Here is his message:
" ... You may or may not show a small South Asian percentage on your autosomal report, but that hasn't as much meaning to me, what does have more meaning to me is matching existing Romany participants and there are multiple Romany whom have done the autosomal test. I do not put a lot of faith in to the admixture population reports because those reports are grossly lop sided towards the European population, so it may find some percentages to certain populations like the Romany, or may not find any at all.
I know of male Romany "Rom" whom are in Y Haplogroup H1a - M82 which is clearly South Asian in origin, but their autosomal reports shows zero percent South Asian. Because of admixture, the mixing of Romany and Europeans over the last 1000 to 2000 years, Romany on an autosomal genetic level are more European today then South Asian. What has more meaning to me personally is the DNA matches you will have because that is really what that test is more about, finding related family members whom share autosomal DNA with you. The autosomal test works exactly as it was intended, I found two cousins through that test, one is my paternal grand mothers nephew, and one is my grand aunt's grand son, so the test is best if used for it's primary purpose, to find related family members and not 100% rely on what the admixture report has to say because those admixture reports are heavily biased towards the European population.
This is a good point.
I think it is also true that 2 full siblings can take an
autosomal test each, but have different results. So one might show some South Asian % and the other show none at all? Even though they both share the same ancestry. Also, as already said, the Romany travelled through many countries, settling in some for a considerable time, intermarrying with locals and then some moving on again
I have a very unusual surname that is on the same branch but in 2 different families (if that makes sense). A spelling variant of this unusual name appears as Y haplo group H in this Romany dna project.
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Romnchel?iframe=yresultsThe families who marry into this unusual name, are not obviously Romany in the 19thc, (apart from a distant cousin in caravans with Romany families), but when you go back further, some of them do seem to be itinerant metal workers and they do seem to intermarry over generations.
I haven't taken a dna test myself (don't know where to start?), just noticed others with the same name who have. By Googling uncommon surnames, looking at the dna results/project and where their ancestors came from. Though I do realise that just because they share a surname and come from the same area, this is not definate proof that they are related. But you might get lucky and find that the person who did the tests ancestor (who is named and dated in the project), is somewhere on your own family tree