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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: LizzieL on Wednesday 16 January 19 10:43 GMT (UK)
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I was hoping for something exotic to turn up, but sadly mine were rather boring and nothing out of the ordinary considering my tree.
England, Wales & Northwestern Europe (predominantly Southern England) 77%
Ireland and Scotland 16%
Germanic Europe 5%
Norway 2%
A bit more Irish / Scottish than expected.
Ovals of mixed colours on dotted lines mean both maternal and paternal lines for as many generations as I could find, some back to mid 1600s
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Something exotic (Melanesian) came up in my initial results but it has disappeared with recent updates.
I'm also more Irish than i expected.
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I'm about as expected. :)
Estimates differ slightly on FTDNA and My Heritage. I have a vague "33% British Isles" on FTDNA and a quite similar "26.2% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh" on My Heritage. I think they lump those in together because to my knowledge I have no Scottish or Welsh ancestry.
Other percentages are European.
I don't really have any desire for anything "exotic" and I fully expect my percentages to change as more people from different countries take tests. :)
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The whole point of my taking a DNA test was to try to get some pointers with tracking down my elusive Grandfather...
My results sadly don't help me at all with this:-(
Romilly.
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Firstly, specifically, Romilly, you should tell more about your grandfather. There are people in this forum and might be able to help you.
More generally,
My parents both came from the same town. Their parents, ie my four grandparents, all came from that same town as well. When I started my research I was sure that I had solid ancestry in that one area. Once I started going further back I found that none of my earlier ancestors came from that town and in fact not even from that part of the country. It just depends how far you go back. In the same way that I referred to towns and counties, the same applies to countries, or even continents. I am still a little bit confused about my 8% Greek. Or Albanian as another company reported.
Martin
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Martin,
- I've been asking about my Paternal Grandfather, William James Wilson (1860 - 1937) ever since I joined Rootschat in 2005!! I'm embarrassed to ask about him any further, - as it would take me aeons to 'gather all the previous threads together' :-)
I suspect that most of us who've taken DNA tests have been a little surprised by some of the Ethnicities we seem to have garnered... (!)
I've just finished reading: 'Who We Are and How We Got Here' by David Reich, Pub by OUP. It's not surprising really, considering how our small group of Islands has been settled and colonised over time, that many of us have bits of DNA from all over the place...
Romilly ;D
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Martin
I think Romilly will tell you* that she has been searching for this Wilson grandfather ever since I remember and has many threads. I recall many late night searches over the years
Re ethnicity. The Ancestry estimates correspond to my paper trails - 55% Eng, Wales, NW Europe and 45% Ireland and Scotland.
Gadget
* Just seen that Romilly has replied. I still have a look for him, Romilly, every so often :)
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Gadget
Just seen that Romilly has replied. I still have a look for him, Romilly, every so often :)
Awwwww, - that's sweet of you Gadget! :)
I strongly suspect a name change...
Romilly.
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I will try and do better at keeping up. I think it's only 3 years since I started here so I'm still a novice.
I don't know why people are so surprised about having odd little scraps of DNA from far-flung places. Every European nation with the exception possibly of Switzerland had overseas colonies. Explorers had to do something on their day off...
Martin
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And don't forget Martin, - the 'Roman' soldiers weren't just from Italy!
They were recruited from all over the far flung Roman Empire.
Romilly ;)
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I am still a little bit confused about my 8% Greek. Or Albanian as another company reported.
Martin
I am ultra-confused about my 1% North African and 1% Nigerian, courtesy of MyHeritage.
Harry
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Hi Harry,
The 'My Heritage' Ethnicity Estimates are just weird!
I don't know how they work them out... I have Finnish on there; which I don't have on Ancestry. My OH has some Italian on there, - none on Ancestry.
I'd just take the MH results with a pinch of salt ;)
Romilly.
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Hi Harry,
The 'My Heritage' Ethnicity Estimates are just weird!
I don't know how they work them out... I have Finnish on there; which I don't have on Ancestry. My OH has some Italian on there, - none on Ancestry.
I'd just take the MH results with a pinch of salt ;)
Romilly.
I do, a whole packet of salt, actually.
I've been corresponding with a Norwegian academic whom I "met" on Roberta Estes's very good genealogy blog about mtDNA J ("Jasmine") people. That's the mitochondrial haplogroup that originated in the Middle East and was allegedly brought to Europe by the first farmers. I was intrigued by the fact that this lady, who is 100% Norwegian as far as she is concerned, had a very similar pattern of DNA to myself, with some Scandinavian, some British Isles, some Southern Europe, some Finnish ... She says she is from the west coast of Norway where people had contacts with the British Isles (ever heard of the Vikings?) and she says there are strong differences between the DNA of people from there and from further east in Norway.
Harry
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Interesting about Norwegian DNA, I wonder which part my 2% is from. Considering a quarter of my family are from Yorkshire, I'm surprised I'm not more Viking!
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Lizzie, tongue-in-cheek, perhaps the pillaging Vikings didn't fancy your ancestors.
Martin
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:o
I take the ethnicity results with lots of salt, as others have said. My My Heritage results (using my Ancestry data), produces a slightly different distribution to the Ancestry 55:45.
I think my Vikings came via the Celtic Sea :D
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My wife is U4, "Ulrike", a haplotype commoner in Scandinavia and the Baltics than in Britain. It has been suggested that some of the Vikings may have brought their womenfolk with them. Maybe they had heard tales of bold English girls throwing up outside clubs and fighting with their stiletto heels at taxi-ranks, and thought they had better bring some respectable Norwegian matrons with them in their longships. I suppose it would also be nice to get some home cooking and darning done for them on the way over.
Harry
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Also don't forget the Normans were in many cases Vikings (or rather Scandinavians) who had settled in Normandy, France.
Cheers
Guy
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My wife is U4, "Ulrike", a haplotype commoner in Scandinavia and the Baltics than in Britain. It has been suggested that some of the Vikings may have brought their womenfolk with them. Maybe they had heard tales of bold English girls throwing up outside clubs and fighting with their stiletto heels at taxi-ranks, and thought they had better bring some respectable Norwegian matrons with them in their longships. I suppose it would also be nice to get some home cooking and darning done for them on the way over.
Harry
I thought that was the origin of the myth of the viking helmet, rather than being horned they had two stiletto heels piercing the helmets as a result of encounters with the women folk of the UK.
Cheers
Guy
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Lizzie, tongue-in-cheek, perhaps the pillaging Vikings didn't fancy your ancestors.
Martin
So you've seen the photo of my very formidable looking great-grandmother, too ;D
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Also don't forget the Normans were in many cases Vikings (or rather Scandinavians) who had settled in Normandy, France.
Cheers
Guy
Maybe my Vikings came from my Channel Island ancestors then, they would only be about one thirtytwo'th
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I wasn't surprised. I've always suspected that my missing g.grandfather (well his origins are missing) was Jewish and sure enough it turns out I have Jewish ancestry in my DNA. I also know that his Ancestry was probably Spanish or Portuguese and I have both those in my DNA.
Unfortunately, most of my matches on both Ancestry and 23andMe who do have Jewish ancestry too, don't respond to my requests to share their trees. :'( I don't know what else I can do to find him. The one match who did respond told me that she thought many of the children born in the 1850s-1900s were illegitimate so may not be listed on the synagogue lists. She gave me a couple of names of possible children but I followed them through the census and they are definitely not my g.grandfather. So I'm still stuck.
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Lizzie, wouldn't you expect the morals of a semi-insular group such as Jews to lead to a lower frequency of illegitimate births? You'd think that turning up at the synagogue with a child of dubious provenance would be as welcome as a .... (Choose your own phrase)
Martin
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Martin - I hadn't thought of it before, it's just that the woman who I was in contact with told me that in the 1800s/early 1900s there were lots of illegitimate children. I'll look up her exact words.
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Aah this is what she said - not exactly as I remembered it ::)
I have a hunch from my family tree that some of the later children registered to Moses and Rachel were actually illegitimate grandchildren, claimed as theirs so they could be welcomed into the synagogue. A Benjamin is registered 19 Oct 1860 (33 years after the last child was registered to Moses and Rachel - Solomon in 1827). I mention it because the dates match your window for your g. grandfather's birth.
My theory was that a Miss Dacosta had got very friendly with the brother of her friend a Miss Wright (actually shown on the census as friend, not visitor etc and living with Rachel Dacosta and her family) and produced my g.grandfather. I know his mother was a Dacosta (various spellings) and he was called Wright and born in Bethnal Green, but I can't get any further - despite the great minds of the Rootschatters over the years.
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Taking in illegitimate grandchildren so that you get them into the synagogue seems a caring idea, but I'm not religious and don't know about these things but it does seem odd that a synagogue would frown on the illegitimate children or rather their parents, but still commend the Grandparents. However I do think the Bible says "suffer the little children to come unto me" . It does surprise me that a very religious group would tolerate illegitimacy, but as I said, I'm not an expert.
Martin
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I'm not an expert either and the quote I gave you is from someone who has traced her ancestors back to 2 x g.grandparents so, obviously more Jewish ancestry than me. However, it still hasn't helped me trace my g.grandfather's origins.
Doing my DNA did, however, prove what I had always suspected that many trees on Ancestry giving my g.grandfather parents had the wrong man (or is that the wrong parents?). One of the people who is directly descended from the supposed mother of my g.grandfather did his DNA too and, not a surprise to me, there was absolutely no match between us. He has now deleted the descendants of my g.grandfather that he had assigned to this other man and I wrote to other tree owners and most of them have also deleted the descendants, so that's one plus.
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Just for fun, here's my ethnicity breakdown from MyHeritage -
Irish, Scottish, and Welsh
60.2%
Scandinavian
19.3%
Finnish
4.9%
Iberian
6.8%
Italian
2.1%
Baltic
4.7%
North African
1.0%
Nigerian
1.0%
What doesn't show up there is the 3% Jewish Diaspora - Sephardic, and the West Middle East trace element <2% allotted me by FTDNA. I imagine these are subsumed into my MyHeritage 6.8% Iberian. Think of all the centuries of occupation by the Moors from North Africa, and Jews were also welcomed in the Moorish kingdom of Spain, in contrast to their treatment later after the Reconquista.
Harry
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Harry, I know it isn't for taking seriously, but you are a real "Heinz 57". From earlier correspondence I've always thought you were 80%+ NE England.
My parents both came from the Hartlepool. Their parents, i.e. my four grandparents, all came from that same town as well. When I started my research I was sure that I had solid ancestry in that one area. Once I started going further back I found that none of my earlier ancestors came from that town and in fact not even from that part of the country. It just depends how far you go back. In the same way that I referred to towns and counties, the same applies to countries, or even continents.
Martin
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My parents both came from fishing families in adjacent villages in the East Neuk of Fife, near St. Andrews. My father's ancestors were almost entirely from that area, with one exception who seems to have come from Perthshire, not very far away. So, pretty homogeneous, and as Fife was part of ancient Pictland or "Caledonia", I wasn't surprised to be told that my particular variety of YDNA R1b-L21 (common as muck in western Europe), was R1b-Pictish. From the evidence of place-names and personal names, the Picts seem to have spoken a form of Celtic close to Welsh. Their former territories have for example lots of Aber- names, whereas the western areas settled by Gaels from Ireland have Inver-.
My mother's family-tree is more diffuse, but even there, ancestors from Northumberland, the Scottish Borders and Northern Ireland don't explain all the fancy bits and pieces in my DNA ethnicity breakdown.
Harry
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My parents both came from fishing families in adjacent villages in the East Neuk of Fife, near St. Andrews. My father's ancestors were almost entirely from that area, with one exception who seems to have come from Perthshire, not very far away. So, pretty homogeneous, and as Fife was part of ancient Pictland or "Caledonia", I wasn't surprised to be told that my particular variety of YDNA R1b-L21 (common as muck in western Europe), was R1b-Pictish. From the evidence of place-names and personal names, the Picts seem to have spoken a form of Celtic close to Welsh. Their former territories have for example lots of Aber- names, whereas the western areas settled by Gaels from Ireland have Inver-.
My mother's family-tree is more diffuse, but even there, ancestors from Northumberland, the Scottish Borders and Northern Ireland don't explain all the fancy bits and pieces in my DNA ethnicity breakdown.
Harry
Harry, I think a lot of people have had some odd results with MyHeritage, if you look at the identical twin thread, they seemed to give very different results to 23andme and ancestry which were in broad agreement
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=806803.0 (https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=806803.0)
Have you tested with ancestry or 23andme?
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No, just with FTDNA, and a genealogist relative uploaded my results to MyHeritage.
Years ago, when this was a very new science, like other Brits I initially tested with Oxford Ancestors but their DNA tests were quite superficial, just giving you your haplogroup and nothing else.
One of the puzzling things about MyHeritage is that they don't allot me any English DNA, although I have proven ancestors (Stephenson) from Northumberland in relatively recent times. Unless that strain of my DNA is indistinguishable from the Scottish component.
Harry
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I'm waiting to hear from mine soon ,I'm excited but also hope it has the results I am after that I am mainly of Irish decent ,heaven knows what I will do if I am not ,down will come the shillelagh and bow my head in shame if I am not :o
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I have had my results but as it was by email I found it confusing ,did anybody else find this .
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I have had my results but as it was by email I found it confusing ,did anybody else find this .
Who were you tested by? Most sites give you more details if you login to your membership/DNA page.
Gadget
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I was tested by Ancestry DNA a christmas gift from my son .
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I was tested by Ancestry DNA a christmas gift from my son .
Have you logged in to your DNA page on Ancestry or did your son set it up?
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I logged in and it said 50% Irish and 50% English but it was all the other stuff I didnt understand ,I will have to get my brother to look at it when he is next over .
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Have a read of this:
https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters2/wedding18.htm#Masterclass
If you have any particular questions, just ask. We'll try to help :)
Gadget
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Thank you very much :)
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I know the ethnicity results need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but was somewhat amused after uploading my AncestryDNA raw data to MyHeritage to be told I have no English DNA at all. ;D
Ancestry ethnicity - 97% England, Wales, and North Western Europe, 3% Scotland and Ireland
which is pretty much what I would expect based on paper trail
MyHeritage ethnicity - 50.5% North and Western Europe, 33.2% Scotland, Ireland & Wales, 12.2% Scandinavian, 4.1% Finnish, 0% English
Now I know it depends on their sampling and yes I can see that as I do have quite a lot of East Anglian ancestors they may appear under North and Western Europe, and the probable Welsh ancestors (Welsh surnames, no idea where they came from), but to say 0% English does beg the question. :-X
That said, I have matched a second cousin of my father's who I've had contact with before and the amount is about right compared to a 2nd cousin of my mother's on Ancestry, although twice as much as another of Dad's second cousins on that line on Ancestry). MH are saying 1st cousin or 2 cousin twice removed, but he is actually 2nd cousin once removed. And someone I match on Gedmatch also appears so its definitely my DNA. However, they are showing matches with people in Germany, which may mean I might have a chance at working out where my 3xGreat Grandfather came from. :)
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I know the ethnicity results need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but was somewhat amused after uploading my AncestryDNA raw data to MyHeritage to be told I have no English DNA at all. ;D
Ancestry ethnicity - 97% England, Wales, and North Western Europe, 3% Scotland and Ireland
which is pretty much what I would expect based on paper trail
MyHeritage ethnicity - 50.5% North and Western Europe, 33.2% Scotland, Ireland & Wales, 12.2% Scandinavian, 4.1% Finnish, 0% English
Now I know it depends on their sampling and yes I can see that as I do have quite a lot of East Anglian ancestors they may appear under North and Western Europe, and the probable Welsh ancestors (Welsh surnames, no idea where they came from), but to say 0% English does beg the question. :-X
That said, I have matched a second cousin of my father's who I've had contact with before and the amount is about right compared to a 2nd cousin of my mother's on Ancestry, although twice as much as another of Dad's second cousins on that line on Ancestry). MH are saying 1st cousin or 2 cousin twice removed, but he is actually 2nd cousin once removed. And someone I match on Gedmatch also appears so its definitely my DNA. However, they are showing matches with people in Germany, which may mean I might have a chance at working out where my 3xGreat Grandfather came from. :)
This ties in with my experience smudwhisk, some very different ethnicity breakdowns on MyHeritage with much more 'Celtic' Scotland/Ireland DNA than what was mostly English on Ancestry. Also some extra regions I am not 100% sure if they are accurate or just 'noise'. My ancestry % breakdowns for my parents both match my recorded ancestry so I think we can say at the moment Ancestry are more accurate for the ethnicity breakdowns. I presume they are doing a similar analysis on England/Scotland/Wales as they have recently done with Ireland, so hopefully we might get a more accurate and detailed breakdown there in the not too distant future.
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Thanks melba, glad its not just me with some weird MH ethnicity results. If it wasn't for the fact that I match a few known cousins at different levels, I'd wonder if it was my sample. The weirdest is the Scandinavian/Finnish, apart from a possible multi-x great grandfather who could be Norwegian or Danish, nothing shows. There is known French Huguenot/Walloon and the aforementioned German 3x Great Grandfather but nothing else. I have no known Irish, one confirmed 4x GGF from Scotland but possibly another but don't know where from (its I think a Scottish surname) and while there are some Welsh names on both sides of the family, don't know where they were from (they all appeared in London pre 1800s) but I suppose English counties bordering Wales could get reflected in the MH sample and appear as Welsh. Who knows. :-\
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Hi smudwhisk,
I seem to have more English DNA on the 'My Heritage' Site than I do on Ancestry! (But perhaps their calculations are different? Or they've just split it up more?)
This is my Ancestry Ethnicity Estimate:
England, Wales & North Western Europe
Wales & the West Midlands: 52%
Southern England
Ireland and Scotland: 37%
European Jewish 7%
Germanic Europe 2%
Sweden 2%
On My Heritage:
North and West Europe : 93.5%
Irish, Scottish, and Welsh : 48.7%
English:40.2%
Finnish : 4.6%
South Europe: 3.5%
Iberian : 3.5%
Ashkenazi Jewish : 3.0%
I have no idea where the Askenazi Jewish DNA come from... But it must be on my BrickWall Paternal side, as my first cousins on that side also have it.
Romilly.
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Ethnicity "estimates" are tosh.
My original Ancestry test had 12% Scandinavian, amended to 3% Norway (when they increased the number of their reference groups).
The same data at MyHeritage - 53.3% Scandinavian ;D
Ethnicity "estimates" at MyH are double tosh !!!!
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Thanks melba, glad its not just me with some weird MH ethnicity results. If it wasn't for the fact that I match a few known cousins at different levels, I'd wonder if it was my sample. The weirdest is the Scandinavian/Finnish, apart from a possible multi-x great grandfather who could be Norwegian or Danish, nothing shows. There is known French Huguenot/Walloon and the aforementioned German 3x Great Grandfather but nothing else. I have no known Irish, one confirmed 4x GGF from Scotland but possibly another but don't know where from (its I think a Scottish surname) and while there are some Welsh names on both sides of the family, don't know where they were from (they all appeared in London pre 1800s) but I suppose English counties bordering Wales could get reflected in the MH sample and appear as Welsh. Who knows. :-\
I have 100% confirmed French DNA on my mother's side - lots of relatively close cousins of full or nearly full French descent, but my mother shows no French, just 100% England/Wales/NW Europe on ancestry. I think France is much less surveyed DNA wise than the UK and Ireland, as in theory commercial DNA testing there is illegal, so other than scientific/anthropological/medical DNA studies and a few French citizens that have managed to import kits without being seized by customs, the DNA companies don't have the ability to recognise it specifically. For central and northern France it is probably very similar to central and southern English DNA due to the Bretons, Normans, Huguenots, Flemish that the two populations have in common. The same probably applies for parts of north western Germany, southern Denmark and northern Netherlands whose DNA will be very similar to the English on a basic level due to the Anglo-Saxon origins there. And then the Viking input from the Danelaw and the Scottish and Irish incursions. So until they do an in-depth study in Britain, and its near continental neighbours, as Ancestry recently did with Ireland we are going to probably have this continuing confusion between British/Scandinavian/Germanic/French genes.
One plus point I will say for MyHeritage is the ability to search matches by country. A lot of my closer matches in Germany/Holland/France are actually either ex-pats or people who clearly (from their tree) have a British parent or grandparent. I do have a lot of matches in Sweden and Norway though which is somewhat bizarre, as I have no known Scandinavian ancestry - I can only assume it comes from a small amount of Huguenot settlement that took place there (being protestant countries).