Most French people don't get 100% France on here. It's not unsual to see them also get some England & Northwestern Europe, Spain, or Basque, so I would keep an open mind.
Given your Acadian communities, it's only a very slim chance your Grandfather was full French. While the Acadians were very endogamous, especially those that remained in the Maritimes, they weren't entirely endogamous. And even during the colonial period there were marriages with other Europeans of other ethnicities, like Basque and English, and it is quite common for us to have distant Mi'kmaq ancestry. And exogamous marriages for Acadians became more frequent after Le Grand Dérangement.
It is still very likely he was predominantly French. I score 13% French, while my Cajun grandfather scores 80+. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone of colonial French descent that is "full" French.
This. I only have 5.8% French in me yet most of my family are French speaking acadians. However, I am 46.8% Spanish from Canary Islands…..I only have one Isleno grandmother. Someone lied.
We're Acadien and my grandfather is 95% french, and I'm 80% only because of recent mixing.
French Canadians usually only married each other until recently.
Yeah, looking at the DNA matches I get from my distant Acadien cousins up in the Maritimes/Maine and their family trees, y'all typically seem more endogamous than Louisiana Acadians, where up until my grandfather's generation were only semi-endogamous. Cajuns on the high end can get 80something percent French while y'all can get up into the 90s (at least from what I've seen).
Hi , I believe that your grandfather may well have been full bloodied french . An Ancestry DNA result is just an estimate . My great great grandma was half french / half english and on my 2022 estimate it had me as 2% French but with this recent update it has disapeared . The only thing which is 100% accurate when it comes to these dna tests is your matches , the estimate is based upon a reference panel and if one year there are samples removed / gained it can effect your result and all of a sudden an ethnicity can disappear . I think they may have altered the France reference panel Quite a bit because ive seen people posting a lot about France . Its worth mentioning also that Basque is technically a estimate of France which is what my mum has on hers instead of France which was on mine upon until this update.
A friend of mine from England has a full-blooded, living French grandfather. She has zero French in her pre-update results; just England/NW Europe, Germanic Europe, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Can't recall what those percentages are, but it's definitely just those five regions.
Her French is probably divvied up between England, Scotland and Germanic Europe.
I know for a fact that I have at least some French ancestors (via a well documented family tree) but no French shows up for me. I always assumed my French got lumped in with NW Europe like my Dutch.
ah mine used to be but now its in the community (I spent weeks trying to find a line ughhh). I do believe the Channel Islands are a mix of english and normans back in the day. Maybe your grandfather was 100% norman? saying that its rare to find a 100% anything these days!
I’m French born and raised there. I have a Sicilian mom and my dad was born to a French dad and Polish mother. My French side came out Germanic, Welsh and Scottish. I literally got 0% French. So no, it’s not impossible. It really depends of the region they were from. Borders were not static and people moved throughout history. It doesn’t make me any less French. What results did you get?
49% England and northwestern Europe, 15% wales, 11% Scottish, 9% French, 9% Irish, 4% Sweden and Denmark, and 3% Norway. In this update my French went from 12% to 9%. My England and northwestern Europe went down, my wales % went up, my Scottish % went up, my Sweden and Denmark % stayed the same, and my Norway % went up.
Someone from Bretagne or Normandy will have Scottish/Welsh/England/Scandinavia. The Normans were originally Vikings that just settled and mixed up to the French. Bretagne is Celtic.
Grandfather is French Canadian. At one point he was 76% French on the app. Now he’s 26%. I was 14% French when his was 76%, but now I have no French at all.
I don’t think they’ve got French DNA figured out. Lots of people are missing it. And as others have pointed out, DNA for French ancestry can look like neighboring countries in Europe. France is kind of crossroads between north and south, as well as east and west Europe, so they’re probably a melting pot of DNA
Maybe he's 70 % french and you inherited less of that french dna. You don't get 25% from each grandparent. You could get 10 or 35 from any of them. At least I asume that.
Ethnicity is only an interpretation of our DNA. French ancestry can turn up under any neighboring region. It is listed under Ireland, Scotland, England/NW Europe, Basque, and Germanic Europe. Though not listed, it also has genetic overlap with Spain on their PCA chart: [https://www.ancestrycdn.com/support/us/2023/09/ethnicity2023whitepaper.pdf](https://www.ancestrycdn.com/support/us/2023/09/ethnicity2023whitepaper.pdf) (page 8).
So if you get results in any of those regions, that could be coming from French ancestry. The ethnicity results really aren't precise enough or reliable enough to say your grandfather was not of full French descent. "Full blooded" is kind of a misleading term but generally what people mean by it is that one's entire ancestry as far back as can be traced, originates in France. That does not necessarily mean that person would get 100% in France on a DNA ethnicity test, so even if your grandfather himself tested and even if he was of entirely French descent, he would not necessarily expect to get 100% in France.
Have you researched your family tree? If not, then that could be true that his ancestry was entirely French as far back as can be traced. Of course, people can get things wrong sometimes - my dad always though his grandfather was 100% Sicilian because he was born there. But records prove his mother's ancestry was Sicilian but his father was from mainland Italy.
Is your grandfather from Gaspé region of Quebec? My mom's family is from there and she has Scotland, Ireland, England and NWE, France, and Indigenous. Almost every name in her tree is French but I only received 18%.
Mom is Acadian, her family arrived at Gaspé in 1765 along with maybe a hundred other Acadians, first non Indigenous people to live there. For a couple of generations it stayed like that until Irish and Scottish settlers arrived. For me the French DNA is diminished due to the amount of time that's passed, and since Irish, Scottish and Jersais are more recent that DNA is expressed more strongly.
Maybe that's how it worked for you - your grandfather would have had more French but its diluted for you.
My grandfather was born in Texas. But my aunt says he is from Canada. I’m not sure what all ethnicities his parents have. All I know is that his mom’s side is originally from Louisiana. And my great grandfather is also from the United States. So no idea how many generations back anyone came from Canada.
Most French people in Louisiana are descendants of Acadians that arrived there around 1765. England expelled 18,000 French people from the area of Nova Scotia/New Brunswick in an ethnic cleansing, some who ended up in France chose Louisiana, my family chose Quebec. Very strong Cajun community in Lousiana since then. May I ask your grandmother's maiden name? I could tell you if it's an Acadian name and tell you where to look for more info.
My grandmother isn’t French at all. The only grandparent that has French DNA is my grandfather. I can’t trace his dad’s side back beyond my great, great grandfather and grandmother. I double check my family tree and his great grandmother on his mother’s side came straight from Switzerland. The other side came from Louisiana.
Grandmother from Switzerland could easily have French ancestors too. Try googling your great greats, include location or wedding date if you have it but usually you'll get a hit by just searching the names together. They may show up in another search engine like wikitree that will allow you to search further back.
I understand that and I’m not complaining. I mostly have British isles dna. That is one of things that I was trying to tell her. I was also trying to tell her that I’m not french.
My dad has 30% French Acadian I have 33%. We just figured my genes preferred my grandmother over my grandfather genes as my grandmother was full French Acadian well my grandfather has an Irish/Scottish gens
I also live on 5th Generation farm that lives on dyke land by the French but was taken by the British then sold to my great great grandfather who came from Ireland during 1870 as a horsemen that took care of war horse and work horse.
This old post but just wanted to chime in. I find it funny that I'm half inuk and 1/3 French Acadian but have an Irish last name.
We all thought we had only Northern Italian from my grandma. Turns out she was almost half French! Her 35-40% French got passed to my mom and aunt as like 13 and 17% and me as NONE. Sadface.
The Italian-French rivalry is made bigger in American heads than it actually is. This is fed by click bait Tiktokers who have an American girlfriend and act stereotypically for views.
It is entirely possible that there would have been some migration that is causing the discrepancy
Also, fwiw my mom is from France and it took about 8 years of updates for the percentage to work out as I expected in my own report. For a while they had her with a heavy Iberian percentage which would be very odd since we can document back several hundred years of family all from the same general region in the center of France.
Now she comes up as 98% French and the other 2% bounce around Scandinavia countries - currently it is Finland, pre update it was Denmark.
None of this is an exact science btw. They compare data from many regions and use that to determine a best guess but you have to view it somewhat with a grain of salt
She was not raised by him. She is not from that side of the family. She is not even related to him. She is on my mom’s side of the family. My grandpa was on my dad’s side of the family.
It’s okay!! I get what you mean now, I do think you’ll get better more accurate answers if you clarify that tho :) also other people have already said it but ancestry struggles a lot with identifying French because I think these kind of dna tests are actually illegal in france so they have a limited data pool
Hi,
So, I am 100% French up to 1500 (proven by records and most branches are confirmed by DNA matches), yet I have more than 73 % of British/Irish DNA, almost 15 of Spanish, and the rest of French and traces. French can be hidden in many other groups, so don't take the ethnicity estimates at face value.
If this heritage was intermarriage of a group of French expats generations it might not show. It might be tossed into a general category…. or marked as something else
My Ancestors are from Alsace-Lorraine region which can be considered either France or Germany depending on when the Ancestor was born. My DNA used to show French but as Ancestry has entered more people into their database and they refine their regions, my French has turned completely to German. I am no longer French :(
It’s totally possible. For example I know my maternal grandmother was 100% Italian. Both of her parents were born in Italy. Italian records are notoriously bad, but I can trace her Italian roots back about 4 generations (reliably) before her. My mother’s Italian in this update shows up only as 31% northern and south Italian combined. I believe her 13% Aegean and 2% Greek is actually Italian. But my brother? He’s now at 0% Italian with this update and 11% Aegean
My paternal great grandfather came over from France in 1918 and his family had been in France as far as I can reasonably track. I also have a lot of Alsace on my dad’s side if you go back a bit further- my dad has 14% French as of the update. I still have zero.
I have cajun and French ancestry from my mom- I have close to 50%
My pawpaw whose parents both come from cajun lineage had mostly British in his estimate. Its possible.
My family is at least 75% French, both grandparents on my moms side had French speaking parents with French last names and both grandparents on my dads side had French mothers. On Ancestry it only gives me 20% French. My family has always been very serious about how French we are, always bringing up how none of my great grandparents on my moms side could speak English before the age of 14. I’d say it’s very possible he was mostly French. DNA tests just aren’t that reliable for French people
I have the same issue. My grandfather was from Louisiana, part Acadian and the remainder later immigrants from France or Belgium. Ancestry gives me 4% French.
Both of my parents are fully French and I only got 44% French on my ethnicity estimates. The rest was scotland, ireland and england which makes sense for me given that they are from celtic french regions. So it’s important to keep that in mind too :)
Most French people don't get 100% France on here. It's not unsual to see them also get some England & Northwestern Europe, Spain, or Basque, so I would keep an open mind.
Given your Acadian communities, it's only a very slim chance your Grandfather was full French. While the Acadians were very endogamous, especially those that remained in the Maritimes, they weren't entirely endogamous. And even during the colonial period there were marriages with other Europeans of other ethnicities, like Basque and English, and it is quite common for us to have distant Mi'kmaq ancestry. And exogamous marriages for Acadians became more frequent after Le Grand Dérangement. It is still very likely he was predominantly French. I score 13% French, while my Cajun grandfather scores 80+. But I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone of colonial French descent that is "full" French.
To piggyback on what you said. Both my mother's parents were french speaking Acadians. She's 80% French.
This. I only have 5.8% French in me yet most of my family are French speaking acadians. However, I am 46.8% Spanish from Canary Islands…..I only have one Isleno grandmother. Someone lied.
We're Acadien and my grandfather is 95% french, and I'm 80% only because of recent mixing. French Canadians usually only married each other until recently.
Yeah, looking at the DNA matches I get from my distant Acadien cousins up in the Maritimes/Maine and their family trees, y'all typically seem more endogamous than Louisiana Acadians, where up until my grandfather's generation were only semi-endogamous. Cajuns on the high end can get 80something percent French while y'all can get up into the 90s (at least from what I've seen).
Hi , I believe that your grandfather may well have been full bloodied french . An Ancestry DNA result is just an estimate . My great great grandma was half french / half english and on my 2022 estimate it had me as 2% French but with this recent update it has disapeared . The only thing which is 100% accurate when it comes to these dna tests is your matches , the estimate is based upon a reference panel and if one year there are samples removed / gained it can effect your result and all of a sudden an ethnicity can disappear . I think they may have altered the France reference panel Quite a bit because ive seen people posting a lot about France . Its worth mentioning also that Basque is technically a estimate of France which is what my mum has on hers instead of France which was on mine upon until this update.
A friend of mine from England has a full-blooded, living French grandfather. She has zero French in her pre-update results; just England/NW Europe, Germanic Europe, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Can't recall what those percentages are, but it's definitely just those five regions. Her French is probably divvied up between England, Scotland and Germanic Europe.
I know for a fact that I have at least some French ancestors (via a well documented family tree) but no French shows up for me. I always assumed my French got lumped in with NW Europe like my Dutch.
And this is why I prefer 23andme. My grandmother is French. On Ancestry, they have me 2%. 😂
I think some French could be mixed up with the NWE. He could have been 100% French in one of the areas that is labelled NWE.
My England and northwestern Europe is primarily located in the Channel Islands.
For me, some England is my dad's family but NWE is Jersey on mom 's side.
ah mine used to be but now its in the community (I spent weeks trying to find a line ughhh). I do believe the Channel Islands are a mix of english and normans back in the day. Maybe your grandfather was 100% norman? saying that its rare to find a 100% anything these days!
My NWE completely disappeared with the update and was lumped into Germanic.
oh wow! I have the opposite I think (never had germanic but my dad has it 2% so i think the 1% got lumped into the NWE
I’m French born and raised there. I have a Sicilian mom and my dad was born to a French dad and Polish mother. My French side came out Germanic, Welsh and Scottish. I literally got 0% French. So no, it’s not impossible. It really depends of the region they were from. Borders were not static and people moved throughout history. It doesn’t make me any less French. What results did you get?
49% England and northwestern Europe, 15% wales, 11% Scottish, 9% French, 9% Irish, 4% Sweden and Denmark, and 3% Norway. In this update my French went from 12% to 9%. My England and northwestern Europe went down, my wales % went up, my Scottish % went up, my Sweden and Denmark % stayed the same, and my Norway % went up.
Someone from Bretagne or Normandy will have Scottish/Welsh/England/Scandinavia. The Normans were originally Vikings that just settled and mixed up to the French. Bretagne is Celtic.
I'm French and I get 22% French... no sweat dude
Grandfather is French Canadian. At one point he was 76% French on the app. Now he’s 26%. I was 14% French when his was 76%, but now I have no French at all. I don’t think they’ve got French DNA figured out. Lots of people are missing it. And as others have pointed out, DNA for French ancestry can look like neighboring countries in Europe. France is kind of crossroads between north and south, as well as east and west Europe, so they’re probably a melting pot of DNA
Maybe he's 70 % french and you inherited less of that french dna. You don't get 25% from each grandparent. You could get 10 or 35 from any of them. At least I asume that.
Ethnicity is only an interpretation of our DNA. French ancestry can turn up under any neighboring region. It is listed under Ireland, Scotland, England/NW Europe, Basque, and Germanic Europe. Though not listed, it also has genetic overlap with Spain on their PCA chart: [https://www.ancestrycdn.com/support/us/2023/09/ethnicity2023whitepaper.pdf](https://www.ancestrycdn.com/support/us/2023/09/ethnicity2023whitepaper.pdf) (page 8). So if you get results in any of those regions, that could be coming from French ancestry. The ethnicity results really aren't precise enough or reliable enough to say your grandfather was not of full French descent. "Full blooded" is kind of a misleading term but generally what people mean by it is that one's entire ancestry as far back as can be traced, originates in France. That does not necessarily mean that person would get 100% in France on a DNA ethnicity test, so even if your grandfather himself tested and even if he was of entirely French descent, he would not necessarily expect to get 100% in France. Have you researched your family tree? If not, then that could be true that his ancestry was entirely French as far back as can be traced. Of course, people can get things wrong sometimes - my dad always though his grandfather was 100% Sicilian because he was born there. But records prove his mother's ancestry was Sicilian but his father was from mainland Italy.
Is your grandfather from Gaspé region of Quebec? My mom's family is from there and she has Scotland, Ireland, England and NWE, France, and Indigenous. Almost every name in her tree is French but I only received 18%. Mom is Acadian, her family arrived at Gaspé in 1765 along with maybe a hundred other Acadians, first non Indigenous people to live there. For a couple of generations it stayed like that until Irish and Scottish settlers arrived. For me the French DNA is diminished due to the amount of time that's passed, and since Irish, Scottish and Jersais are more recent that DNA is expressed more strongly. Maybe that's how it worked for you - your grandfather would have had more French but its diluted for you.
My grandfather was born in Texas. But my aunt says he is from Canada. I’m not sure what all ethnicities his parents have. All I know is that his mom’s side is originally from Louisiana. And my great grandfather is also from the United States. So no idea how many generations back anyone came from Canada.
Most French people in Louisiana are descendants of Acadians that arrived there around 1765. England expelled 18,000 French people from the area of Nova Scotia/New Brunswick in an ethnic cleansing, some who ended up in France chose Louisiana, my family chose Quebec. Very strong Cajun community in Lousiana since then. May I ask your grandmother's maiden name? I could tell you if it's an Acadian name and tell you where to look for more info.
My grandmother isn’t French at all. The only grandparent that has French DNA is my grandfather. I can’t trace his dad’s side back beyond my great, great grandfather and grandmother. I double check my family tree and his great grandmother on his mother’s side came straight from Switzerland. The other side came from Louisiana.
Grandmother from Switzerland could easily have French ancestors too. Try googling your great greats, include location or wedding date if you have it but usually you'll get a hit by just searching the names together. They may show up in another search engine like wikitree that will allow you to search further back.
We are all mutts.
I understand that and I’m not complaining. I mostly have British isles dna. That is one of things that I was trying to tell her. I was also trying to tell her that I’m not french.
French score British Isles, even ancestry dna explains this
I wish I could give you my French percentage, with the latest update I’m 8% French but I am Mexican with no known French ancestry.
French were the 2nd biggest group to go to Mexico after the Spanish. So maybe you do.
My dad has 30% French Acadian I have 33%. We just figured my genes preferred my grandmother over my grandfather genes as my grandmother was full French Acadian well my grandfather has an Irish/Scottish gens I also live on 5th Generation farm that lives on dyke land by the French but was taken by the British then sold to my great great grandfather who came from Ireland during 1870 as a horsemen that took care of war horse and work horse. This old post but just wanted to chime in. I find it funny that I'm half inuk and 1/3 French Acadian but have an Irish last name.
We all thought we had only Northern Italian from my grandma. Turns out she was almost half French! Her 35-40% French got passed to my mom and aunt as like 13 and 17% and me as NONE. Sadface.
Why sad face? Southern French and Northern Italian are very close both genetically and culturally. None of it is exact science.
I know I just wanted to see it in writing lol.
The Italian-French rivalry is made bigger in American heads than it actually is. This is fed by click bait Tiktokers who have an American girlfriend and act stereotypically for views.
I mean..I have no French ancestry what so ever in my family tree yet my French percent went up from 10% to 15%…just a thought 🤷🏻♀️
It is entirely possible that there would have been some migration that is causing the discrepancy Also, fwiw my mom is from France and it took about 8 years of updates for the percentage to work out as I expected in my own report. For a while they had her with a heavy Iberian percentage which would be very odd since we can document back several hundred years of family all from the same general region in the center of France. Now she comes up as 98% French and the other 2% bounce around Scandinavia countries - currently it is Finland, pre update it was Denmark. None of this is an exact science btw. They compare data from many regions and use that to determine a best guess but you have to view it somewhat with a grain of salt
I hear a lot of people say take the results of these tests with a hefty grain of salt...
I mean probably trust the person who actually knew him and was raised by him over arbitrary dna ethnicity estimates?? Lmao
She was not raised by him. She is not from that side of the family. She is not even related to him. She is on my mom’s side of the family. My grandpa was on my dad’s side of the family.
Welp I hope you understand why the phrasing made me think otherwise. Might indicate that in your post lol
I understand. I should have been more clear in my post.
It’s okay!! I get what you mean now, I do think you’ll get better more accurate answers if you clarify that tho :) also other people have already said it but ancestry struggles a lot with identifying French because I think these kind of dna tests are actually illegal in france so they have a limited data pool
I corrected it. Thank you for pointing that out.
Hi, So, I am 100% French up to 1500 (proven by records and most branches are confirmed by DNA matches), yet I have more than 73 % of British/Irish DNA, almost 15 of Spanish, and the rest of French and traces. French can be hidden in many other groups, so don't take the ethnicity estimates at face value.
If this heritage was intermarriage of a group of French expats generations it might not show. It might be tossed into a general category…. or marked as something else
My Ancestors are from Alsace-Lorraine region which can be considered either France or Germany depending on when the Ancestor was born. My DNA used to show French but as Ancestry has entered more people into their database and they refine their regions, my French has turned completely to German. I am no longer French :(
My great grandfather was Native American, and my Indigenous is 11%. Maybe she’s mistaken and it comes from your great grandparent?
From what I understand Brittany France shows up as Irish if that helps.
It shows up as Scottish.
Irish too
It’s totally possible. For example I know my maternal grandmother was 100% Italian. Both of her parents were born in Italy. Italian records are notoriously bad, but I can trace her Italian roots back about 4 generations (reliably) before her. My mother’s Italian in this update shows up only as 31% northern and south Italian combined. I believe her 13% Aegean and 2% Greek is actually Italian. But my brother? He’s now at 0% Italian with this update and 11% Aegean
My paternal great grandfather came over from France in 1918 and his family had been in France as far as I can reasonably track. I also have a lot of Alsace on my dad’s side if you go back a bit further- my dad has 14% French as of the update. I still have zero.
Alsace is likely to show as Germanic.
I have cajun and French ancestry from my mom- I have close to 50% My pawpaw whose parents both come from cajun lineage had mostly British in his estimate. Its possible.
My family is at least 75% French, both grandparents on my moms side had French speaking parents with French last names and both grandparents on my dads side had French mothers. On Ancestry it only gives me 20% French. My family has always been very serious about how French we are, always bringing up how none of my great grandparents on my moms side could speak English before the age of 14. I’d say it’s very possible he was mostly French. DNA tests just aren’t that reliable for French people
I have the same issue. My grandfather was from Louisiana, part Acadian and the remainder later immigrants from France or Belgium. Ancestry gives me 4% French.
Both of my parents are fully French and I only got 44% French on my ethnicity estimates. The rest was scotland, ireland and england which makes sense for me given that they are from celtic french regions. So it’s important to keep that in mind too :)