ENLISTING DNA ON YOUR FAMILY HISTORY QUEST
YOUR DNA WORKSHOP
This month, Karen Evans advises two readers. One of whom is trying to make sense of his ethnicity estimate; and the other who wonders whether he is misinterpreting his results
Karen Evans
Making DNA work
FOR YOU
'But I'm Swedish, not Norwegian'
DAVID WRITES:
I have a DNA query which I don’t know whether you can help me with.
I have a tree of over 6,000 people on Ancestry and am quite happy with this. My greatgrandfather was from Sweden, Carl Johan Nilsson (anglicised to Nelson), a merchant seaman, and with the help of register. slatdata.org– which has what looks like parish register info – I have gone well back on this side.
I tested with Ancestry DNA and the results say that I am 23% Norwegian not Swedish and I wondered why this is like this.
I have printed the trees from the 4 highest Norwegian cM matches that have trees, 2 at 55 cM, 1 at 42 cM and 1 at 40 cM and can’t find anyone from my tree or names that match on any of their trees either. Ancestry claims 4th – 6th cousins with this number of cM. Am I doing something wrong or is this just a false positive?
I have no DNA links showing on my Swedish side but I do on my grandmother’s side.
Any help you can give would be very much appreciated.
KAREN REPLIES:
David’s question was a very interesting one because it used his ethnicity estimate as well as his matches. I am always careful not to ascribe too much emphasis on ethnicity estimates because they are indeed that, estimates.
• Each company uses their own reference panels as a guide to ‘work out’ your ethnicity breakdown which is trying to say where your ancestor came from 500-1,000 years ago.
• Each company is pretty accurate at a continental level. Testers whose ancestry is French, British or German for example seem to find their estimate is European. If your ancestors were Ghanian, Nigerian or Kenyan then the estimate is African.
• However the accuracy begins to drop as we get more area specific so having 15 percent Scottish when you have no known Scottish ancestry doesn’t mean you should rush out and buy a kilt.