Gender icons on Ancestry and My Heritage

[LizzieL]

On both Ancestry and My Heritage matches will show up with a generic  icon depending on their gender if they haven't uploaded a photo to their profile. They both use the conventional pink with longer hair icon for  a female and blue with shorter hair for a male. I have always assumed that the icon was determined by whether the DNA sample came from a male or a female (whether there was a Y chromosome or not), but today I found a match on My Heritage with a person displaying a blue male icon, but had a definitely female first name. I have a lot of matches on both Ancestry and MH who use just their initials and have always assumed the icon colour correctly indicated their gender, but could they be assigned randomly?

[Gadget]

I've always assumed that it was taken from the Gender (My Heritage  or 'Assigned sex at birth' - Ancestry) which had been provided in the account details when registered.

[LizzieL]

I have checked my own Ancestry profile, as far as I can see, there is no field for gender. Maybe this is new since I registered.

On my MH profile there is a place to select male or female, which is supposed to be mandatory, but I have not selected either. Presumably this field was not there when I registered with MH many years ago.

[Gadget]

I've always assumed that it was taken from the Gender (My Heritage  or 'Assigned sex at birth' - Ancestry) which had been provided in the account details when registered.

It's clearly marked in my details. Have you looked under Account?

[GailB]

I have a 1C2R who is female and on Ancestry the pink icon was present when she first tested a few months after me five years ago. She matched me 733 cM over 28 segments which is beyond what should be for a 1C2R.

•   82%Great-Grandparent Great-Aunt / Uncle Half Aunt / Uncle 1C Half Niece / Nephew Great-Niece / Nephew Great-Grandchild
•   18%Great-Great-Aunt / Uncle † Great-Great-Niece / Nephew † Half Great-Aunt / Uncle † Half Great-Niece / Nephew † Half 1C 1C1R

About a month later the icon changed to the blue male icon, and I am pretty sure that it is her father’s DNA who is my 1C1R, he being the son of my paternal grandfather’s brother.

My sister matches this person 499 cM over 20 segments and my mother matches 436 cM over 15 segments. My parents were second cousins and I think that is why I match much more than I should.

[LizzieL]

I've always assumed that it was taken from the Gender (My Heritage  or 'Assigned sex at birth' - Ancestry) which had been provided in the account details when registered.

It's clearly marked in my details. Have you looked under Account?

All it has in Accounts is my name, user name, email, password as a line of dots. Then details of my membership - renewal date, order history etc

[Pheno]

When I first registered with MH, for some reason I mixed up my dna with my husband's when uploading from Ancestry so I got a lot of matches saying I was related to people that were not in my ancestry but in my husband's.  Having done that it took quite a bit of sorting out.

However, I didn't ever look at what gender I had been assigned so that may have been one of the instances where I would have said female but the dna would be saying male - heaven knows what it would actually have ended up as on my profile.  Can't think that loads of people would have done this but it might account for some anomalies.

Pheno

[LizzieL]

When I first registered with MH, for some reason I mixed up my dna with my husband's when uploading from Ancestry so I got a lot of matches saying I was related to people that were not in my ancestry but in my husband's.  Having done that it took quite a bit of sorting out.

However, I didn't ever look at what gender I had been assigned so that may have been one of the instances where I would have said female but the dna would be saying male - heaven knows what it would actually have ended up as on my profile.  Can't think that loads of people would have done this but it might account for some anomalies.

Pheno

So you can accidentally select wrong gender on MH. Sounds like this lady might have done that and that's how she got a blue icon even though her DNA is female.

[Pheno]

No I didn't select the wrong gender, just uploaded my husband's dna to my name.

Whether MH can tell from the attached dna that it doesn't match the gender that you have stated I don't know, and even if they can, which would override the other - stated gender or dna I don't know.

However, you may also have hit on the reason for the anomaly in that someone has actually selected the wrong gender - don't know whether that is possible or not but I should think soj.

Pheno