DNA pickle....

Yes, apparently I’m 24% Scottish, but I haven’t found any Scottish ancestors even though I’ve gone a long way back, I have Welsh ancestry but I have no Welsh DNA.
It seems such a large amount to have just been 1 person who strayed.
It seems that we have something in common!

This article may help explain. Here's an extract:

There are many scientific limitations to the home DNA test. “These companies aren’t actually testing your ancestry at all,” says Mark Thomas, professor of evolutionary genetics at University College London. “They’re problematic in their claims to be able to infer an individual’s ancestry.”

There are a few reasons for this. First, the genetic information these DNA testing companies hold is based on living populations. When you send your spit off in a little tube, it is specific snippets, or markers, in your genome (the total collection of DNA that resides in your cells) that are being analysed, and then compared to the markers of others who are good representatives for distinct regions or ethnicities around the world. But as Thomas notes, the companies are only looking at very recent samples, from a relatively small group, in one specific database. “They are just saying: ‘If I wanted to make your genome, I could pull bits of your DNA from people all over the world who are around today. And this is just one way I could do it,’” he says.

The databases are skewed towards different parts of the world, too. “23andMe has more American customers, and AncestryDNA has more British and Australian,” Thomas explains. “And none of these companies asks: ‘What do we know about the genetics of the past, and which of those past inferred genetic clusters do we get our ancestry from?’ They are giving us what the market wants, not what the genetics tells us.”

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/11/question-ancestry-does-dna-testing-really-understand-race

I turned out to be 67% Scots. I knew my mother had a Scots great grandfather x3 and my father's family are Reivers from the English side of the border. I can only guess there has been a lot of taking women as well as cows and sheep.
My mother has Stewarts way back but they are living in Northern England and I cannot make the connection back.
My cousin found she was 75% Scots and is now looking into her fathers side and Reivers not the same as mine on her maternal side through which we are related.
We have come to the conclusion that people just wandered from one side of the border to the other and thought of themselves by their family name rather than English or Scots .

I'm showing 5% Irish which is a puzzle as I've gone back to 1700 and the families are all living in little villages in Dorset, Wiltshire and Essex. As far as I know they came from there, but maybe some Irish lad came a'courting in the 1600s or earlier.

I'm also 3% Norwegian but that must have been Viking invaders in Essex.

Your Scottish and Welsh makes up 45% of your DNA which is a lot. The only way you can solve it is to make contact with any close cousin DNA matches, although they may not be interested of course. Do not give up though, I have solved some unbelievable mysteries in my tree which you would never believe possible. The best way is probably by process of elimination. In other words, if it can't be that then it might be this. There is something unexpected here so think outside the box. Keep going until you unravel the puzzle.

Because the percentage is so large you should maybe start with your grandparents and then their parents. Your DNA cousins will reveal things just by how they are linked to you. Click on one of them and then look at their Ethnicity and their Shared Matches. You can group people through the Shared Matches, it's great! Use the Groups feature for different families, then add people to the correct colour group. Hope I've explained that properly.

Good grief. If we go back far enough we will find we are all related to each other…………
See what Adam Rutherford, a geneticist has to say about DNA testing.

I was tempted to do the DNA test on Ancestry until I did some background reading and decided that the results are so inaccurate that it wasn't worth it! The database is still very small and results are changing all the time as more people are tested. As I understand it - you could have 2 parents from a remote South American tribe but this wouldn't show in your DNA results if no-one else from that tribe had been tested

Thanks so much for the replies.

Oopsadaisy1, perhaps we are long lost family!

Chestnut, I think what I'm struggling with is looking at the numbers, I presumed the Scots / Welsh must be fairly close timewise but I've managed to go back to the 1700's on both Maternal and Paternal sides and there's no link at all I can see...still fascinating though!

Fathers named on the birth certificate aren’t necessarily the actual father, that may account for some discrepancies. Through Ancestry.com my family were contacted by a lady in Australia with whom we had no known connection, but whose DNA was a match. We discovered that her great grandfather and our great aunt were the parents although they weren’t married. They lived two streets away from each other at the time.

When tracking autosomal DNA through the generations it obviously becomes diluted with each generation. It’s interesting that it is estimated that from a 3rd great grandparent we may inherit as little as .01%. DNA from them.

This is variable because of recombination of DNA which is not equally shared.

Apparently what we inherit in our DNA is quite random. I have found that it is all fairly accurate though and even brothers and sisters can inherit different DNA.

That’s really informative. Thanks

I did a DNA test just to convince myself I have Viking blood (apparently I do!) but I also received a message from an unknown half cousin in NZ who thought her family tree for the last couple of generations was complete.
I knew I was adopted and have quite a lot of info on one side of my birth family but knew very little of the other side.
Thanks to this lovely new relative I discovered three cousins and two half siblings. The cousins are my age and we are in regular contact but the siblings are considerably younger and we’re happy just to exchange an email every now and again. I knew the name/address of our shared parent but had chosen years ago not to get in touch and I’m still happy with that decision.

Ancestry's ethnicity estimate is just that. Mine is actually fairly accurate but you shouldn't see it as more than just a bit of fun. The test is only worth doing if you want to further your family tree efforts. I was lucky enough to be able to test both my parents and the results have helped me verify (or not!) my Ancestry family tree.

That’s correct JudyBloom. Siblings do inherit 25% of paternal and maternal grandparent DNA , but not necessarily the same combination of DNA, and this distribution is random (recombination).

I find it fascinating but wouldn’t waste money on it. I agree it’s ok for fun. Has anyone tried different sites and had similar results?

Borders in UK have changed over hundreds and hundreds of years. The border between Scotland and England used to be near Edinburgh.
Vikings invaded the north taking slaves, Romans, who probably had otger European heritage, and goodness knows who else invaded everywhere so of course there's a good chance folk have mixed DNA.

Ancestry reported a DNA match which was exciting until I realised my son in Australia had also done the test.

Dee1012

I've recently received my DNA report via Ancestry and am totally intrigued by the results which are;

23% Scottish and 22% Welsh plus a further mix of Irish, Germanic Europe and Norway.
I expected the Irish and Germanic but am at a total loss about the Scottish and Welsh.

I've been working on my family tree for some time and have been lucky enough to go back quite some time but cannot for the life of me work out the largest parts.
Has anyone else found something like this?

Wasn't there a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the north of Ireland and the west of Scotland?

Interesting article, Caravansera, thanks for posting it.

I have always fought shy of these DNA tests, though I am tempted to do one just for fun. I know that a niece did one recently, it would be interesting to see if Ancestry 'matched' me with her.

Or would a Manx ancestor account for the Scottish and the Welsh?

Bella23

I turned out to be 67% Scots. I knew my mother had a Scots great grandfather x3 and my father's family are Reivers from the English side of the border. I can only guess there has been a lot of taking women as well as cows and sheep.
My mother has Stewarts way back but they are living in Northern England and I cannot make the connection back.
My cousin found she was 75% Scots and is now looking into her fathers side and Reivers not the same as mine on her maternal side through which we are related.
We have come to the conclusion that people just wandered from one side of the border to the other and thought of themselves by their family name rather than English or Scots .

Like most other land borders, the one between Scotland and England has moved about quite a bit, This might explain some of the 67% Scots.

Young people fell in love in the past too, without bothering about where someone actually belonged. If their families objected, some ran away together, some married someone the family approved of, and some of the girls who did this, were probably more concerned with getting married and having a father for the bairn they knew was coming than concerned with getting the bairn's father to marry them!

I show as 30% Scots but can only account for 12.5 % by known ancestry. But my second cousin, who doesn't share my Scots great grandfather and is, as far as we know, thoroughly English, shows as 5% Scots. So I think it is just the case that enough people we share genes with have ancestors who moved from England to Scotland and who are therefore counted as Scottish by the DNA banks.

Mine waas mainly Swedish, my mum's side, Irish, my dad's side and French, I've got some Norman ancestors that I know of. The rest is a mongrel mix. It's fairly accurate for me.

My dad was born in Scotland - his dad was Irish - my mum’s family originated from Ireland, however, my DNA results showed no Scottish or Irish!!!!