Does this make sense?

[DianaCanada]

My daughter shows 5% Welsh ancestry, according to ANC ethnic distribution.  This is backed up by the paper trail that shows her Lloyd ancestor came to Canada from Wales in the first half of the 19th century.  The DNA inheritance chart on ANC shows she received 3% Welsh ancestry from her father and 2% from me.  I have no evidence of this, but it wouldn’t be far fetched geographically, but what bothers me is that ANC has not assigned any Welsh in my ethnic groups.  I do have 2% Irish ancestry, according to Ancestry, and I think that’s correct, although not proven via the paper trail .
Wouldn’t ANC have included my Welsh?  They also gave me 1% Basque, which I assume is Celtic.

And really off the wall is my 17% Scottish (my brother is 29%, and yes, we are full siblings) and there is absolutely no Scottish paper trail or DNA matches. 

[Ruskie]

Ethnicity estimates shouldn’t be taken too literally Diana. There are all sorts of anomalies in these percentages - different companies can give you different percentages - it is really just guesswork.

Sometimes the estimates seem quite accuarate and match up with the paper trail as you have found with your daughter’s Welsh, (which may be more by accident rather than design), and you wil often find some mystery percentages which you can’t explain, like your Scottish. I have a similar Scottish mystery percentage in my Ancestry ethnicity estimates, with no known Scottish. I do have Northumbrian though which may explain it.

Some companies, like My Heritage, are heavy on the Scandinavian.

Treat the estimates as a bit of fun but it could send you mad trying to find your 1% Basque ancestor. 

[DianaCanada]

Ruskie, certainly am not looking for my Basque ancestor 

What I was really questioning was if Ancestry says 2% Welsh in my daughter’s DNA is from me, why is it absent from my own ethnicity estimate?

The Scottish issue I have given up on understanding.  My mother was from Sussex, and paper trail and DNA both show roots are deep in Sussex back into the 1700s and likely beyond.  My father was born in Lancashire, and had ancestry from Lancs., West and East Yorkshire, Cheshire, Cumberland (the last two one each 5 or 6 generations ago).  He likely had Irish ancestors who arrived in Manchester in the 1790’s.  So Scottish?  Doubtful, the DNA matches don’t back this up, either.  We might have a stray Scot or two in the 1700’s, but certainly not enough to show 29% for my brother. 

[Biggles50]

Take Ethnicity Estimates as loose guidelines.

I have lost track of the number of time that I have written “my Ethnicity results when I first took a DNA test and my Ethnicity results today look like two different people”.

Far more useful is working with the Matches, highest cM first, group them using Ancestry’s coding system.

Download your Ancestry DNA and upload it to My Heritage, run their Chromosome Browser, download the results and printout the chart. 

Then you have a good basis to help solve those mysteries.

[Ruskie]

My suggesting searching for your Basque ancestor was an attempt at a joke - I didn’t think you were actually going to do so, though there have been numerous requests on here from people trying to find that unexpected 1 or 2%.

 

[phil57]

In addition to Ruskie and Biggles replies, ethnicity estimates when presented as a single figure are a median of an estimated probability range. For instance, an estimate of 12% could indicate a range of probability between 5% and 19% (or more, or less). Lower percentages such as 2% are more likely to include a probability range that encompasses zero, i.e. no match to that region at all, so should be taken with an even larger pinch of salt.

So one likely explanation is that the low percentage involved indicates a false probability in your daughter's test which was not present in yours, similar to the way in which shorter match lengths in relationship testing can be identical by chance rather than a genuine match.

[Ruskie]

I have numerous examples where my daughter shares a higher or very similar percentage of DNA with common matches than my father (her grandfather) does. You would expect her to share less DNA as she is further removed from the common ancestor. I wonder if there is something similar at play in your example Diana - which simply comes down to the randomness of DNA inheritance. 

[Nanna52]

I think Scotland is the problem. 
I had 22% now down to 5%.  My son inherited 10 of the 5 from me.  Huh?  His Scottish ethnicity is twice from me than I have.
I have always argued about Ancestries interpretation of my Scottish ethnicity.  I can’t find any links so must come way back from my paternal grandfather where the line is said to have gone to Canada from Scotland. 
Surely it can’t be from the fact that I married a Scot. 

[Millmoor]

I am sure that Ruskie has made a very good point re Northumbria. My mother's side are all from Scotland while my father's side are all from Northumberland and Durham. Yet Ancestry has me as 77% Scottish. ( They are pretty spot on re communities). I suspect we have to get beyond our mental map of where the modern day boundary  between countries lies in looking at how these companies are defining their regions. My Heritage has me at 91.2% Irish, Scottish and Welsh ( and 8.8% Finnish but we won't go there). When one reads how they are defining the Irish, Scottish and Welsh region it does make a degree of sense.

I also think that Phil makes a very good point re the probability range of these figures on Ancestry. My previous estimate there was 81% Scottish but the range is pretty much the same this time.

William