If nothing else, the 2024 Ancestry update should serve to remind people that these estimates
must be taken with a grain of salt -- or sometimes with an entire shaker.
Until the current update, my Germanic Europe had gotten ridiculously low -- in fact, completely disappearing in one update. My surname itself is an Americanized German surname, brought over by a 5th great grandfather in 1749. My father basically only has ancestries: German (from the Palatine migration) and British (mostly as Scots-Irish and Scottish).
The problem was, most of my German ancestry was subsumed into Ancestry's
England and Northwestern Europe category. And in the same update in which my
Germanic Europe disappeared, my daughter still had a small amount (2%)
which Ancestry attributed completely to me! I think her range was something like 0-30+%, but of course Ancestry didn't bother showing a range for me since my final score was 0.
So now I have 37%
Germanic Europe, with a range of 24-39%. This is a much closer fit with my paper trail. For comparison purposes, my most recent update from 23andMe shows 48.9%
French & German. (This does include some French.) My Genetic Groups at 23andMe also make sense. These include Rhineland, which is labeled as "very close"; Western Swiss Plateau, labeled as "very close"; and Eastern German Plains, labeled as "close".
At Ancestry I also get 37%
England & Northwestern Europe (range 25-50%). That's an improvement over the previous 69%, but still a bit off. The problem is that I have much more Scottish (and Scots-Irish) ancestry than I do English, even though Ancestry credits me with only 13% Scotland (5-25%).
Scotland shows my only subregion at Ancestry,
Scottish Highlands & Central Lowlands. Looking again at the 23andMe numbers, I get 30.8%
British & Irish. However, while I do have
England as one of my Genetics Groups, it's labeled as "distant".
My other Genetic Groups are
Northern Ireland and Central Scottish Lowlands;
Northern and Central Scotland;
Scotland & Northern Ireland;
Scottish Highlands and Western Islands; and
Wales -- all labeled as "very close".
My other "origins" at Ancestry are:
- France 4% (0-9%).
- Indigenous Americas - North 2% (1-2%). This compares to 2.1% Indigenous American at 23andMe.
- Denmark 2% (0-3%). I have no known Danish ancestry.
- Cornwall 2% 90-5%).
- Finland 1% (0-1%). No known Finnish ancestry, but 23andMe says 0.4%.
- Eastern European Roma 1% (0-1%). Interestingly, the larger of the two segments in Ancestry's Chromosome Painter is found at the beginning of my maternal chromosome 4 -- which I know came from one of my two Menorcan-born 2nd great grandfathers. This same segment shows as Anatolian in 23andMe's Chromosome Painting.
- Portugal 1% (0-1%). No known Portuguese ancestry.
- Spain <1% (0-4%). Currently, Ancestry's biggest fail for me. Both of my maternal grandmother's grandfathers (separately) immigrated with their parents and siblings from the island of Menorca. On paper this makes me 12.5% Spanish, although even 23andMe shows only 6.1% Spanish & Portuguese. However, they do associate this with "Balearic Islands, Alicante, and Southern Valencia" -- which makes sense for someone from the Catalan region of Spain. (Ancestry previously included the island of Menorca as part of its France region.)
My ancestry is Palatine German - Swiss - Alsatian / British & Irish / Menorcan / French / Indigenous American
![[Image: Ancestry-DNA-update-October-2024.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/sg80MGck/Ancestry-DNA-update-October-2024.jpg)
