Family History Research and DNA Tests

Seeing as the company I did my first one with had no idea of where in the country or the world my family comes from, it narrowed it down to a surprisingly precise area, one where I knew the family had deep roots, what I didn't realise was how deep, that's one reason why I want to know my deep ancestry.

I think you are wise to be cautious but I don’t agree that the algorithm has been randomly generated by any of the companies listed in the image with my original post.

Sometimes misunderstandings arise because people expect DNA tests to give absolute percentages of ancestral origins and when variations occur between results it can appear that the testing algorithm is flawed. 

Most companies include information and/or extensive courses which educate people on why ancestry is estimated and why no two companies will give the same results. I had to spend time working through the education material and I will use my results in conjunction with my known family tree history on the Ancestry website.

There is loads of literature online explaining why variations between companies occur so I’ll list some websites:

https://familyhistorydaily.com/genealogy-help-and-how-to/understanding-dna-results/

https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/dna/what-do-dna-test-results-mean

https://biologyinsights.com/can-a-dna-test-tell-you-your-ethnicity/

https://scgensoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/DNA-SIG-handout-Why-Are-Ethnicity-Estimates-So-Confusing-April-2025.pdf

perhaps call me sceptic with these DNA tests  - I suspect these companies get the random generator going and take yer money in the process

Great Christmas present! 

I was telling my son about Living DNA and how it differs from other tests, he's bought it for me as a present, it was half price until midday today, hopefully I'll know loads more about my ancestry over the next couple of months.

Ancestry seems to be the most popular option for many people, and it seems good for people who want to research their family history. I haven’t used MyHeritage DNA, but according to their website, they suggest using multiple DNA testing companies to compare and contrast DNA results in order to attain greater accuracy.

Yes, I’ve already seen variations between 23andMe and Living DNA, although I’m hoping Ancestry DNA will provide more balance. 

pietro_21 said:

most of us share the same origins

I think about this a lot and find it really comforting. I’m enjoying using my new subscription to Ancestry and hoping to explore some of the English and Irish lines of my ancestry that I know little about.

23andMe shows 1.3% Scandinavian in my ancestry and 25.5% Scottish and Northern Irish, with the remainder mostly English. This is a vastly different result to the 8% Irish, 4.5% Scandinavian, 4.4% Northern Irish and SW Scottish, and the remainder mostly English of Living DNA. I assume Living DNA is more likely to accurately reflect British and Irish populations. As far as I know from my parents and grandparents, my recent Irish ancestry is of areas south of Wexford and west to Co Mayo. I had been thinking it wouldn’t be surprising if Spanish or Southern Europe had shown up somewhere. 

My X haplogroup is H1a, it has a pan-European distribution and is found in some North African populations.

I have an Irish gt. grandmother with a Hiberno-Norse surname, a surname derived from an Old Norse personal name. Most of my English ancestry is from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire, all in the former Danelaw, so some Scandinavian ancestry is probably not all that surprising. My Y haplogroup is the R-Z18 variety of R1b U106. The earliest remains with it date from the transition between the Late Neolithic and Early Nordic Bronze Age in Denmark and Southern Sweden. My two insular ancient DNA matches are to a male buried under the Poulnabrone dolmen in Co. Clare Ireland more than 5,500 years ago, and the other is an Iron Age Briton, buried in Dorset.

I bought the full 23+me  kit for one of my parents in never got and feedback from the results. I discovered the results of these can be quite general because most of us share the same origins. I am looking into an ancestry test separately from this. Ancestry is a more precise tool to give answers into you, than genealogy testing at the moment. 

TheCatWoman said:

As I have so much southern English DNA you'd be forgiven for thinking I have some kind of pull towards this area, but I don't

It’s interesting, if you keep going west and north you will end up in northern Canada! 

I feel at home where I am, although a bit of me wants to be in Italy. I have visited some African countries, and I felt a kind of magic at being in the same place as all those big mammals. I have heard a lot of people say they are drawn to places like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Botswana, perhaps because we are nearest our roots there. 

I have just checked out the BMD site so thanks for that tip. 

My H haplogroup is dominant in European populations, so it is probably not meaningful to quote other people who inherited it such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Antoinette and many of the royals as our common ancestor dates to around 18,000 years ago. I am hoping that a male cousin might be willing to provide a sample for DNA testing to establish the paternal haplogroup. I know some of my cousins have family trees on Ancestry, but I don’t know if they have had their DNA tested, or if my paternal uncle was tested when he was alive. 

I might use MyHeritage in the future, just to cover all available ground. I’m not sure that I’m the best person to be attempting to compare and contrast DNA results between companies, but MyHeritage have video courses which may cover this and they have recommended using multiple testing companies.

It's probably quite common to have a high percentage of Scandinavian ancestry, so many Irish people are of Scandinavian descent, but to be able to trace it as far back as the Bronze Age is pretty amazing, although we all have to begin somewhere. Is your Y haplogroup originating in Scandinavia in the ronze Age?

I used ancestry UK to follow our family tree back quite far. It was a very interesting project. We did our DNA through Ancestry. We came back very British and Irish. Very little of anything else.

I've not done any of the ancient research you're describing though. I didn't know that was possible. It sounds very interesting.

There is a free BMD site that has quite good coverage for Britain back to 1837. I did most of my genealogical research just using either the free site or pay to view for one off payments. Intersecting with other people's trees can garner quite spectacular results.

I also have used 23andMe and Living DNA. Most of the results fitted in with my researched ancestry. The historical matches on 23andMe were a little surprising. I am about a third Irish, and always considered, on no real evidence, that my English ancestry would be largely indigenous Celtic too. However, of 18 historical DNA matches, 12 were to Viking Age, or earlier, Scandinavians, with 9 of these being Swedes (two of whom were buried in ship burials with weapons). On Living DNA my Viking Index was 67. It appears that my English ancestry is largely Germanic and probably Viking Age in origin. My Y haplogroup also appeared in southern Scandinavia in the Early Bronze Age.

It is time consuming and a bit addictive, I've tow uncommon family names and two common ones, the common ones I had trouble tracing very far back, although they seem to have been in the same parish for generations, which makes me wonder if they might have been there since before the reformation?

It gets frustrating that you still have to physically visit so many archives and may have to get permission to search them.

The other two are interesting and one has a much older spelling of the name than is common and it's possible they have been there for centuries too. The other is a very small wider family which frustratingly has the same names travelling down the generations in the male line so it's hard to know who's being refered too.

As I have so much southern English DNA you'd be forgiven for thinking I have some kind of pull towards this area, but I don't, I really don't like it, I feel more drawn to the west and north than the south east.

It’s so time consuming researching on Ancestry, although I really enjoy doing it, but I really need  to be doing other things as well, and I can’t easily drag myself away from the screen when I’m on the trail as it feels addictive. I often think I would have like to have been a behind the scenes detective or barrister, if there were such a thing. I suppose that is where the interest in archaeology comes in. 

23andMe showed my Neanderthal DNA was just under 2%, while Living DNA put Neanderthal at just over 2% along with a  tiny proportion of Denisovan, which was a surprise, but maybe because it’s so minuscule most people of recent European ancestry would have that tiny amount.

I had always thought my recent ancestry was 50% Irish and 50% English, but it turns out that I’m nearly all English, with a bit of Viking and some other European, likely French. The Northern Irish Ancestry had been originally all or mostly English, and the Irish in the south had been mostly English too. Only 8% of my ancestry is Irish. One of my parents had an unusual surname, so I have been able to get very far back along that line, and that branch of the family has been in the same northern English county since at least 1600.  It is unusual for a non aristocratic family to be able to trace so far back, but if the name had been something like Brown or Jones, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. 

TheCatWoman said:

What surprised me was how concentrated my ancestry is in a small area of southern England on both sides of my family something like 87%,

That’s interesting and all sorts of possibilities for that come to mind, though it could be coincidence as the UK Isn’t a big country. It reminds me of the time when I was a student on an archaeological dig in Kent, and I met a girl who was doing A Levels at my old school and a man who had lived in the tiny town where I had grown up, in Northern Ireland.

I've done my recent ancestors with it and it's by far the best site to use in my opinion, when I next have some spare moneyI want to get the one that tells you of your deep ancestry as that interests me more that my recent ancestry, although thats interesting too.

What surprised me was how concentrated my ancestry is in a small area of southern England on both sides of my family something like 87%, my Mum did one and she has Viking, and Welsh in hers, its passed me by though, obviously washed out in the mix. Although it can be a bit frustrating doing it yourself I managed OK, I had some help from a friend about how to access some stuff, but I think that was me being a technoklutz and anybody else who's fairly familair with pooters would manage fine, I did try My Heritage, but they didn't seem to have as many records as ancestry.