thought about Cleopatra.

I pleaded my Ancestry results to My Heritage and took a new test with Living DNA and have different ethnicity with all of them - because the data they have collected is different. So which of them is neare the truth I wonder.

I have gone with My heritage as there was an offer for £35 + £5 postage :-D

Florence, I bought mine from Ancestry when it had a special offer. :-D

ty grannyfanny

You buy DNA tests online, there are several different ones at different prices and offering different results. The popularity of each company varies from time to time.
I chose mine with My Heritage, as there was a Black Friday offer 2 for 1.......

Ask around, and google them.

Daft question, how do you get a test for DNA? Do you just buy one from the internet and if so are there any particular sites that are better than others? How must does a test kit cost about?

Florence in the hebrides

I have to admit, I find DNA tests that specify areas a bit 'dodgy'.
How do they work it out? Do they compare the DNA with residents of that area?

i had a laugh when someone was explaining how the food a person ate could determine the area where they came from.
Wherever we lived, we ate 'local' food.
I remember my mother pickling octopus in Malta, and I went around eating prickly pears.
Scotland entailed eating haggis (which I still eat regularly), turnips etc
Then we lived in Cornwall, Devon, and Wales.
As a young woman, i lived in Shetland, and ate a lot of fish and lamb.
'Local' food tended to be less expensive to buy.

I was born in Sussex. When we left, I was still breastfeeding - not sure how much Sussex food would be in my system, but there's definitely more 'food' DNA from everywhere else I've lived.

My results, many years ago, from 'My Heritage were basic, but could easily be explained.

47.1% Northern and Western Europe - My gran (mum's side) came from Suffolk - remember the Viking invasion?
The family had lived in Suffolk for many, many generations - but had moved around Suffolk - as agricultural labourers did.

43.4% Irish, Scottish, Welsh - or in other words - Celtic. I haven't found any Irish, Scottish or Welsh so far, but my dad's mum's side goes back hundreds of years in Cornwall - then to Brittany..
True, we don't know who my dad's dad was, but if it's who we think it was - he was Cornish.

9.5% Iberian. Well, this could be tricky - but a great gran came from the New Forest. Her family were originally Travellers.

Hi all

It was a livingdna test, which I know has a much smaller sample base, but as I "never look a gift horse in the mouth" and it was free, I gave it a go.

Ethnicity wise there was very little I hadn't expected from my paper research, it was a good match percentage wise to the known areas.


Great Britain and Ireland
74.7%

Southeast England
21.3%

Ireland
20%

Devon
7.4%

East Anglia
7.1%

South Central England
6%

South England
3.9%

Northwest England
2.3%

North Wales
2.2%

Aberdeenshire
1.6%

South Wales
1.6%

Central England
1.3%
...

Europe (North and West)
25.3%

South Germanic
16.3%

France
5.5%

Northwest Germanic
3.5%

The Germanic percentage was a bit of a surprise until I considered gt grandmother's Canadian line, and their surnames. which were undoubtedly German.

I've contacted a few people, one who had no one in their extensive tree that matched any name in mine except "Brown" but had no first name for him or her and no idea of date. My John Brown started off in Yorks, went to US in the 1700s , was a Loyalist in the War of Independence, and fled to Canada ( hence my Gt grandmother being Canadian) .

My best hope was a well known genealogist, we exchanged a couple of messages and might have got further on it had he not sadly died, but I sent him a list of names and vice versa, and matching ones were Kemps/Wrights of Teddington area on mother's maternal side, that I have back to the 1700s. Oddly enough , and this may well be coincidence, I can see a family resemblance in his photo via Google.

As far as the Irish side goes, well we all know where that gets stuck, around the 1840s. I've been looking that a bit more recently and there are so many families with the same names intermarrying in a small area that it's a tangle. But there are a number of matches to Sullivans which I might try and contact just to see what they know.

Like Duncan, my Ancestry matches were split between paternal and maternal. I think it happened automatically when my full cousin did a test and she was top of my matches so I identified her as being on my maternal side.

Fwiw, after my brother finished carrying out DNA research (late-70s to early-80s) to lecture, he told me that we all have more in common than we don’t have in common so we are all much more alike genetically than we are aware.

When scientists eventually came up with an ‘Eve’ it resonated with me.

Hi Rambling, was this an Ancestry DNA test?

If so you can split the matches into maternal or paternal if it helps. I just looked back at mine and I can't work out how I did it now - possibly because I have done it so whatever I had to click is no longer there. I know it was simple to do, all you need is to definitely know which side just one match is.

Good luck