General Chat

I'm sure there's a simple answer, but it's beyond me lol. It's like one of those questions in maths, if x has 30% of 99 oranges and shares them with 16 people who gets the apple.?

I have one first cousin match ( my paternal uncle's child) with whom I share 40 other matches of varying degrees 3-5th, no surprise as my gt grandfather and gt grandmother had, and came from, large families,

I have a lot of other matches at 3-5 that 'seem' likely to be on my maternal side, and some of those match each other, probably mum's paternal side in Ireland and maternal side in England.

But what about the 3-5th cousins who seem to have no matches to anyone else?

I've put this on this board as I know some DNA savvy people here are more likely to see it and put me out of my misery :-D

Presumably you mean those who match you, but match no others of your matches?

Possibilities - they might not actually be your matches, at that distance away there can be errors.

Some more distant people on your tree may have 'unknown' parents. Or even some closer ones.....

At that long distance, there are very many family 'lines' so many more individuals.

Have you loaded your DNA onto Gedmatch? That is a good site for sorting matches into groups.

Edited to say that I've checked how many matches I have, back to 4th cousin (as they describe it), and I have 15,326, of which I can identify 11 of them as in my tree.

Thankyou grannyfranny, I haven't loaded my DNA to gedmatch, may do so at some point.

I really only took the test because it was a gift, and I was interested more in the ethnicity aspect than contacting distant connections, so it's not a pressing issue as such. :-)

I recommend uploading to my site for DNA too, FTDNA. It's cheap and you get a whole new database of potential matches.

https://www.familytreedna.com/autosomal-transfer

Actually it seems to be free now. I thought there was a $19 charge somewhere but I can't tell.

If you are interested in matching, you may be more likely to get some there. People who do DNA testing at Ancestry tend to be dilettantes (present company excluded of course!) expecting they will turn out to be descended from Cleopatra or some Viking warrior. It always seems like it's one step farther along the new-age reincarnation claptrap path. People at FTDNA are more likely to know what they're doing, and there are users with all kinds of different projects who are happy to help.

I don't know much about autosomal DNA (what Ancestry tests) yet. I've just ordered upgrades on my two male rellies' DNA kits to get the autosomal ("family finder") testing done. Here's hoping my mum's male rellie is still usable. He died a few months before she did. And I've ordered YDNA and autosomal for No.1 in the hope of maybe finding out who his parents' fathers were, and mtDNA (female line) and autosomal for me, hoping for more news of my mum's loony grandfather's family. I had got a quite close match for my mum's male rellie's YDNA with someone who was just what I expected: a family with long roots in Cornwall 10 miles from where my mum's grfather was born. With a third and theretofore unknown surname.

I've been especially lucky that someone in England had been researching that surname because a bunch of USAmericans have got such strange theories and he's trying to help them out, and along came me and the woman whose dad matches my guy, and proved at least that our Cornish clan is not at all related to those other ones, but they don't match among themselves or anybody else, pretty much. So the guy in England has done all this pro bono researching and explaining for us ... much more than I care to take in, frankly. :-)

The big thing when dealing in DNA: never ever give out personal details at the websites. My kits are named things like "Mr. X. Private" and I'm "Ms. [cute childhood nickname] Private". I delete address details after kits are received. And so on.

Back to your question: have you exchanged ancestral surnames with the possible matches? I'd just sling a whole list of them at them and get theirs in return. If there's any match among them, then work on what the connection might be.

The best way to tell whether a match is on your mother's or father's side is to get a first cousin on one side to test. Then you can separate your matches into those who match with that person and those who don't.

So ... what's the ethnicity answer? :-D

Hi Rambling, was this an Ancestry DNA test?

If so you can split the matches into maternal or paternal if it helps. I just looked back at mine and I can't work out how I did it now - possibly because I have done it so whatever I had to click is no longer there. I know it was simple to do, all you need is to definitely know which side just one match is.

Good luck

Like Duncan, my Ancestry matches were split between paternal and maternal. I think it happened automatically when my full cousin did a test and she was top of my matches so I identified her as being on my maternal side.

Fwiw, after my brother finished carrying out DNA research (late-70s to early-80s) to lecture, he told me that we all have more in common than we don’t have in common so we are all much more alike genetically than we are aware.

When scientists eventually came up with an ‘Eve’ it resonated with me.

Hi all

It was a livingdna test, which I know has a much smaller sample base, but as I "never look a gift horse in the mouth" and it was free, I gave it a go.

Ethnicity wise there was very little I hadn't expected from my paper research, it was a good match percentage wise to the known areas.


Great Britain and Ireland
74.7%

Southeast England
21.3%

Ireland
20%

Devon
7.4%

East Anglia
7.1%

South Central England
6%

South England
3.9%

Northwest England
2.3%

North Wales
2.2%

Aberdeenshire
1.6%

South Wales
1.6%

Central England
1.3%
...

Europe (North and West)
25.3%

South Germanic
16.3%

France
5.5%

Northwest Germanic
3.5%

The Germanic percentage was a bit of a surprise until I considered gt grandmother's Canadian line, and their surnames. which were undoubtedly German.

I've contacted a few people, one who had no one in their extensive tree that matched any name in mine except "Brown" but had no first name for him or her and no idea of date. My John Brown started off in Yorks, went to US in the 1700s , was a Loyalist in the War of Independence, and fled to Canada ( hence my Gt grandmother being Canadian) .

My best hope was a well known genealogist, we exchanged a couple of messages and might have got further on it had he not sadly died, but I sent him a list of names and vice versa, and matching ones were Kemps/Wrights of Teddington area on mother's maternal side, that I have back to the 1700s. Oddly enough , and this may well be coincidence, I can see a family resemblance in his photo via Google.

As far as the Irish side goes, well we all know where that gets stuck, around the 1840s. I've been looking that a bit more recently and there are so many families with the same names intermarrying in a small area that it's a tangle. But there are a number of matches to Sullivans which I might try and contact just to see what they know.

I have to admit, I find DNA tests that specify areas a bit 'dodgy'.
How do they work it out? Do they compare the DNA with residents of that area?

i had a laugh when someone was explaining how the food a person ate could determine the area where they came from.
Wherever we lived, we ate 'local' food.
I remember my mother pickling octopus in Malta, and I went around eating prickly pears.
Scotland entailed eating haggis (which I still eat regularly), turnips etc
Then we lived in Cornwall, Devon, and Wales.
As a young woman, i lived in Shetland, and ate a lot of fish and lamb.
'Local' food tended to be less expensive to buy.

I was born in Sussex. When we left, I was still breastfeeding - not sure how much Sussex food would be in my system, but there's definitely more 'food' DNA from everywhere else I've lived.

My results, many years ago, from 'My Heritage were basic, but could easily be explained.

47.1% Northern and Western Europe - My gran (mum's side) came from Suffolk - remember the Viking invasion?
The family had lived in Suffolk for many, many generations - but had moved around Suffolk - as agricultural labourers did.

43.4% Irish, Scottish, Welsh - or in other words - Celtic. I haven't found any Irish, Scottish or Welsh so far, but my dad's mum's side goes back hundreds of years in Cornwall - then to Brittany..
True, we don't know who my dad's dad was, but if it's who we think it was - he was Cornish.

9.5% Iberian. Well, this could be tricky - but a great gran came from the New Forest. Her family were originally Travellers.

Daft question, how do you get a test for DNA? Do you just buy one from the internet and if so are there any particular sites that are better than others? How must does a test kit cost about?

Florence in the hebrides

You buy DNA tests online, there are several different ones at different prices and offering different results. The popularity of each company varies from time to time.
I chose mine with My Heritage, as there was a Black Friday offer 2 for 1.......

Ask around, and google them.

ty grannyfanny

Florence, I bought mine from Ancestry when it had a special offer. :-D

I have gone with My heritage as there was an offer for £35 + £5 postage :-D

That’s a shame , as Ancestry
has the biggest database. You cannot upload any test TO A ratty but can upload to your Ancestry test to other sites.

Rose - I have a whole
Batch that I call the Ver…… group. They match with each other but not one of them match to any of my many close relations ( inc. a sibling) I think they are false matches.
I also have matches that I share with one or other cousin but not my sibling!

Jonnie - we all know who is descended from a Viking warrior, I am just content with knowing I have Viking ancestors because of where some of my family came from. Never thought about Cleopatra.

I pleaded my Ancestry results to My Heritage and took a new test with Living DNA and have different ethnicity with all of them - because the data they have collected is different. So which of them is neare the truth I wonder.

I believe they take DNA from people in different areas whose ancestors have lived there for a number of generations, and it is this DNA that we are matched with re ethnicity. I suppose the reason they are able to tweak the ethnicities from time to time is by taking more samples to compare your DNA with.

A good example of how difficult this all is.

I’ve been away so have just checked my matches.

I have a new match, not shared with my sibling But shared with a 1st cousin, 3 2nd cousins and a much more distant relation so I can see exactly which line it is.

Sometimes I wonder if he really is my brother ;-) ;-). Ancestry tells me he is ;-) ;-)

It's interesting to hear what everyone has done.

I just went to have another look at my livingdna and note that Findmypast is no longer in partnership with them, which is not particularly a problem, but I believe some people were hoping it would eventually be linked to their FMP trees.

Names, me, my sister and nephew (sister's son) all had our DNA tested by 'My Heritage' at the same time.
Sister and I were similar, but she has more 'Northern and Western Europe' than me,
I have slightly more Celtic, and a lot more Iberian than her - but I am a lot darker than her. I had black hair - she had brown with fair bits, and skin-wise, before my hair went silver, I had dark olive skin.

My nephew - Irish father - has about 1% Iberian. He has got Northern and Western European, and Irish, Scottish, Welsh, like his mum and I, but a vast percentage of his DNA is Roman! :-S

Nephew's Irish grandparents had the very 'Roman' surnames of Murphy and Kelly!! :-S

I think people can take their ethnicity results to0 seriously. Unless you are looking for a specific area Or you find you are 50% something unexpected ( then questions to be asked of your parents) then you should accept them with tongue in cheek and wait for further updates which might make more sense to you.

Ethnicity results raise so many issues, such as I know where my Irishness comes from but why am I more than double that in Scottishness - execpet that I do know that it is difficult to difereniate between the two. Yet Livingdna say i have no Scots. :-S

One of the reasons I was more interested in the ethnicity result was the family story that there may have been some Spanish in the Irish side ( from shipwrecked Armada sailors, historically unlikely but just possible) due to the darker hair and skin tones of some relatives.

I do know that the surname is Anglo-Norman.

Either way I doubt I shall get back past early 1800s. :-)

All comes to nothing in the end ;-)