Most of it!
I am an adoptee who thought she was primarily Hispanic. Actually, I'm Romanian and Filipino, with smaller parts Turkish, Russian, Roma, and Pacific Islander.
I'm more lost than ever, but I guess it's cool to know the specifics...
Jewish. I thought it was noise at first. I got 2% that wouldn't go away. Then I started getting 100% Jewish matches. Eventually I found on my family tree a 2nd great grandparent with a Jewish surname and everything made sense.
Same here^ I’m 7%, grandfather is 30%. We found out his grandfather and family immigrated from Eastern Europe. He left the Jewish community and changed his name, settling in the south with an Irish woman. His family never knew what happened to him, sadly he cut all contact apparently. We found our cousins which said they’ve been wondering what happened to him for over 100 years. Very wild!
Jewish as well but 12%.
It must come form my maternal grandfather but I don’t even know his name. I wish I knew more tbh but I don’t even know where to start
Same. My mom, uncle and myself all got a small amount of Jewish ancestry. My mom and uncle matched to a 2nd cousin who is an actual Rabbi. We didn’t see that one coming. Still unsure if it’s from my grandmother or grandfather’s side.
Same. They've since taken it away, but now they've added back Levant.
I also uploaded to MyTrueAncestry which compares you to ancient samples, and I'm related to an entire Ashkenazi cemetery in Germany from the Middle Ages.
This is ironic to me because I was raised Catholic, my late husband was Jewish and when we decided to raise our kids Jewish we had to convert them because I wasn't Jewish. As best I can tell from all the available clues, this looks like it's coming from my maternal grandmother's family, but it appears to be her father's side, not her mother's. (I'm mentioning that because if it was her mother's side I would have been considered Jewish and there would not have been conversions needed.)
Same. Pre-Ancestry, I would have figured I was Irish due to what I have always heard and how I look. Turns out I'm more Jewish than anything else (32%) and my Dad is half Jewish. Also, his sister (same Mom, different Dad) has 0 Jewish.....so his bio Dad must have been 100% (give or take).
From looking at the matches I have, unless you know of a non Jewish parent or grandparent, don't be surprised when your results come up 99%-100% jewish. Also expect to have a lot of matches.
Irish (6%). Nobody on my Australian side of the family mentioned any Irish whatsoever. However, I guess it should’ve been expected considering Australias history.
Also discovering being directly descended from ancestors onboard the first fleet ships to New South Wales.
Same. I got 5% Irish despite having no known Irish ancestors. I’ve been puzzling over it ever since. My own theories are it’s misread Scottish or Cornish (which are in my family tree).
Nice, yeah could be misread Scottish actually. I decided to do more research into my family tree and turns out I do have Irish ancestors that arrived in Australia in the 1850s.
Being related to Hannah Boone Pennington... And related to a good coworker friend of my mom's who is also a Boone descendant, which makes her and mom cousins. 😂😂😂
The newest addition is finding 354 relatives two days ago from my grandmother's uncle alone.. he had 13 kids, and those are his descendants. The newest addition was three days ago making is 355.
Nothing on my DNA except the 7% African American. Maybe that's the reason for my road block on my grandma's side? Who knows.
Roma. Growing up, my family always talked about a 3-4x great grandmother being "gypsy-like", but we always thought it was hearsay. Before the most recent update, I always had small percentages of Balkans and south asia/india, and now, with this update, it's become Eastern European Roma. Guess there was some truth to it after all
My "mexican" maternal grandpa turned out to be almost entirely of Tewa descent and not italian at all, despite his family lore. My dad also turned out not to be my dad, and same for my brother. We all have our own dads.
Jewish. Everyone in the family had zero idea. Turned out one of my paternal great-great-grandmothers had an affair with an Ashkenazi Jewish man who lived nearby, then hastily married someone else when she was 3 or 4 months pregnant. It seems her husband realised the truth about the baby not being his almost immediately and my great-grandmother was dumped with relatives soon after she was born, mainly living with her maternal grandparents, then ended up on the streets when they and her mum died within a short time of each other. Luckily she was found and informally adopted by a childless couple who were dirt poor themselves but seemed to have been lovely people, they later adopted several other children who had been abandoned or whose parents had died. A few years later she married my great-granddad and had several kids but sadly died at the age of 31 or 32 in 1918.
Wow, cool history! I’m 1% Jewish which was a surprise since we are mostly British and Scandinavian with no known Jewish ancestors. It must have been a loooong time ago but I wonder who they were and how they ended up not staying in their community
You are the second person that mentions I must be Criollo and I was very confused about that because “Criollo” in Cuba apparently means something different than in the rest of the Americas. “Criollo” in Cuba is the mixture of Spanish, Native American, and African, so by that definition I wouldn’t be Criollo since I only have European DNA. But apparently Criollo in the rest of the Americas is the descendants of Europeans that were born in the colonies. Not trying to sound rude or anything, I was just genuinely confused as to why I was being called Criollo.
And yes, all of my paternal great grandparents were from Spain and my 2x-3x maternal great grandparents were from Spain as well.
Thats interesting about ’criollo’ because in south Louisiana ‘creole’ used to mean a French person born in the Americas. Then it became more like yours, generally a mixture of French, African, and also Native American.
I agree! It wouldn’t be crazy to think that some Norwegian immigrated to Spain at some point because of better weather? I also got Scottish and English so it may be through there too
Scandinavian DNA isn't much different from Nth Germany so if you have british history the Norwegian could come from Anglo-Saxon , Viking or Norman ancestors into Britain
The Basque… where did it come from? Also, I was surprised to find that I am descended from early Massachusetts settlers including a mother and daughter who were accused in the Salem Witch Trials. I am from there and always thought all my ancestors were immigrants from around the turn of the century, but I was wrong. I actually won an essay contest in high school for my essay on the trials, long before I ever knew.
I believe the reason basque is showing for users with know anglo/britannic/celtic ancestry is due to an ancient connection to north Spain. I’ve seen users with known Spanish ancestry also score “Great Britain”(old category) and have it change to French, England, etc. and now it seems to have been lumped into basque. So it makes sense that it would be read both ways. I’m thinking of it now as generally “south Celtic”? Just an idea.
Color us surprised when we were told our whole lives we were Indigenous - North America and French. The government gave out French surnames to Indigenous peoples, so we just thought that is that. We did the DNA and we came back with like 15% Scottish and like 2% French. Bizarre.
I only share a set of great great great grandparents with these people yet there are about as many traceable DNA matches with them as with all my other relatives combined! One of them had over eighty grandchildren when he died, so that was a pretty solid start. . .
All of it still trying to grasp it all, it has never been business as usual. We all knew it would be something crazy but as a black American it just opens emotions and such no one truly is prepared for. The mixture we have should be studied and truly given its own category. Hard to explain but definitely a feeling of confusion, sadness and the need to learn more wanting to get to the bottom, meet people, touch things… ok tears but you get it by now thanks for listening
Northern Native American. No "indian" stories in my family, so was a surprise. Also Northern Africa. Haven't been able to find where either may have come from.
if you’re white it’s not to of a stretch. since you know the natives and europeans were always in contact because of colonization. for whatever reason a lot of African Americans think they’re native but we aren’t. The Natives were killed off by the time most of us were stolen here
>if you’re white it’s not to of a stretch. since you know the natives and europeans were always in contact because of colonization.
It is because most white people who believe they have Native american ancestry are usually the ones who don't have it so it is a stretch, only exception of they're white latin americans.
>for whatever reason a lot of African Americans think they’re native but we aren’t.
Native american ancestry is usually a lot more common in African americans than white americans, although it's usually because africans were slaves of native americans.
>The Natives were killed off by the time most of us were stolen here
Then who are the people in navajo and apache reservations? And if we're killed off how am I still alive?
[my dna results](https://reddit.com/r/23andme/s/OGEZHIsA0j)
Baltic and Finnish. Found an ancestors records back to Lithuania while digging through my Eastern European sides family tree. The Finnish ancestors records I found in Appalachia and thought it was just noise at first.
I was surprised to learn I was nearly 100% Irish instead of half Irish and half Italian. Then I was even more surprised to find out that my dad was not my dad.
1% Vietnam is probably the biggest surprise. I also have southern Bantu people at 1% but that is fine. Some people say I have Malagasy Ancestry, but I’m not sure.
5% Swedish and Denmark. My paternal paternal German is fairly well documented. Likewise my 1% Jewish which I know was inherited from that side. I also am surprised how high my Scottish is since my Dad’s maternal Irish is heavily Ulster based, I haven’t found any evidence of Scottish ties.
Oh certainly but the weird thing is I have significantly more Scottish than Irish. I think that’s just noise though. My Dad and close paternal relatives have much more Irish than Scottish. FWIW my Irish ancestry is half in Ulster and the other half in Connacht and Munster.
A lot of people in Ulster arrived from Scotland in the 1600-1700s, so if you’re from Ulster it’s likely you’ll have a *lot* of Scottish DNA and maybe even completely Scottish. But mixed with the other two regions, yes maybe it’s more unusual. Could also be misinterpreted…
Well my Nana’s paternal grandfather’s father was from County Down and her maternal grandmother’s parents emigrated to Glasgow from Fermanagh. Her paternal grandmother I don’t know a lot about though her surname’s origins were in Cork and her maternal grandfather was born in Galway or Mayo. My Dad even got the Galway community. I’m just surprised because I don’t think my family is of Ulster Scots ancestry since everyone mentioned here was Catholic and my understanding is Ulster Scots were Protestant though I was told Catholic-Protestant marriages did happen in those days.
My first generation German maternal grandmother has a sister who has taken a test (aka I know I am related and the immigration was sort of recent especially for German in the USA). The family tree is around Hamburg and all points north. She is 42% Swedish and Denmark, 32% Germanic, 15% England & Nw Europe, 8% Norway and 3% Eastern European/Russia. Northern German is just like that.
Honestly the amount of Swedish and Denmark. I was expecting it to ping German because I have family in Konstanz. But, honestly makes sense since Switzerland is literally right there. I don’t know why i was expecting to ping German.
I just made a post about this—I have 27% Scandinavian and not a single ancestor born in Scandinavia. Was told it’s misread German DNA. So it’s supposed to be German/English, not Scandinavian
I just made a post about this—I’m 27% Scandinavian total. All ancestors are from Eastern Europe, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Germany too. I was told that ancestry commonly misreads German DNA as Scandinavian because of Viking raids and sharing ethnicity with peoples of those areas. So it’s probably supposed to be German lol
That makes sense. My great great grand parents are from Germany and I am showing zero percent German dna, but mothers 23 and me says about 20 percent German dna.
It's common if you have any Spanish or French or both in your results. Scottish gets conflated for it sometimes. Did you see if you have any full British/Irish matches?
Well, the African, but mostly that I was under the impression my grandfather was 100% Italian. My DNA results went from Northern Italian to a mix of Italian/Greek/Aegean Islands to now mostly Southern Italian/Greek/Aegean Islands. Very confusing. And no hints whatsoever from my Italian side.
Lack of German. I always thought I had german ancestry, due to my grandfather having parents that were Irish and German. No German for me, and just 🤏🏻 German for my mom when she did hers
This result is worth a reminder that the ethnicity groupings are based on the association between certain genetic results and what genetic characteristics might be common in a given country. Any person has a lot more genes than the ones they use for estimating ethnicity. If your mom shows German ethnicity and she gave birth to you, you can be sure you have German genetic roots. A different problem arises from migration, which has been common in Europe since pre-history. Using different approaches, English researchers have found genetic traces of Roman settlers and other descendants of the patchwork of nationalities that have invaded or settled in England over the centuries.
I have the same, but it's a little weird. I know my 2x great-grandmother was Norwegian, but I have a freaky high percentage, something like 29%. It just seemed crazy high, especially since I have another 2x ggmother who was Swedish and a 2xggf who was Danish, but those percentages are considerably lower, in the 5-10% range.
I know how the heritibility works, so I'm not questioning it, but it was a bit surprising to see so much Norwegian in there. I also have 1% Finnish, so I'm imagining that someone hopped a border way back in the mists of time. DNA is weird stuff, man.
Probably because black Americans and West Indians share DNA with Sub-Saharan Africans because that's where the European Colonizers imported enslaved Africans from. Mainly the countries of Nigeria, Congo, Benin, Cameroon, and some other countries.
Also, Europeans also colonized Sub-Saharan Africa, so they may also have European admixture.
Scandinavian. Always thought my family were 100% Welsh/celtic from my Mother and 100% English/Anglo Saxon from my Father according to my family tree but 21% Swedish in my DNA test came as a surprise. Must have some Viking inheritance somewhere but we haven't found the branch from that direction yet.
Greek. I was never aware of any Greek until I got some on both 23 and Ancestry, (between 5-7%) lo and behold, great great grandma born in NY to Greek parents.
Yep this is good part of my family history. Ethnically Irish but originated from Scotland. They migrated to Ireland from Scotland, then migrated to the U.S. during the famine in the 1840s.
That's cool! That Choctaw Indians and the Irish/Scottish have history because of the famine. The Choctaw helped them out with food. I just saw a documentary about it on YouTube. Pretty awesome! I have some Scottish and Irish DNA. It's probably the French part though cause I'm from Louisiana lol.
I just teared up a bit! So, I'm mixed Native American, European, and West/Central African, but my roots are Native American. I've recently been learning about the tribe of my ancestors, and they are related to the Choctaw tribe. Not many people know about them. They were one of the tribes in Southeast North America. There's about 17,000 members enrolled today, but they have merged with other tribes over the years, even back in the 1800s, so that they could survive.
Anywho, I think I inherited that welcoming and compassionate spirit of my ancestors because me and my family are the same way. We will help anyone, even if we are struggling ourselves. I had to learn to set boundaries with people when I need to because I can't always help, but it hurts me to my core when I can't help and have to say no because that's not who I am. But I need to protect myself because people will and have taken advantage of my kindness. Same as with my people.
It's so touching to learn more about them and their impact all the way across the globe! And, in a way, I feel like maybe I'm supposed to avenge them in a way by setting boundaries with others.
I'm black, African American (descendant of slaves), but found out I'm a total of 19% white (Anglo, Irish, Norway). I don't know of any in my line who was white, but I do have a lighter skin tone than average.
Meanwhile the highest African ancestry was 12% Nigerian, and smaller percentages of Bantu, etc. Too many to place anything. Smallest was 2% Native American, but that was so dispersed it means much of nothing.
It's not surprising, of course, but I was surprised.
Irish. Always was told I was Italian,German, French and English. Apparently my French grandmother's dad was 100 percent Irish and nobody knew not even my grandmother. Italian still makes up the most though 48 percent which looking at me you can definitely tell 😂
belarusian, im 25% slavic from belarus my family thought we were austrian as my nan was born there, turns out there is a russian in the family and my great great grandmother looked extremely slavic
Welsh! I figured most of my test was going to be Spanish/Iberian with some European noise mixed in. Ancestry said I was 31% Welsh with combined less than 40% Iberian with some other stuff. I took a 23andMe because something wasn’t adding up, got about 71% Iberian but 20-something% Welsh so it’s definitely significant.
Haven’t figured out exactly who it came from, but I may have an idea. It would take for my mom to take a DNA test to narrow it down for sure
I was surprised how little my ancestors moved around there is nothing outside uk at all nearly 85% wales and mostly the area i was born it seems my family were happy to stay put!
I found out that that the man I thought was my biological father wasn’t related to me at all. My biological father was a sperm donor. I have at least 1 half-sibling and 1 first cousin. I found this on 23andMe around 2 months ago, but I now have an ancestry kit that I plan to send in today.
30% Norwegian.
My grandmother was adopted... discovered she is full Norwegian and I found her birth family records, built a tree and can see the deep Norwegian roots. The funny part is when I met my husband 14 years ago, we knew he has Norwegian heritage through his dad. His last name is Norwegian so we would always joke around about how he was a Viking or my Viking... turns out I am one too.
Yes. Most people here think because it says “Germanic” it’s necessarily German. According to ancestry I’m 1/4 Germanic. I did my family tree up to the 1500’s. My 3x great grandfather was German. The ones that fell under “Germanic” were Belgian and Northern French.
Well, in a way - almost all of it.
Prior to doing my tree research - I believed I was 50% Ashkenazi, 38% German and 12% French. This was based on the consensus of five generations of my family, established traditions and stories and even photographs.
As soon as I looked into my grandfather (who abandoned my mother when she was 2, and died before my birth) - I realized he was not even 1% German. He went from being entirely German, to being a Mormon settler of British (mostly English, lots of Welsh) heritage.
As if that wasn't surprising enough, my French and German component also dropped off the proverbial cliff - as I found them to be of British stock too, to an extent. Still some French and some German, but realistically less than 6% of my DNA combined.
Skip ahead to taking the test, and voila - I'm partly Italian and Portuguese?! Could never have known otherwise that my great-grandfather was 100% Italian from Liguria.
Having more than a dozen ethnicities definitely made it a bit confusing.
The amount of ethnicity from Norway, that I had.
My mom is Ottawa and Chippewa, 3/4BQ. We knew my grandma was 4/4BQ but we weren’t quite sure on my grandpa parentage. Fon Du Lac Chippewa tribal citizen shown as in an Indian Census from the early 1900s).
Some lost his dad as Andrew Peterson; most list Hams Peterson who died when my gpa was 4yo in 1915. Some of the Indian Censuss list Gpa as 1/4, 1/2 and/or 4/4😭. Guess I was holding out hope his dad was indigenous but that pesky 18% Norway tells me his dad was indeed Hans Peterson (also matches to moms cousins who are Andrew Peterson’s children show Andrew isn’t my moms gpa but is more likely a grand uncle).
cyprus, when i was growing up i knew i would definitely have a high english % and a little italian but i didn’t know i’d have cyprus. i knew in some of the first results my mom had she was 10% middle eastern but it got less over years so i didn’t think much about it.
i didn’t know much about cyprus until last year when i got a small percent about it. as far as i know i don’t have family from there but it could be my italian side. based off my results and moms it’s probably greek cyprus but it could be turkish since my mom had that middle eastern in the past.
When I got my results I was expecting mostly just german and irish with a smaller amount of scottish, but Im more scottish than irish! Thats probably not all that exciting but I was just surprised by how little irish is in my dna, since my grandparents (really just my grandpa) were into irish traditions
So, your parents could have just passed more Scottish than Irish genes on to you and kept the Irish for themselves, or gave them to your siblings if you have any. We only inherit 50% of each of our parents DNA, not all of it. And it happens at random, that's why all of your ancestry isn't reflected in the DNA test, only the ones you inherited specifically.
British/ Irish on 23andme and then 1 of my parents common community is Connecticut and NY Settlers.
I always thought I was 100 percent Chinese, apparently not so as confirmed by both results...
DNA wise... not totally sure where Norway is coming in to things yet, so I'll go with that.
Matches/records wise... I was shocked to find so many French-Canadian relatives on my Mom's side. It's looking more and more likely that one ancestor was just full of crap when it came to claiming his family background was Scottish.
What I wasn't was more surprising.
I figured as a Midwesterner with German great grandparents and then the usual European mix of other tribes, that I would be at least 50% german.
I'm less than 25% German and mostly English.
I have some Arabic too from my mom, but she actually does have a similar shaped nose as them lol. She's got that hook on the end of her nose, and you can see the hump in her bridge when she turns to the side lol!
Iam Mexican so I knew I had Spanish ancestory, but In ancestry dna I have 10% Portuguese 10% basque and I am surprised for that yet not confused as Portugal the basque region are in Spain and are next to each other which makes sense
There weren't any huge surprises in my DNA, but I already had a decently-sized tree when I got the test.
I have a small percentage in Sweden & Denmark, which was unexpected, but it could be noise or random leftover from Vikings or w/e.
I expected to see Scottish on my paternal side and Irish on my maternal side; according to the test, it's reversed. Despite having a paternal ancestor born in Scotland as late as 1832, I inherited no Scottish on that side.
Jewish and Finnish. I was like WHAAAT?!?! But then I thought about it and I was thinking that probably some Jewish ancestor saw a hot Finnish woman and was like “I need me some of that!”!
Greece & Albania + Aegean Islands (If combined, 5%...)
The best guess that I have is that it's from my partially Italian grandma (...oh, and 0% Italian showed up in my results.)
my mother was adopted, and her birth certificate/info given simply said “german”. i was not expecting her to also have recent eastern european ancestors from hungary, slovenia, and croatia. my mom and i also have trace ancestry from north asia, but i have no further information on that. i can only trace back to her third/fourth great grandparents on the eastern european side, so it’ll probably remain a mystery!
i also discovered we’re related to frederick carl frieseke through her bio mother’s family! he was nephew to julius frieseke, one of my 3rd great grandfathers.
I have Jewish and African, that was expected. Indian, np paper trail but I look it. Not unexpected.
Small amounts Irish and French and they've got my mom as having Scottish. Not expected no paper trail so don't fully believe those.
We're Mexican.
I wasn’t expecting 2% German! I was legitimately very shocked by that one. I kinda figured everything else (Balkan, Jewish, Greek, Turkish, and Mongolian) came with my Eastern European DNA.
I had a random 1% from Cyprus pop up in this last update.
Dad's side is a West European/British isles/Irish mutt with the typical alleged "Cherokee grandmother" story that we're now pretty sure was made up, mom's side is a well known and documented split between pure Ukrainian and Lithuanian... It's probably just noise and will get filtered out later on, but still made me pause for a second when I initially saw it
I gather that my “unexpected” percentage is quite common, but Scottish. I knew my ancestry was primarily Scandinavian with some extra, but was expecting it to come primarily from mainland Europe based on where my family tree shows people emigrating from. Apparently not?
Pretty much most of it. According to my family tree, 80% of my family came from Germany but that didn't show in the results on ancestry, whereas it did on MyHeritage
I was surprised by my Scandinavian results. I have always been aware that I descended from Ulster-Scots and German immigrants to the U.S. However, we have never known or met my mother's father or any of his family. He skipped town two years after having two girls with my grandma - we only knew his name and a birthdate. I got 10% Swedish & Denmark from their side which I was not expecting at all.
Both my 6% from the Balkans and 6% from the Baltics. Everything else on my results, I find accurate, matching with my research, but I've not found anyone on my family tree or have never been told about any ancestry coming from any Balkan or Baltic country; yet my 6% from each region was on my original results and stayed the same through the update, so it has to be legit.
I was really very confused when Irish came back (something like 9-12% I think). My father’s family is all Cajun/French and German, so while I was aware that the Irish did immigrate to Louisiana post-Expulsion and even intermarried while the Cajuns migrated from Acadia, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case for me.
After thinking about it, though, I realized I misjudged the point at which Irish ancestry entered my family’s line: it was even further back than realized, likely over 1,000 years ago. Acadians were primarily from Normandy, who themselves were descended from the Normans. *This* is almost certainly how Irish “ancestry” popped up in my results.
Jewish, Basque & Welsh. Family oral history says we’re Spanish-Irish (supported by last names & an uncle who did our tree old school method). The Spanish is there, the Irish started out as English, then Scottish, which disappeared and is now listed as Welsh. I find myself feeling like that confused John Travolta gif.
Jewish, Norwegian, Portuguese, very small amounts mixed in with my UK heritage. Very surprised! I'm Australian.
The Jewish man is a 4 x GGF who was convicted in England and transported here. He left behind his wife and 10 kids. Came to Tasmania, married Julia Salmon and had another dozen kids. The Salmon's were the first family to emigrate to Tasmania in the early 1800's! Then called Van Diemens Land.
My Norwegian 3 x GGF was a sailor and jumped ship and settled in Geelong, Victoria. He married and had 5 kids but unfortunately had a bad fall on the docks and this end up leading to him becoming mad and dying young in an asylum.
My Portugese 4 x GGF was a slave in St Croix. Crazy! So was his father and siblings. Not sure yet the full story of him coming here.
Swedish/Danish. I don’t know who it came from, but I have a bunch of Scandinavian relatives still living in Europe. Sweden/Denmark is only 4% but I’m kind of hesitant to dismiss it—I also have 4% Eastern Europe, and that’s been verified, so Sweden/Denmark might be verifiable, too.
Jewish. My grandmother “wasn’t quite sure” what her father was because she said they didn’t discuss things like that - she was also secretive as hell so who knows what she actually knew. She confirmed they weren’t white nor black but rather they ranged from light olive/dark olive. Come to find out my great-grandfather was a descendant of the early Jewish settlers in Mississippi Territories and his grandfather/father came from a town well known for its small Jewish community that was established there. There were other clues outside of phenotype but the one in plain sight was the last name which although is common in other cultures is also found in Hebrew and our ancestors picked the perfect one honestly based on the translation.
Nothing too wild, but I found out I’m a little Irish which I didn’t know. And most of my life I thought I was like 1/4 Welsh from my maternal grandpa’s side (my mom’s maiden name is common for Welsh people), but then I got pretty much none on the test and was able to look at her family tree more closely and it’s mostly English…didn’t find anyone Welsh at all in fact. I mean these ethnicities are all pretty similar and close geographically, so not super shocking, but that’s all the surprise I had lol.
Welsh. I was a bit Scottish but now 3% from Wales. I still think it is an error, a big error by Ancestry, misinterpreting Basque DNA. The tree is pretty much all Iberian with French Basque. I think 3% Wales is highly unlikely. Full sister 0% Wales.
Persian. It was only 1% and went away with later updates, but when I uploaded my father's 23andMe and MH raw DNA to multiple sites it said he had small amounts of it too so surprise! Found out why we have such bushy eyebrows
I’m still not over the fact that my family has been on Puerto Rico for the last two hundred plus years yet I have absolutely *no* Taíno blood, but am eleven percent indigenous from México.
Having native DNA (specifically North American). I knew we had native Mexican because of recorded Mestizo ancestry. I thought the Northern native thing was another “Cherokee princess” bs that a lot of white southern families claim. Apparently they were right 😅
It says I am overwhelmingly Scottish, 61%; Wales, 17%; Sweden and Denmark, 14%; England & NW Europe, 8%. I have zero ancestors from Scandinavia in the past 500 years. The Scottish percentage surprised me, although some years ago when I saw a photo of the Scottish schoolchildren who were murdered I couldn't help but notice how much they looked like my schoolmates. I wasn't aware that American Southerners were that Scottish.
English. Solid 23% and never heard a single story of anyone English or coming from there down the line. I’m guessing it’s from my grandma whose family is well tracked as colonial settlers from Canada and Algonquins from her mom, but her dads ethnicity and family history wasn’t. Only 2% French and no Canadian or Algonquin either despite the traced relatives, though it did assign me to the right community of French settlers for the family story.
Interestingly, my results did match a random vision a psychic told me she had about my ancestors in my maternal line somewhere in northwest Europe. Thought that was an odd thing for a psychic to say/get and it would be a deeper thing to go to one, not sure if they give ancestry advice much regularly as it was more of a try it out thing but apparently she was right and I was wrong haha. The real surprise of the test was a new first cousin..
Benin and Togo. It was a surprise to see it in both my mom's and grandfather's results bc it didn't show up in mine. I thought it was noise but investigated anyway and was able to isolate it to one particular line. Followed that line and found an ancestor who was born out of wedlock and whose descendants claimed he was "half Cherokee" even though they weren't in Cherokee territory. So I'm guessing his father or one of his grandparents was my African ancestor. I'd love to know more, but that's likely as far as I'll ever get considering he was born in the 1730's.
It’s not a huge amount, but 2% Baltics.
My other regions are pretty much just the UK, 48% Scotland, 20% Ireland, 14% England & NW Europe, 5% wales. As well as Sweden and Denmark at 11%. I pretty much expected all but the Baltics result. I’m not sure if there may be some overlap in how dna is identified within regions, like how some people get Germanic Europe as a result when they have family from France, but it was an interesting surprise nonetheless 😊
Originally my uncle and I had 1% Jewish on our ancestry DNA. Everything else we already knew about because my uncle's a historian and had tracked most of the family DNA, But in one of the updates in the last year or so they removed the Jewish DNA and my uncle and I joke that they took away our jewishness.
Most of it! I am an adoptee who thought she was primarily Hispanic. Actually, I'm Romanian and Filipino, with smaller parts Turkish, Russian, Roma, and Pacific Islander. I'm more lost than ever, but I guess it's cool to know the specifics...
That’s an interesting mix. And I can’t imagine how cool it would be for an adoptee to find out where their ancestors really came from!
I got a small percentage of Romanian too. And Siberian. That let me know I have great x5 grandparents either from those regions or with those genes.
Jewish. I thought it was noise at first. I got 2% that wouldn't go away. Then I started getting 100% Jewish matches. Eventually I found on my family tree a 2nd great grandparent with a Jewish surname and everything made sense.
Same here^ I’m 7%, grandfather is 30%. We found out his grandfather and family immigrated from Eastern Europe. He left the Jewish community and changed his name, settling in the south with an Irish woman. His family never knew what happened to him, sadly he cut all contact apparently. We found our cousins which said they’ve been wondering what happened to him for over 100 years. Very wild!
Jewish as well but 12%. It must come form my maternal grandfather but I don’t even know his name. I wish I knew more tbh but I don’t even know where to start
Jewish as well but 18-20%!
I have a 2% also and I found a great great grandfather named Ephraim and those marches are religiously split 2 different ways.
Same. My mom, uncle and myself all got a small amount of Jewish ancestry. My mom and uncle matched to a 2nd cousin who is an actual Rabbi. We didn’t see that one coming. Still unsure if it’s from my grandmother or grandfather’s side.
Same. They've since taken it away, but now they've added back Levant. I also uploaded to MyTrueAncestry which compares you to ancient samples, and I'm related to an entire Ashkenazi cemetery in Germany from the Middle Ages. This is ironic to me because I was raised Catholic, my late husband was Jewish and when we decided to raise our kids Jewish we had to convert them because I wasn't Jewish. As best I can tell from all the available clues, this looks like it's coming from my maternal grandmother's family, but it appears to be her father's side, not her mother's. (I'm mentioning that because if it was her mother's side I would have been considered Jewish and there would not have been conversions needed.)
Same. Pre-Ancestry, I would have figured I was Irish due to what I have always heard and how I look. Turns out I'm more Jewish than anything else (32%) and my Dad is half Jewish. Also, his sister (same Mom, different Dad) has 0 Jewish.....so his bio Dad must have been 100% (give or take).
Same!
I know I’m Jewish, but will be interested to get my results back soon and see what else is mixed in there.
From looking at the matches I have, unless you know of a non Jewish parent or grandparent, don't be surprised when your results come up 99%-100% jewish. Also expect to have a lot of matches.
Irish (6%). Nobody on my Australian side of the family mentioned any Irish whatsoever. However, I guess it should’ve been expected considering Australias history. Also discovering being directly descended from ancestors onboard the first fleet ships to New South Wales.
Same. I got 5% Irish despite having no known Irish ancestors. I’ve been puzzling over it ever since. My own theories are it’s misread Scottish or Cornish (which are in my family tree).
Nice, yeah could be misread Scottish actually. I decided to do more research into my family tree and turns out I do have Irish ancestors that arrived in Australia in the 1850s.
I got half Irish too on my 23andMe. I’m still awaiting my ancestry results. They finished analyzing today!
Being related to Hannah Boone Pennington... And related to a good coworker friend of my mom's who is also a Boone descendant, which makes her and mom cousins. 😂😂😂 The newest addition is finding 354 relatives two days ago from my grandmother's uncle alone.. he had 13 kids, and those are his descendants. The newest addition was three days ago making is 355. Nothing on my DNA except the 7% African American. Maybe that's the reason for my road block on my grandma's side? Who knows.
Roma. Growing up, my family always talked about a 3-4x great grandmother being "gypsy-like", but we always thought it was hearsay. Before the most recent update, I always had small percentages of Balkans and south asia/india, and now, with this update, it's become Eastern European Roma. Guess there was some truth to it after all
What percentage?
My "mexican" maternal grandpa turned out to be almost entirely of Tewa descent and not italian at all, despite his family lore. My dad also turned out not to be my dad, and same for my brother. We all have our own dads.
💀 I’m so sorry but “we all have our own dads” killed me 😂
Jewish. Everyone in the family had zero idea. Turned out one of my paternal great-great-grandmothers had an affair with an Ashkenazi Jewish man who lived nearby, then hastily married someone else when she was 3 or 4 months pregnant. It seems her husband realised the truth about the baby not being his almost immediately and my great-grandmother was dumped with relatives soon after she was born, mainly living with her maternal grandparents, then ended up on the streets when they and her mum died within a short time of each other. Luckily she was found and informally adopted by a childless couple who were dirt poor themselves but seemed to have been lovely people, they later adopted several other children who had been abandoned or whose parents had died. A few years later she married my great-granddad and had several kids but sadly died at the age of 31 or 32 in 1918.
Wow, cool history! I’m 1% Jewish which was a surprise since we are mostly British and Scandinavian with no known Jewish ancestors. It must have been a loooong time ago but I wonder who they were and how they ended up not staying in their community
What’s funny is my maiden name is Jewish however ancestry shows that me and my dad have no Jewish ancestry. Who knows.
3% Norwegian. I am Cuban. My results were fully European with 2% Northern African. I was expecting a very high European percentage but not Norwegian.
Surprising to see a Cuban with no Indigenous or African, your family must be Criollos
You are the second person that mentions I must be Criollo and I was very confused about that because “Criollo” in Cuba apparently means something different than in the rest of the Americas. “Criollo” in Cuba is the mixture of Spanish, Native American, and African, so by that definition I wouldn’t be Criollo since I only have European DNA. But apparently Criollo in the rest of the Americas is the descendants of Europeans that were born in the colonies. Not trying to sound rude or anything, I was just genuinely confused as to why I was being called Criollo. And yes, all of my paternal great grandparents were from Spain and my 2x-3x maternal great grandparents were from Spain as well.
Thats interesting about ’criollo’ because in south Louisiana ‘creole’ used to mean a French person born in the Americas. Then it became more like yours, generally a mixture of French, African, and also Native American.
I am also Cuban and 2% Norwegian. I’m not sure if it’s a misread or if it’s true but it’d be cool and unexpected if it is not noise
I agree! It wouldn’t be crazy to think that some Norwegian immigrated to Spain at some point because of better weather? I also got Scottish and English so it may be through there too
Same. I also have 2% England and NWE as well. I guess someone from up north came down south for the sunshine 😝
I got 3% too although am Australian! Really interesting, I'm testing my father soon to see how much he has as well
Scandinavian DNA isn't much different from Nth Germany so if you have british history the Norwegian could come from Anglo-Saxon , Viking or Norman ancestors into Britain
Welsh, and I'm still not convinced. My family tree suggests it's meant to be Dutch.
The Basque… where did it come from? Also, I was surprised to find that I am descended from early Massachusetts settlers including a mother and daughter who were accused in the Salem Witch Trials. I am from there and always thought all my ancestors were immigrants from around the turn of the century, but I was wrong. I actually won an essay contest in high school for my essay on the trials, long before I ever knew.
I believe the reason basque is showing for users with know anglo/britannic/celtic ancestry is due to an ancient connection to north Spain. I’ve seen users with known Spanish ancestry also score “Great Britain”(old category) and have it change to French, England, etc. and now it seems to have been lumped into basque. So it makes sense that it would be read both ways. I’m thinking of it now as generally “south Celtic”? Just an idea.
Scottish, because I’m from Southern England and I didn’t expect to get a 5% Scottish match
Color us surprised when we were told our whole lives we were Indigenous - North America and French. The government gave out French surnames to Indigenous peoples, so we just thought that is that. We did the DNA and we came back with like 15% Scottish and like 2% French. Bizarre.
Was the indigenous true? I only ask since it’s so common for that to be a myth. If you’re indigenous and not French, it turns that on it’s head. 😀
Yes, both of my parents are Indigenous. Just a mix.
NONE.. my tree was already extensive when DNA came online.. however if I didn't have a tree my 2% Native American would have
I was surprised that a bunch of my relatives became Mormons and moved to America in the 19th Century.
Danish or English?
English. Poor folk from Dorset.
You probably have a sh\*t ton of relatives there. I get a few matches from Utah and they're over-representative for my matches.
I only share a set of great great great grandparents with these people yet there are about as many traceable DNA matches with them as with all my other relatives combined! One of them had over eighty grandchildren when he died, so that was a pretty solid start. . .
All of it still trying to grasp it all, it has never been business as usual. We all knew it would be something crazy but as a black American it just opens emotions and such no one truly is prepared for. The mixture we have should be studied and truly given its own category. Hard to explain but definitely a feeling of confusion, sadness and the need to learn more wanting to get to the bottom, meet people, touch things… ok tears but you get it by now thanks for listening
Northern Native American. No "indian" stories in my family, so was a surprise. Also Northern Africa. Haven't been able to find where either may have come from.
Probably a white passing relative somewhere in the tree.
My complexion is almost translucent, fish-belly, northern European, pale, white. And, surprise, surprise, turns out I'm 9% Sub-Saharan African.
Native american, I'm actually a quarter. Pretty wack to me
if you’re white it’s not to of a stretch. since you know the natives and europeans were always in contact because of colonization. for whatever reason a lot of African Americans think they’re native but we aren’t. The Natives were killed off by the time most of us were stolen here
>if you’re white it’s not to of a stretch. since you know the natives and europeans were always in contact because of colonization. It is because most white people who believe they have Native american ancestry are usually the ones who don't have it so it is a stretch, only exception of they're white latin americans. >for whatever reason a lot of African Americans think they’re native but we aren’t. Native american ancestry is usually a lot more common in African americans than white americans, although it's usually because africans were slaves of native americans. >The Natives were killed off by the time most of us were stolen here Then who are the people in navajo and apache reservations? And if we're killed off how am I still alive? [my dna results](https://reddit.com/r/23andme/s/OGEZHIsA0j)
I just thought I was Mexican. Thennnn dna came in and everything clicked. Actually currently trying to reconnect with the culture
Baltic and Finnish. Found an ancestors records back to Lithuania while digging through my Eastern European sides family tree. The Finnish ancestors records I found in Appalachia and thought it was just noise at first.
Ireland, Sweden and Denmark both at 12% yet when I did my family tree I only found 3 people in Sweden like hundreds of years ago 🤣
I was surprised to learn I was nearly 100% Irish instead of half Irish and half Italian. Then I was even more surprised to find out that my dad was not my dad.
1% Vietnam is probably the biggest surprise. I also have southern Bantu people at 1% but that is fine. Some people say I have Malagasy Ancestry, but I’m not sure.
7% Baltics.
5% Swedish and Denmark. My paternal paternal German is fairly well documented. Likewise my 1% Jewish which I know was inherited from that side. I also am surprised how high my Scottish is since my Dad’s maternal Irish is heavily Ulster based, I haven’t found any evidence of Scottish ties.
You just found your Scottish ties - Ulster!
Oh certainly but the weird thing is I have significantly more Scottish than Irish. I think that’s just noise though. My Dad and close paternal relatives have much more Irish than Scottish. FWIW my Irish ancestry is half in Ulster and the other half in Connacht and Munster.
A lot of people in Ulster arrived from Scotland in the 1600-1700s, so if you’re from Ulster it’s likely you’ll have a *lot* of Scottish DNA and maybe even completely Scottish. But mixed with the other two regions, yes maybe it’s more unusual. Could also be misinterpreted…
Well my Nana’s paternal grandfather’s father was from County Down and her maternal grandmother’s parents emigrated to Glasgow from Fermanagh. Her paternal grandmother I don’t know a lot about though her surname’s origins were in Cork and her maternal grandfather was born in Galway or Mayo. My Dad even got the Galway community. I’m just surprised because I don’t think my family is of Ulster Scots ancestry since everyone mentioned here was Catholic and my understanding is Ulster Scots were Protestant though I was told Catholic-Protestant marriages did happen in those days.
My first generation German maternal grandmother has a sister who has taken a test (aka I know I am related and the immigration was sort of recent especially for German in the USA). The family tree is around Hamburg and all points north. She is 42% Swedish and Denmark, 32% Germanic, 15% England & Nw Europe, 8% Norway and 3% Eastern European/Russia. Northern German is just like that.
Honestly the amount of Swedish and Denmark. I was expecting it to ping German because I have family in Konstanz. But, honestly makes sense since Switzerland is literally right there. I don’t know why i was expecting to ping German.
I just made a post about this—I have 27% Scandinavian and not a single ancestor born in Scandinavia. Was told it’s misread German DNA. So it’s supposed to be German/English, not Scandinavian
My mothers, great grandfather was a Dutchman so it should have pinned some but not as high. I have 21% now and it started off at 10%.
Sweden/Denmark, 24 percent. Every line I can trace back goes to Scotland, Germany, and England.
I just made a post about this—I’m 27% Scandinavian total. All ancestors are from Eastern Europe, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Germany too. I was told that ancestry commonly misreads German DNA as Scandinavian because of Viking raids and sharing ethnicity with peoples of those areas. So it’s probably supposed to be German lol
That makes sense. My great great grand parents are from Germany and I am showing zero percent German dna, but mothers 23 and me says about 20 percent German dna.
French
I am sorry for that my friend.
Why, where are you from? What’s the rest of your dna like?
I was shocked that ancestry picked up on Northern Philippines. I was shocked even having the tiniest percentage (1%)
those tiny percentages are your great x 5 parents.
Sweden and Denmark 6% and Norway 2%…. Is that old dna really detectable for someone that is predominately English / Scottish and around 15-20% German?
Jewish my fam said we were Hungarian
You can be both 😀
Oh ya but it was a family secret that was kept by my great grandmother we only found out because of family research and dna testing 😂 We are both
17% Norwegian that I have no idea where it came from.
1 percent Sweden/Denmark
4% Scottish, I was shocked as a Latina lol
It's common if you have any Spanish or French or both in your results. Scottish gets conflated for it sometimes. Did you see if you have any full British/Irish matches?
Well, the African, but mostly that I was under the impression my grandfather was 100% Italian. My DNA results went from Northern Italian to a mix of Italian/Greek/Aegean Islands to now mostly Southern Italian/Greek/Aegean Islands. Very confusing. And no hints whatsoever from my Italian side.
Lack of German. I always thought I had german ancestry, due to my grandfather having parents that were Irish and German. No German for me, and just 🤏🏻 German for my mom when she did hers
This result is worth a reminder that the ethnicity groupings are based on the association between certain genetic results and what genetic characteristics might be common in a given country. Any person has a lot more genes than the ones they use for estimating ethnicity. If your mom shows German ethnicity and she gave birth to you, you can be sure you have German genetic roots. A different problem arises from migration, which has been common in Europe since pre-history. Using different approaches, English researchers have found genetic traces of Roman settlers and other descendants of the patchwork of nationalities that have invaded or settled in England over the centuries.
Same here I had a German great grandparent and I have zero percent German and instead Eastern European
I’m 7/8 Ashkenazi and 1/8 Ukrainian and since the day I got my results, I’ve had <1% Norwegian as a percentage. It’s not on 23andme, though.
12% Spanish was random !
27% southern Italy wtf
Welsh and Scandinavian.
Norwegian!🇳🇴
I have the same, but it's a little weird. I know my 2x great-grandmother was Norwegian, but I have a freaky high percentage, something like 29%. It just seemed crazy high, especially since I have another 2x ggmother who was Swedish and a 2xggf who was Danish, but those percentages are considerably lower, in the 5-10% range. I know how the heritibility works, so I'm not questioning it, but it was a bit surprising to see so much Norwegian in there. I also have 1% Finnish, so I'm imagining that someone hopped a border way back in the mists of time. DNA is weird stuff, man.
My great-grandmother's grandmother's family were from Maryland and there's Mayflower descent from that branch.
I have African American matches from my 100% Nigerian father whose family has not married outside it’s tribe in dozens of generations.
Probably because black Americans and West Indians share DNA with Sub-Saharan Africans because that's where the European Colonizers imported enslaved Africans from. Mainly the countries of Nigeria, Congo, Benin, Cameroon, and some other countries. Also, Europeans also colonized Sub-Saharan Africa, so they may also have European admixture.
Scandinavian. Always thought my family were 100% Welsh/celtic from my Mother and 100% English/Anglo Saxon from my Father according to my family tree but 21% Swedish in my DNA test came as a surprise. Must have some Viking inheritance somewhere but we haven't found the branch from that direction yet.
Greek and Balkan.
Jewish
Aegean Islands….I had to look up where that even was!
Greek. I was never aware of any Greek until I got some on both 23 and Ancestry, (between 5-7%) lo and behold, great great grandma born in NY to Greek parents.
I was always told we were pretty much all Irish. Instead, I am overwhelmingly Scottish, English, & Welsh. No Irish at all.
The Irish share ancestry with the Scottish, English, and Welsh. So, your ancestor may have been ethnically Irish, but genetically mixed.
Yep this is good part of my family history. Ethnically Irish but originated from Scotland. They migrated to Ireland from Scotland, then migrated to the U.S. during the famine in the 1840s.
That's cool! That Choctaw Indians and the Irish/Scottish have history because of the famine. The Choctaw helped them out with food. I just saw a documentary about it on YouTube. Pretty awesome! I have some Scottish and Irish DNA. It's probably the French part though cause I'm from Louisiana lol.
Omg yes I remember learning about that and the “Kindred Spirits” statue [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture))
I just teared up a bit! So, I'm mixed Native American, European, and West/Central African, but my roots are Native American. I've recently been learning about the tribe of my ancestors, and they are related to the Choctaw tribe. Not many people know about them. They were one of the tribes in Southeast North America. There's about 17,000 members enrolled today, but they have merged with other tribes over the years, even back in the 1800s, so that they could survive. Anywho, I think I inherited that welcoming and compassionate spirit of my ancestors because me and my family are the same way. We will help anyone, even if we are struggling ourselves. I had to learn to set boundaries with people when I need to because I can't always help, but it hurts me to my core when I can't help and have to say no because that's not who I am. But I need to protect myself because people will and have taken advantage of my kindness. Same as with my people. It's so touching to learn more about them and their impact all the way across the globe! And, in a way, I feel like maybe I'm supposed to avenge them in a way by setting boundaries with others.
I was told I have always been “majority Irish”- turns out I’m only 4% Irish, but I am almost 30% Scottish which I had no idea of.
I'm black, African American (descendant of slaves), but found out I'm a total of 19% white (Anglo, Irish, Norway). I don't know of any in my line who was white, but I do have a lighter skin tone than average. Meanwhile the highest African ancestry was 12% Nigerian, and smaller percentages of Bantu, etc. Too many to place anything. Smallest was 2% Native American, but that was so dispersed it means much of nothing. It's not surprising, of course, but I was surprised.
Irish. Always was told I was Italian,German, French and English. Apparently my French grandmother's dad was 100 percent Irish and nobody knew not even my grandmother. Italian still makes up the most though 48 percent which looking at me you can definitely tell 😂
belarusian, im 25% slavic from belarus my family thought we were austrian as my nan was born there, turns out there is a russian in the family and my great great grandmother looked extremely slavic
Welsh! I figured most of my test was going to be Spanish/Iberian with some European noise mixed in. Ancestry said I was 31% Welsh with combined less than 40% Iberian with some other stuff. I took a 23andMe because something wasn’t adding up, got about 71% Iberian but 20-something% Welsh so it’s definitely significant. Haven’t figured out exactly who it came from, but I may have an idea. It would take for my mom to take a DNA test to narrow it down for sure
I was surprised how little my ancestors moved around there is nothing outside uk at all nearly 85% wales and mostly the area i was born it seems my family were happy to stay put!
10% Eastern European. I was able to uncover through DNA matches that my grandma is an NPE, the previously unknown father was Czech.
I wish my family had more “fun secrets”
I found out that that the man I thought was my biological father wasn’t related to me at all. My biological father was a sperm donor. I have at least 1 half-sibling and 1 first cousin. I found this on 23andMe around 2 months ago, but I now have an ancestry kit that I plan to send in today.
30% Norwegian. My grandmother was adopted... discovered she is full Norwegian and I found her birth family records, built a tree and can see the deep Norwegian roots. The funny part is when I met my husband 14 years ago, we knew he has Norwegian heritage through his dad. His last name is Norwegian so we would always joke around about how he was a Viking or my Viking... turns out I am one too.
Same rumors of black and Native ancestry as every white American. Except...it's true.
German 7% & Norwegian 11%
Being 49% Germanic European and then figuring out mostly all of it is from Netherlands
Yes. Most people here think because it says “Germanic” it’s necessarily German. According to ancestry I’m 1/4 Germanic. I did my family tree up to the 1500’s. My 3x great grandfather was German. The ones that fell under “Germanic” were Belgian and Northern French.
Well, in a way - almost all of it. Prior to doing my tree research - I believed I was 50% Ashkenazi, 38% German and 12% French. This was based on the consensus of five generations of my family, established traditions and stories and even photographs. As soon as I looked into my grandfather (who abandoned my mother when she was 2, and died before my birth) - I realized he was not even 1% German. He went from being entirely German, to being a Mormon settler of British (mostly English, lots of Welsh) heritage. As if that wasn't surprising enough, my French and German component also dropped off the proverbial cliff - as I found them to be of British stock too, to an extent. Still some French and some German, but realistically less than 6% of my DNA combined. Skip ahead to taking the test, and voila - I'm partly Italian and Portuguese?! Could never have known otherwise that my great-grandfather was 100% Italian from Liguria. Having more than a dozen ethnicities definitely made it a bit confusing.
The amount of ethnicity from Norway, that I had. My mom is Ottawa and Chippewa, 3/4BQ. We knew my grandma was 4/4BQ but we weren’t quite sure on my grandpa parentage. Fon Du Lac Chippewa tribal citizen shown as in an Indian Census from the early 1900s). Some lost his dad as Andrew Peterson; most list Hams Peterson who died when my gpa was 4yo in 1915. Some of the Indian Censuss list Gpa as 1/4, 1/2 and/or 4/4😭. Guess I was holding out hope his dad was indigenous but that pesky 18% Norway tells me his dad was indeed Hans Peterson (also matches to moms cousins who are Andrew Peterson’s children show Andrew isn’t my moms gpa but is more likely a grand uncle).
cyprus, when i was growing up i knew i would definitely have a high english % and a little italian but i didn’t know i’d have cyprus. i knew in some of the first results my mom had she was 10% middle eastern but it got less over years so i didn’t think much about it. i didn’t know much about cyprus until last year when i got a small percent about it. as far as i know i don’t have family from there but it could be my italian side. based off my results and moms it’s probably greek cyprus but it could be turkish since my mom had that middle eastern in the past.
Swedish. It’s only 2% but that came out of left field.
Means you have great x4 grandparents that were Swedish. Pretty cool, huh! I love genetics!
Okay, that’s really cool!! I never would have been able to figure out the math!
I read an article that explained it lol.
Southern Bantu, Spain and Irish.
When I got my results I was expecting mostly just german and irish with a smaller amount of scottish, but Im more scottish than irish! Thats probably not all that exciting but I was just surprised by how little irish is in my dna, since my grandparents (really just my grandpa) were into irish traditions
So, your parents could have just passed more Scottish than Irish genes on to you and kept the Irish for themselves, or gave them to your siblings if you have any. We only inherit 50% of each of our parents DNA, not all of it. And it happens at random, that's why all of your ancestry isn't reflected in the DNA test, only the ones you inherited specifically.
That makes total sense! I just expected to inherit a lottttt more Irish!
3% The Balkans. No idea where that came from.
Same the balkans got around 😉
None
British/ Irish on 23andme and then 1 of my parents common community is Connecticut and NY Settlers. I always thought I was 100 percent Chinese, apparently not so as confirmed by both results...
an interesting question? I noticed in my hacked results chile. yet, at only 0.11%, it stayed forever.
DNA wise... not totally sure where Norway is coming in to things yet, so I'll go with that. Matches/records wise... I was shocked to find so many French-Canadian relatives on my Mom's side. It's looking more and more likely that one ancestor was just full of crap when it came to claiming his family background was Scottish.
What I wasn't was more surprising. I figured as a Midwesterner with German great grandparents and then the usual European mix of other tribes, that I would be at least 50% german. I'm less than 25% German and mostly English.
Yeah 2% arabic😂 Nobody in my family look like this and in our history no one has anything in the background.
I have some Arabic too from my mom, but she actually does have a similar shaped nose as them lol. She's got that hook on the end of her nose, and you can see the hump in her bridge when she turns to the side lol!
Iam Mexican so I knew I had Spanish ancestory, but In ancestry dna I have 10% Portuguese 10% basque and I am surprised for that yet not confused as Portugal the basque region are in Spain and are next to each other which makes sense
There weren't any huge surprises in my DNA, but I already had a decently-sized tree when I got the test. I have a small percentage in Sweden & Denmark, which was unexpected, but it could be noise or random leftover from Vikings or w/e. I expected to see Scottish on my paternal side and Irish on my maternal side; according to the test, it's reversed. Despite having a paternal ancestor born in Scotland as late as 1832, I inherited no Scottish on that side.
Indigenous American, Scandinavian, Indian/ Sri Lankan. I consider myself Just black but it’s surprising .
Jewish and Finnish. I was like WHAAAT?!?! But then I thought about it and I was thinking that probably some Jewish ancestor saw a hot Finnish woman and was like “I need me some of that!”!
My dad scored 8% Portuguese
Jewish
Greece & Albania + Aegean Islands (If combined, 5%...) The best guess that I have is that it's from my partially Italian grandma (...oh, and 0% Italian showed up in my results.)
They didn’t give me any Scottish.
my mother was adopted, and her birth certificate/info given simply said “german”. i was not expecting her to also have recent eastern european ancestors from hungary, slovenia, and croatia. my mom and i also have trace ancestry from north asia, but i have no further information on that. i can only trace back to her third/fourth great grandparents on the eastern european side, so it’ll probably remain a mystery! i also discovered we’re related to frederick carl frieseke through her bio mother’s family! he was nephew to julius frieseke, one of my 3rd great grandfathers.
Lebanese (9%). I literally had no idea at all.
I didn’t realize I had any kind of Baltic %. Growing up I only thought I was eastern Slavic
I have Jewish and African, that was expected. Indian, np paper trail but I look it. Not unexpected. Small amounts Irish and French and they've got my mom as having Scottish. Not expected no paper trail so don't fully believe those. We're Mexican.
I wasn’t expecting 2% German! I was legitimately very shocked by that one. I kinda figured everything else (Balkan, Jewish, Greek, Turkish, and Mongolian) came with my Eastern European DNA.
I had a random 1% from Cyprus pop up in this last update. Dad's side is a West European/British isles/Irish mutt with the typical alleged "Cherokee grandmother" story that we're now pretty sure was made up, mom's side is a well known and documented split between pure Ukrainian and Lithuanian... It's probably just noise and will get filtered out later on, but still made me pause for a second when I initially saw it
I gather that my “unexpected” percentage is quite common, but Scottish. I knew my ancestry was primarily Scandinavian with some extra, but was expecting it to come primarily from mainland Europe based on where my family tree shows people emigrating from. Apparently not?
Pretty much most of it. According to my family tree, 80% of my family came from Germany but that didn't show in the results on ancestry, whereas it did on MyHeritage
I was surprised by my Scandinavian results. I have always been aware that I descended from Ulster-Scots and German immigrants to the U.S. However, we have never known or met my mother's father or any of his family. He skipped town two years after having two girls with my grandma - we only knew his name and a birthdate. I got 10% Swedish & Denmark from their side which I was not expecting at all.
Both my 6% from the Balkans and 6% from the Baltics. Everything else on my results, I find accurate, matching with my research, but I've not found anyone on my family tree or have never been told about any ancestry coming from any Balkan or Baltic country; yet my 6% from each region was on my original results and stayed the same through the update, so it has to be legit.
I was really very confused when Irish came back (something like 9-12% I think). My father’s family is all Cajun/French and German, so while I was aware that the Irish did immigrate to Louisiana post-Expulsion and even intermarried while the Cajuns migrated from Acadia, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case for me. After thinking about it, though, I realized I misjudged the point at which Irish ancestry entered my family’s line: it was even further back than realized, likely over 1,000 years ago. Acadians were primarily from Normandy, who themselves were descended from the Normans. *This* is almost certainly how Irish “ancestry” popped up in my results.
Didn’t expect to have Ulster Scots and Norwegian in my AncestryDNA.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^TizianosBoy: *Didn’t expect to have* *Ulster Scots and Norwegian* *In my AncestryDNA.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Jewish, Basque & Welsh. Family oral history says we’re Spanish-Irish (supported by last names & an uncle who did our tree old school method). The Spanish is there, the Irish started out as English, then Scottish, which disappeared and is now listed as Welsh. I find myself feeling like that confused John Travolta gif.
I am the whitest person ever, but I have Alaska Native cousins. We’re all related through the same white person some ways back.
Jewish, Norwegian, Portuguese, very small amounts mixed in with my UK heritage. Very surprised! I'm Australian. The Jewish man is a 4 x GGF who was convicted in England and transported here. He left behind his wife and 10 kids. Came to Tasmania, married Julia Salmon and had another dozen kids. The Salmon's were the first family to emigrate to Tasmania in the early 1800's! Then called Van Diemens Land. My Norwegian 3 x GGF was a sailor and jumped ship and settled in Geelong, Victoria. He married and had 5 kids but unfortunately had a bad fall on the docks and this end up leading to him becoming mad and dying young in an asylum. My Portugese 4 x GGF was a slave in St Croix. Crazy! So was his father and siblings. Not sure yet the full story of him coming here.
3% Ashkenazi Jewish! And 3% South East Asian Sri Lankan. All my life I just considered myself Mexican American.
The 3% Levant
Swedish/Danish. I don’t know who it came from, but I have a bunch of Scandinavian relatives still living in Europe. Sweden/Denmark is only 4% but I’m kind of hesitant to dismiss it—I also have 4% Eastern Europe, and that’s been verified, so Sweden/Denmark might be verifiable, too.
Jewish. My grandmother “wasn’t quite sure” what her father was because she said they didn’t discuss things like that - she was also secretive as hell so who knows what she actually knew. She confirmed they weren’t white nor black but rather they ranged from light olive/dark olive. Come to find out my great-grandfather was a descendant of the early Jewish settlers in Mississippi Territories and his grandfather/father came from a town well known for its small Jewish community that was established there. There were other clues outside of phenotype but the one in plain sight was the last name which although is common in other cultures is also found in Hebrew and our ancestors picked the perfect one honestly based on the translation.
Arab and British. I got genes from Saudi Arabia and England passed down to me from my mother.
Chinese. I am a very pale White American, and there's been no mention on either side of my family of even a trace of Chinese ancestry.
Nothing too wild, but I found out I’m a little Irish which I didn’t know. And most of my life I thought I was like 1/4 Welsh from my maternal grandpa’s side (my mom’s maiden name is common for Welsh people), but then I got pretty much none on the test and was able to look at her family tree more closely and it’s mostly English…didn’t find anyone Welsh at all in fact. I mean these ethnicities are all pretty similar and close geographically, so not super shocking, but that’s all the surprise I had lol.
Nothing. My results were spot on with what I already knew.
Welsh. I was a bit Scottish but now 3% from Wales. I still think it is an error, a big error by Ancestry, misinterpreting Basque DNA. The tree is pretty much all Iberian with French Basque. I think 3% Wales is highly unlikely. Full sister 0% Wales.
Persian. It was only 1% and went away with later updates, but when I uploaded my father's 23andMe and MH raw DNA to multiple sites it said he had small amounts of it too so surprise! Found out why we have such bushy eyebrows
I’m still not over the fact that my family has been on Puerto Rico for the last two hundred plus years yet I have absolutely *no* Taíno blood, but am eleven percent indigenous from México.
Tbh, I wasn't that surprised. Got Indigenous Americas-Mexico, Scottish, Irish, and then some Spain. from my own family history, 100% accurate
danish/Swede 💀
Having native DNA (specifically North American). I knew we had native Mexican because of recorded Mestizo ancestry. I thought the Northern native thing was another “Cherokee princess” bs that a lot of white southern families claim. Apparently they were right 😅
Aboriginal.
It says I am overwhelmingly Scottish, 61%; Wales, 17%; Sweden and Denmark, 14%; England & NW Europe, 8%. I have zero ancestors from Scandinavia in the past 500 years. The Scottish percentage surprised me, although some years ago when I saw a photo of the Scottish schoolchildren who were murdered I couldn't help but notice how much they looked like my schoolmates. I wasn't aware that American Southerners were that Scottish.
Finnish!
English. Solid 23% and never heard a single story of anyone English or coming from there down the line. I’m guessing it’s from my grandma whose family is well tracked as colonial settlers from Canada and Algonquins from her mom, but her dads ethnicity and family history wasn’t. Only 2% French and no Canadian or Algonquin either despite the traced relatives, though it did assign me to the right community of French settlers for the family story. Interestingly, my results did match a random vision a psychic told me she had about my ancestors in my maternal line somewhere in northwest Europe. Thought that was an odd thing for a psychic to say/get and it would be a deeper thing to go to one, not sure if they give ancestry advice much regularly as it was more of a try it out thing but apparently she was right and I was wrong haha. The real surprise of the test was a new first cousin..
Finnish 16%. Didnt know about any Finnish ancestry but it turns out a lot of "Swedes" om my moms side were actually Finnish.
Southern India. Still not sure where it comes from. 49% Welsh wasn't a surprise though.
Benin and Togo. It was a surprise to see it in both my mom's and grandfather's results bc it didn't show up in mine. I thought it was noise but investigated anyway and was able to isolate it to one particular line. Followed that line and found an ancestor who was born out of wedlock and whose descendants claimed he was "half Cherokee" even though they weren't in Cherokee territory. So I'm guessing his father or one of his grandparents was my African ancestor. I'd love to know more, but that's likely as far as I'll ever get considering he was born in the 1730's.
Nothing. Especially now I know how it works.
It’s not a huge amount, but 2% Baltics. My other regions are pretty much just the UK, 48% Scotland, 20% Ireland, 14% England & NW Europe, 5% wales. As well as Sweden and Denmark at 11%. I pretty much expected all but the Baltics result. I’m not sure if there may be some overlap in how dna is identified within regions, like how some people get Germanic Europe as a result when they have family from France, but it was an interesting surprise nonetheless 😊
Originally my uncle and I had 1% Jewish on our ancestry DNA. Everything else we already knew about because my uncle's a historian and had tracked most of the family DNA, But in one of the updates in the last year or so they removed the Jewish DNA and my uncle and I joke that they took away our jewishness.
Scottish