anyone get unexpected / surprise results in DNA test?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My maternal grandmother was 100% French Canadian. All my other family is a grab bag of 100s of ethnicities. So if I do the test, will it come back as 100% French Canadian?

No. The person insisting that women get only info on female relatives is completely wrong. I got both ethnic info and familial ties from my mom and dad’s families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Black African American surprised to find my results were European and African split right down the middle 50/50. The other shock was for my entire life I’ve heard that we also have Native American ancestry. My DNA proved otherwise.

I’m surprised you find this surprising. Many African Americans have a lot of European ancestry.

Maybe someone along the way said Native American to explain why they looked so white, because they didn’t want to get into the pain of explaining or thinking about their white ancestors raping their black ancestors….

True. Many don’t realize that White slave owners raping their Black slaves was very common. This helped them to create more slaves (which meant more free labor or more slaves to sell for money).

I thought it was common knowledge that most descendants of enslaved people had european blood? Otherwise, wouldn't their skin generally be much darker since they came from Western Africa?

[Anonymous]

My 23&Me results were mostly what I expected, but I was surprised and fascinated to learn that one set of ancestors we thought were German were actually Jewish immigrants from near Prague.

23&Me turned up the Jewish ancestry, then I found the immigrant ancestor’s town of birth on his naturalization application, and then I was able to do a ton of research in the Czech state archives’ digitized collections. So interesting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish women could get info on their father's side. Well, you can, but you need a male relative to do the test, and I don't have one.

New tests can show both parentage apparently - OP here - this is my son's one which shows what we already knew about my side of the family and is showing us now also this combined with my DH's side. There's a lot of overlap, we're from the UK and have a lot of Irish / Welsh / Scottish ancestry (70%) and Scandinavian (they invaded Ireland substantially). The Maori percentage was about 8% which isn't huge but is also not trace

Nope. Women only have X chromosomes. You need the Y to get the haplogroup info on heritage from the father's side.

NP. That's good to know, but I'm not sure what it means. For example, if my female cousin takes a DNA test, it'll show her mother's line, but not her father's? If her brother, my male cousin, takes the test it'll show the father's line?

In simplistic, incomplete, and general terms (leaving out incomplete chromosomes and multiple Xs and Ys and other combinations, or defects or changes):

XY sons and XX daughters get X DNA from XX mothers. So both can find out about the mother's line of heritage.

XY Sons get only Y DNA from XY fathers, which came from dad's father, and dad's father's father, and so on -- only the Y-bearing males in the family line get the info from the y DNA, as it only passes to Y-bearing males, and does so virtually unchanged. Because of this, Y DNA is a more directly known line of heritage than X dna. All people with a y chromosome have a direct paternal line to a single male ancestor who lived about 300,000 years ago.

Daughters get X DNA from both. The X from her mom could have been mom's maternal or paternal-maternal line. Daughters get only X DNA info from fathers, which obviously comes from the father's maternal line. But since daughters get none of the information from the Y DNA from dad, her own DNA will show nothing of dad's paternal line, so knowing the DNA from a male on your dad's side of the family is the only way to learn about your dad's paternal heritage line.

Thank you for explanation. So interesting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My maternal grandmother was 100% French Canadian. All my other family is a grab bag of 100s of ethnicities. So if I do the test, will it come back as 100% French Canadian?

No. The person insisting that women get only info on female relatives is completely wrong. I got both ethnic info and familial ties from my mom and dad’s families.

People seem generally confused about how DNA inheritance works. You get 23 pairs of chromosomes -- 23 chromosomes from mom, and 23 from dad. One of these pairs is sex chromosomes, which can be XX (if you get an X from dad), or XY (if you get a Y from dad). The other 22 pairs of chromosomes are not sex chromosomes and still will provide information on ancestry from both parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Black African American surprised to find my results were European and African split right down the middle 50/50. The other shock was for my entire life I’ve heard that we also have Native American ancestry. My DNA proved otherwise.

I’m surprised you find this surprising. Many African Americans have a lot of European ancestry.

Maybe someone along the way said Native American to explain why they looked so white, because they didn’t want to get into the pain of explaining or thinking about their white ancestors raping their black ancestors….

Unless you knew, why would you assume that narrative when it might be false?

Which narrative?

It’s pretty common for African Americans to be told through the generations that they had Native American blood and then find out in dna testing it’s not true. The white features were attributed to Native American blood rather than white ancestors, and a lot of white and black mixing was not consensual. That’s just historical fact.

If you’re talking about the narrative of having white ancestors, most African Americans do, so it makes more sense to assume you do than don’t if you are African American.

Of course if you are from a place where the black population came from large plantations, those people tend to be darker skinned and are less likely to have a higher percentage of white ancestors. Walk around savannah for example. a lot of the African Americans you see there are darker than the many you will see in the upstate regions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to 23 and Me, 99 percent of my ancestors are from various parts of the British Isles, and 1 percent are from Northeastern India. My ancestors have all been in Virginia for more than 300 years so I assume the ancestor from India must have come over as a servant to an English immigrant. I haven’t been able to identify specifically who it was. Possibly the used an anglicanized name.

It’s may be a Roma rather than an Indian.

[Anonymous]

Found out that grandmother was adopted and was Irish which horrified my “Italian” uncles in Brooklyn and Queens.
“Don’t tell nobody!!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish women could get info on their father's side. Well, you can, but you need a male relative to do the test, and I don't have one.

New tests can show both parentage apparently - OP here - this is my son's one which shows what we already knew about my side of the family and is showing us now also this combined with my DH's side. There's a lot of overlap, we're from the UK and have a lot of Irish / Welsh / Scottish ancestry (70%) and Scandinavian (they invaded Ireland substantially). The Maori percentage was about 8% which isn't huge but is also not trace

Nope. Women only have X chromosomes. You need the Y to get the haplogroup info on heritage from the father's side.

NP. That's good to know, but I'm not sure what it means. For example, if my female cousin takes a DNA test, it'll show her mother's line, but not her father's? If her brother, my male cousin, takes the test it'll show the father's line?

In simplistic, incomplete, and general terms (leaving out incomplete chromosomes and multiple Xs and Ys and other combinations, or defects or changes):

XY sons and XX daughters get X DNA from XX mothers. So both can find out about the mother's line of heritage.

XY Sons get only Y DNA from XY fathers, which came from dad's father, and dad's father's father, and so on -- only the Y-bearing males in the family line get the info from the y DNA, as it only passes to Y-bearing males, and does so virtually unchanged. Because of this, Y DNA is a more directly known line of heritage than X dna. All people with a y chromosome have a direct paternal line to a single male ancestor who lived about 300,000 years ago.

Daughters get X DNA from both. The X from her mom could have been mom's maternal or paternal-maternal line. Daughters get only X DNA info from fathers, which obviously comes from the father's maternal line. But since daughters get none of the information from the Y DNA from dad, her own DNA will show nothing of dad's paternal line, so knowing the DNA from a male on your dad's side of the family is the only way to learn about your dad's paternal heritage line.

Thank you for explanation. So interesting!

Except it is no longer true. The testing has evolved enough to be able to include both lineages.

[Anonymous]

Scandinavia and Italy were expected. Somalia was a little surprising.

[Anonymous]

Did anyone find out about being a carrier of a genetic mutation?

All of my family members on my father's side who took the test including me had the cystic fibrosis genetic mutation. My husband and children have the Tay Sachs mutation. Those were surprising results

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My maternal grandmother was 100% French Canadian. All my other family is a grab bag of 100s of ethnicities. So if I do the test, will it come back as 100% French Canadian?

Where did your grandmother grow up? My mother is French Canadian too. Nova Scotia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone find out about being a carrier of a genetic mutation?

All of my family members on my father's side who took the test including me had the cystic fibrosis genetic mutation. My husband and children have the Tay Sachs mutation. Those were surprising results

That's health DNA analysis. OP here, my son only did ethnicity testing. He said he'd "rather not know" and then spend his life worrying about medical outcomes.

[Anonymous]

There is a lot of incorrect information on here from people who don't understand the difference between autosomal dna and sex-linked dna. You get half of your dna from each of your parents regardless of your biological sex. Females don't have a Y chromosome, but that only means you can't get the limited information contained on that one chromosome regarding that haploid group. The poster at 15: 16 summarized it correctly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Black African American surprised to find my results were European and African split right down the middle 50/50. The other shock was for my entire life I’ve heard that we also have Native American ancestry. My DNA proved otherwise.

I’m surprised you find this surprising. Many African Americans have a lot of European ancestry.

Maybe someone along the way said Native American to explain why they looked so white, because they didn’t want to get into the pain of explaining or thinking about their white ancestors raping their black ancestors….

Unless you knew, why would you assume that narrative when it might be false?

Which narrative?

It’s pretty common for African Americans to be told through the generations that they had Native American blood and then find out in dna testing it’s not true. The white features were attributed to Native American blood rather than white ancestors, and a lot of white and black mixing was not consensual. That’s just historical fact.

If you’re talking about the narrative of having white ancestors, most African Americans do, so it makes more sense to assume you do than don’t if you are African American.

Of course if you are from a place where the black population came from large plantations, those people tend to be darker skinned and are less likely to have a higher percentage of white ancestors. Walk around savannah for example. a lot of the African Americans you see there are darker than the many you will see in the upstate regions.

The opposite is true as well, many "white" people are told they have native Americans ancestry to explain darker skin or features, and mostly they are also the descendents of Africans, either enslaved or free.