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Saturday, June 11, 2016

DNA: Sisters' Ethnicity Results

DNA test results have come back from FamilyTreeDNA for my mother's sister (A).

The following colorful images are from FamilyTreeDNA's MyOrigins feature which shows estimates of an individual's ethnicity going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The key word here is estimate - this is really just a fun way to see where your distant ancestors came from.

As I have noted before, we are European.

My mother's DNA shows her ethnic makeup to be:
42% British Isles
26% Western and Central Europe
22% Scandinavia
9% Southern Europe

I think the 99% total is a rounding error.


My mother's sister has slightly different ethnic makeup:

44% Scandinavia
31% British Isles
25% Southern Europe
and no Western and Central Europe


As I have noted before, these are estimates, and are for fun.

The great-grandparents of my mother and her sister were born in America (two in Maine; two in Massachusetts; four in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania). Of their second great-grandparents, eleven were born in America, three in Scotland, and two in Ireland. Therefore, it's almost impossible to figure out exactly which ethnicity came from which ancestor.

I thank my mother's sister for scraping the inside of her cheek for me.

Previous posts about DNA can be found at:
Autosomal Testing with FamilyTreeDNA (April 2014) which explains autosomal DNA and provides additional links to other helpful blogs.
Three Siblings' DNA Ethnicity Results (January 2016) which compares the ethnic makeup of me and my brothers.
This link shows all posts with the DNA tag.

2 comments:

  1. This illustrates yet again that -- other than identical twins I suppose -- we all inherit a mixed bag of genetic material from our ancestors and even close relatives like siblings will differ somewhat in their DNA ethnic markers.

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    1. Yes, it's interesting to see how different siblings can be. I'm looking forward to seeing some 1st and 2nd cousins test to see what that looks like.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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