Getting our DNA tested and sharing results. Do you want to?

I had my DNA tested on 23and Me.com. The kit was a present from my daughter.

I'm rather boring.

I knew it! I always hated Sardinians.

I am not interested in being DNA tested. I am only interested in people and not their DNA. I think people, their traditions, their interests, their life, their family is of interest not some DNA.
I know where my family and ancestors came from. If there was some non Scandinavian 600 years ago is of no interest as is does not tell me anything about the person.

But it does explain my fear of being crammed in.

I do understand that. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if many Europeans felt as you do. But there's a quite different set of circumstances and notions in the US, particularly, I'd wager, in certain parts of the country.

I get that. So there was some revelation to be had in your otherwise completely white bread boring results?

I have a cousin that I never met in Dallas. He is way into genealogy. He payed Family Tree to test my spit. My mother had told me, "We are Irish, Dutch and Indian." She ticked off three tribes of Native Americans. Turned out, I am 100% European. A series of dots on a map makes a sort of circle around Ireland, covering France and Sweden, among others. The heaviest concentration of the dots is over Ireland.

Isn't that interesting! Some similar results noted in the piece linked up top. My dad's family is from England and I'm guessing few surprises on that side. But mother's family were Low German speakers from the Ukraine (Catherine enticed a lot of Mennonite farmers to come there) and that could yield some surprises, I think. My suspicion is that there's rather more Jewish roots than our family notions suspect. But god knows.

Is anyone else on Ancestry.com?

My cousin and I have been putting together our tree, and it's rather extensive because we aren't that closely related. If you're on, PM me and maybe we can figure out how we're related.

I just received an Ancestry DNA kit for Christmas. I'll send it off as soon as I'm over my sinus infection. I would be very interested in sharing the results. I live in the US where family's deep history is not always known, so the results of such tests can be more relevant here (and in other parts of the world that have become melting pots). A lot of people here use their ancestry to justify all sorts of behaviors and beliefs. It would be interesting to hear the reaction of a bigot who found out he had ancestors from the country he is bigoted against. My family (both sides) are from Poland. I am first generation American and have always been told we were all Polish all the way back as far as anyone can remember. It will be interesting to learn of my actual ancestry.

I'm also on Ancestry.com.

I found out that a 4xgreat-grandfather was an officer in the <gasp> British
Army. I suppose every family needs a black sheep.

While I'm not committing to the project, I would suggest that if everyone is going to get this testing done at once, that a service is selected which measures the percentage of non-Homo Sapien heritage as well, like Neanderthal and Denisovan. There's a lot of interest in that these days.

Quote blatham:

Looks like it might be the same here. My grandparents from Ukraine spoke German as well as Ukrainian, and he was Catholic and not Orthodox. When they came to New York City their friends were either Ukrainians or Polish, Poles and Ukrainians view each other as close.

Consult a "haplogroup pie chart" map to make better sense out of all those percentages. You can see by their map locations the major contributions that the several Y chromosomal inserts add to your overall "fmily tree".

I like 23 and me best of all, since you can acquire the raw data and do your own haplogroup associations.

It would hold some interest as far as figuring out, in particular, my father's background. Since he was without any official lineage (he was adopted as a child), it has been pretty much a head scratcher.

On the other side, it would be interesting to learn what they'd classify now as being from my grandfather. He was born as an Austrian, by the time my mother arrived it was Polish, these days his birth town is part of the Ukraine. I detest borders being moved.

Maybe I'll just stick with being whatever I already am...can DNA identify Confusion as a background?

Thanks for the tip.

Quote Sturgis:

I'm taking a guess-he lived in or near Lviv?

You got it, although when he was born they called it Lemberg.

Wonderful. Please let us know.

Quote Sturgis:

Our grandparents might well have been neighbors. I only met my grandparents a few times when I was young, but my mother told me that her father knew German, and one of the reasons he emigrated to the US was that his brother was drafted into the German army and wrote letters home telling him, whatever you do, don't let the German army get you. My mother explained that they came from a part of Europe that kept changing borders, the place was first in one country, then another, and they wound up in Ukraine. So he hopped a boat for Ellis Island.

He also had no problem understanding Yiddish, which is a German dialect anyway, because my mother told me when he went into a store with Jewish owners and undertook negotiations for something, he could understand what they were talking about to each other but never let them know. He got a lot of nice deals that way.

I think I have my grandfather's birth certificate among the papers here, I'll have to check.