Ethnicity inheritance

[Lisa in California]

My mum’s maternal great-grandparents were born in Ireland (Co. Fermanagh, Tuam-Co. Galway, Co. Wicklow and Belfast-Co. Antrim/Co. Down).  I believe four of her gggp were born in the same areas; I don’t know about the others.

Looking at Anc*try’s ethnicity inheritance, she inherited from her maternal side
Ireland - 2%
England & NW Europe - 26%
Scotland - 22%

I’ve read that DNA percentages are estimates, Belfast would actually be in the Scottish category, borders change, and we inherit different DNA amounts from our relatives/ancestors, but looking at the above percentages might it be plausible that her mother’s ancestors had not lived in Ireland for generations, as she believed?

Any insight would be gratefully welcomed.  Thank you, Lisa

[Biggles50]

Ethnicity is an ESTIMATE and is based on a limited sample with known deep ethnic connections to a specific area.

If you go into Ancestry Support and type in Ethnicity then there are articles how they sample and present their version of a sample’s Ethnicity.

Other DNA testing companies have different procedures ie my My Heritage Ethnicity Estimate is very different to my Ancestry Estimate and the Ancestry Ethnicity Estimate from 5 years ago is a completely different person to what I see today.

As your Genetic Inheritance is random and affected by how DNA recombines you can have huge sections of your genetic inheritance missing, the white areas show where predecessors where no DNA is inherited from.  The chart is for one person, the charts are unique hence anyone elses will be very different.

[Elwyn Soutter]

Many folk say that ethnicity testing is about as accurate as a horoscope.

I attended a talk recently in Co Antrim where the speaker, Dr Nic Wright, a local archaeologist explained the results of a recent DNA study of folk in the Glens of Antrim. In his talk he mentioned that “ethnicity” is not recognised seriously as a scientific concept. The scientific focus is on comparing genes. And the clear conclusions of his study were that, in the main, the folk from the Glens had identical genes to those in Scotland and England. So all share the same common heritage (which in turn comes from a wave of pastoral folk from middle Europe, plus later big influxes of more agrarian migrants from what is now modern Ukraine, and another from an area around modern Turkey). He said there’s no significant scientific difference in the genes of most folk across the UK and Ireland.

I know people are proud of apparently being Irish or Scottish or Celtic etc but they cannot really be told apart by their DNA & Genes. Ethnicity is something humans have created for their own entertainment.

[Lisa in California]

Many folk say that ethnicity testing is about as accurate as a horoscope.

  .  I do like that statement.

Biggles50, I will read the articles in Ancestry Support; thank you for pointing them out. I had not seen the fan image before; thank you for posting it.  While my mum’s DNA ethnicity results have remained somewhat similar to her first results (years ago), my brother’s and mine have definitely changed.

…I attended a talk recently in Co Antrim where the speaker, Dr Nic Wright, a local archaeologist explained the results of a recent DNA study of folk in the Glens of Antrim. In his talk he mentioned that “ethnicity” is not recognised seriously as a scientific concept. The scientific focus is on comparing genes. And the clear conclusions of his study were that, in the main, the folk from the Glens had identical genes to those in Scotland and England. So all share the same common heritage (which in turn comes from a wave of pastoral folk from middle Europe, plus later big influxes of more agrarian migrants from what is now modern Ukraine, and another from an area around modern Turkey). He said there’s no significant scientific difference in the genes of most folk across the UK and Ireland...

I’m most likely incorrectly thinking the following, but perhaps the Glens of Antrim results are somewhat similar to results for folks who have ancestors who arrived in North America during the early 1600s?  Their results don’t mention Quebec, Canada, or Rhode Island or Virginia, USA, etc. but rather Germanic Europe, Norway, England & Northwestern Europe, etc.  At any rate, I do understand your comment, even if my reply is erroneous. 

Thank you both very much for your replies. Scottish DNA was not a category when I received my first result but with each update my brother and I have become more Irish and Scottish (he now has 38% Scottish DNA).    I truly am amused and entertained by the results and while I’m very interested in receiving updates, my research for documents, etc. (with amazing help from RootsChatters) is what I truly value.  I am very thankful that I had my DNA tested as I found a distant cousin (through a “whoops” event) and I found several matches to descendants of my most treasured ancestors.

[brigidmac]

There were a lot of cross overs from Scotland to Ireland so I suspect that at least one of the great grandparents originally had strong Scottish origins
Sometimes the surnames can be indicative of particular regions

My late aunt b1927  was true Scots .but has a small percentage of Irish and I did eventually find an Irish born great great grandmother.but had to go back to 1828

[Lisa in California]

Hi brigidmac.  I forgot about folks travelling back and forth (between Ireland and Scotland).  Thank you for the reminder.

…Sometimes the surnames can be indicative of particular regions…

Our Ovens ancestors have been mentioned on RootsChat; there is a possibility that they were living in Scotland at one point.
According to other (branches’) descendants I’ve contacted:
their Wakefields were in England before settling in Ireland; and,
their Ellisons were in Ireland for several generations.
I’ve never found out anything about our Brown ancestors.

While it is interesting looking at others’ trees, I won’t include possible locations in my tree.  I’d rather have a brief tree rather than a more extensive, and possibly incorrect, tree. 

Good point about particular regions.  I will keep that in mind when researching my husband’s ancestors.  Thank you very much for your comments.

[AlanBoyd]

Anyone interested in the fine-scale genetic structure of the population of Ireland – and who is prepared to put in a bit of work – will find this scientific paper very interesting. Note that this an open access article (free to view) and there is a downloadable pdf at the linked page. Also, if you follow the "metrics" link on the page you will get links to popular articles that reported on the paper.

The Irish DNA Atlas: Revealing Fine-Scale Population Structure and History within Ireland (2017) Nature Scientific Reports 7: 1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17124-4

abstract:

The extent of population structure within Ireland is largely unknown, as is the impact of historical migrations. Here we illustrate fine-scale genetic structure across Ireland that follows geographic boundaries and present evidence of admixture events into Ireland. Utilising the ‘Irish DNA Atlas’, a cohort (n = 194) of Irish individuals with four generations of ancestry linked to specific regions in Ireland, in combination with 2,039 individuals from the Peoples of the British Isles dataset, we show that the Irish population can be divided in 10 distinct geographically stratified genetic clusters; seven of ‘Gaelic’ Irish ancestry, and three of shared Irish-British ancestry. In addition we observe a major genetic barrier to the north of Ireland in Ulster. Using a reference of 6,760 European individuals and two ancient Irish genomes, we demonstrate high levels of North-West French-like and West Norwegian-like ancestry within Ireland. We show that that our ‘Gaelic’ Irish clusters present homogenous levels of ancient Irish ancestries. We additionally detect admixture events that provide evidence of Norse-Viking gene flow into Ireland, and reflect the Ulster Plantations. Our work informs both on Irish history, as well as the study of Mendelian and complex disease genetics involving populations of Irish ancestry.

[AlanBoyd]

Incidentally, I think that Ancestry’s co-option of the word “ethnicity” to describe subgroups based solely on genetic analysis was an unfortunate one. Probably they felt unable to use the now loaded term “race”. The Wikipedia definition of ethnicity is, I think, a good one:

Ethnicity may be construed as an inherited or societally imposed construct. Ethnic membership tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language, dialect, religion, mythology, folklore, ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, or physical appearance. Ethnic groups may share a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with many groups having mixed genetic ancestry.

[Lisa in California]

AlanBoyd, thank you very much for providing the link.  I started to read it but it is after 1:00 am here, and my mind can’t keep up with my eyes.    I look forward to reading it tomorrow.

Thank you again.