A longfather of old

I have a question.

My 23 and Me results said that my ancestry composition is:

78.4% British and Irish

19.9% French and German

1.7% Northwest European

but my Living DNA results are different, based on the download of my raw genetic data from 23 and Me:

97.5% Britain and Ireland

1.4% Northwest Germanic

1.7% Northwest European

I don't know which one is correct (and why they would differ)?

I think and others here are far more knowlegable than I, will be able to confirm or deny this, but it can depend on how large the samples used to arrive at the estimates are, obviously the larger the sample the more acurate the results are likely to be. DNA research is moving at such a pace that many studies aren't published before they're superceded by newer research. Some countries are better represented in genealogical research than others, America seems to be very well researched as so many Americans know their recent ancestry is from elsewhere usually of European decent. Some countries, I believe France is one of them outright bans this sort of genealogical research in the name of Fench unity and also against comercialisation of genetic material, a DNA test is usually only carried out in France if court ordered, like for a paternity test.

According to My Heritage, I'm 87% Southern English, with 7% Iberian and the rest made up of random Northwestern European. My Mum, has no Iberian DNA and I can't find anyone on my dads side of the family going back nearly 200 years who seems to be a recent imigrant. It's confusing and not an easy search when one has a fairly common name and seems to have spent a large part of thier time in the East End of London, thats if I got that connection right and I'm not sure I did. Unless you can go and physically search archives, church records and make any sense of military ones which seem designed to obfuscate. It can be pretty difficult and not as many of them are digitised as you're led to believe, some of the digitised records are of poor quality and difficult to read, others may well be accurate, but what I wondered looking at mine, was how much of what my peasant ancestors mumbled at an educated registrar of priest was recorded properly? Some of it I can make out where the mistakes are as I know what the local accent was and the stresses on vowels were a bit different to "educated" English. For example I guessed where Teresa May grew up because I recognised some of her pronunciation, such as Mondee instead of Monday, that particular way of pronouncing "ay" as "ee" is quite common in parts of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

TheCatWoman said:

but it can depend on how large the samples used to arrive at the estimates are, obviously the larger the sample the more acurate the results are likely to be.

In this case it was the same sample as I uploaded the raw genetic data from 23 and Me to Living DNA which someone on here (Martin?) had previously done which gave me the idea.

Thanks though and what you write is interesting.

LivingDNA do something similar to match people to ‘Classical Populations’, Greek, Roman and Egyptian. I am distantly related to populations from all three. It isn’t that surprising as people were migrating in numbers. My Ancient Greek match is from NE Spain, the Roman from NE England and the Egyptian hasn’t been narrowed down other than being from Egypt.

LivingDNA do something similar to match people to ‘Classical Populations’, Greek, Roman and Egyptian. I am distantly related to populations from all three. It isn’t that surprising as people were migrating in numbers. My Ancient Greek match is from NE Spain, the Roman from NE England and the Egyptian hasn’t been narrowed down other than being from Egypt.