i had the name relative race in one of my dna matches

It’s crucial to remember that DNA can lead to surprising results. This is the most important thing to remember. It’s those differences that can mean your estimates are different and your matches are different. But exactly which pieces of DNA you each inherited is different. Yes, you got your DNA from the same parents. That’s why siblings’ results can be (and usually are) different, both in ethnicity estimates and in the genetic matches. (Think about it - if you and your siblings each got the same 50% DNA from each parent, you’d be identical.) Speaking of things getting passed down, remember in biology class when you learned that you get half of your DNA from your mother and half from your father? It’s true for your siblings, too… but they didn’t get the same half that you did. (Also, keep in mind that a photo of your ancestor showing high cheekbones and dark hair does NOT prove that he or she was Native American.) 4. It doesn’t mean that you’re not part Native American it just means that the part of the DNA that would have identified it didn’t get passed down. Why didn’t it show up on my ethnicity estimate?” If your great-great-grandma’s line is the only Native American line that you have, not enough of her DNA might have made it down to you to show up in the ethnicity estimate. “I know my great-great-grandmother was Native American. Ethnicity might not show up even when proven by “traditional” research methods. When you consider the invasions from Scandinavia into what is now Ireland and the UK, that Scandinavian DNA makes some sense.īut it also cuts both ways. However, I’m also 45% Irish/Scottish/Welsh and 22% British, which is consistent with what I have found in my research. I haven’t found a single ancestor who comes from Scandinavia. Case in point is my reported 19% Scandinavian DNA. Not only is the ethnicity estimate an estimate, we need to remember that it represents our ethnicity waaaaaaay back.

The Ethnicity Estimate Might Not Match Paper Research (AKA “Why Isn’t My Native American DNA Showing Up?”) There’s bound to be some variance.īottom line: just because my AncestryDNA ethnicity estimate says that I’m 19% Scandinavian doesn’t mean that I’m going to be rooting for Denmark, Norway, and Sweden 1/5 of the time during the Winter Olympics. AncestryDNA’s ethnicity estimates are built around reference panels, which total 56,000 people. The problem is that the estimates are built around living people who can trace their lineage in a certain location for hundreds of years. My old ethnicity estimate on AncestryDNA. As genetic genealogist Blaine Bettinger pointed out in an interview I did with him, the ethnicity estimate is good on the continent level getting down to the country or region is much more problematic. To say that the pie chart or map that you get of your ethnicity isn’t exact would be an understatement. Yes, it’s frustrating when a close match doesn’t reply to your messages, but try to keep in mind that they might not be interested. Just because someone doesn’t want to connect with cousins now doesn’t mean that he or she won’t want to in a few weeks or months. Now, before you go putting the bad mouth on them, remember that DNA is an excellent gateway into the bigger world of genealogy. Many people just want the ethnicity estimate. Just because you and I might take a DNA test to find genetic cousins doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Not Everyone Takes a DNA Test for the Matches Or watch the video (or scroll below to keep reading):ġ. But before you mail off your spit or convince a relative to send theirs, there are some things you need to know about DNA testing for genealogy. DNA is an incredible tool for our genealogy and it’s more accessible than ever before.

I had the name relative race in one of my dna matches