“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,–
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
–Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15)
There are times when The Legal Genealogist is convinced that the DNA testing companies are channeling their inner MacBeths.
And the most recent ethnicity update from MyHeritage DNA is most surely one of those times.
My father’s family was German. He was born there, his parents were born there, his ancestry can be traced there on both sides for roughly 400 years, thanks to civil registration and church books.
My mother’s side is more of a mix, but the components are the various areas of the British Isles and a wee bit of Huguenot French. Period. No evidence whatsoever of anything more. And most of those branches have been in North America since the mid-to-late 1600s. Five of her siblings have results at MyHeritage, and they average 86% English (range 73.1%-97.9%) at MyHeritage.
So I always expect that the ethnicity estimates a testing company would dish up for my siblings and for me would be somewhere in the vicinity of 50% British Isles or thereabouts, mostly English, and 50% western and eastern Europe or thereabouts, mostly German.
And what do we get instead in this latest MyHeritage update? Among five full-blood siblings, we get — just as some examples:
Eye of newt. South Asian 1.0%.
Toe of frog. Finnish 1.2%.
Wool of bat. Ashkenazi Jewish 2.0%.
Tongue of dog. East European 4.6%.
Adder’s fork. Greek and South Italian 6.6%.
Blind-worm’s sting. Balkan 20.4%.
Lizard’s leg. Iberian 18.6%.
And howlet’s wing. Scandinavian 66.9%.
Now the East European and the Balkan, I’m going along with. My German grandfather was born in what used to be East Germany and it’s entirely possible that his ancestry would have included folks from the east.
But as much as I would dearly love to believe we have some of the color and verve suggested by these other results, … um … no.
First off, that astoundingly high percentage of Scandinavian — ranging among the five of us from a low of 26.2% to a high of 66.9% and averaging 53.2% — is just plain bonkers.
I understand that it’s essentially impossible to distinguish between — say — Danish DNA on one hand and northwestern Germany on the other. And it’s almost as hard to distinguish between northwestern German and southeastern English.
But to lump it all in as Scandinavian for four of us, and as North and West European for the fifth? With very little English for any of us, when our mother’s siblings are all showing huge chunks of English? I mean, I get it: the Vikings raided the British Isles and the DNA all looks pretty much the same. But if you can distinguish English for my mother’s generation, you all of a sudden can’t for mine? We’re all Scandinavian? Well, except for that one sister, who apparently is a changeling and did get the North and West European we’d expect.
And what’s up with the Iberian? Seriously? I would have said — jokingly — that maybe it’s the Spanish Armada folks swimming ashore in the British Isles, but not one of my mother’s five siblings has a drop of Iberian, so this clearly isn’t from my mother’s side. So somehow my German-for-hundreds-of-years father’s side has produced as much as 18.6% Iberian?
Sigh…
There’s a reason why these are called ethnicity estimates by the testing companies. I have to keep reminding myself to remember what these numbers are: the only way to get these percentages is by comparing the test results of folks like you and me — alive today — to the test results of other people who are alive today (and not to the actual DNA of our ancient ancestors!!). Because of that, it’s all a numbers game based on one fundamental assumption: that people who live in an area today (say, modern Englishmen and -women) and who have all four of their grandparents born in that area are typical of the genetic signature of that population generations ago.
And each company has its own reference populations of those living people to compare our results to, and so it comes up with its own estimate as to what the comparisons mean. Looking just at my results, and just at the Scandinavian estimates, I am 60.9% correction: 66.9% Scandinavian at MyHeritage, 14% at Ancestry, 11% at Family Tree DNA, 5.4% at 23andMe, and 0% at Living DNA. That’s some range of outcomes…
The numbers are terrific at the continental level: Europe versus Africa versus Asia. But they are still more than a little problematic at the regional or country level.
Iberian.
Right.
Eye of newt, and toe of frog…
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Eye of newt, and toe of frog,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 6 Sep 2020).
My German roots do not show on MyHeritage either. Diahan Southard explained to me that their populations have not been adjusted to reflect German DNA – perhaps because there are not enough of them yet on their database. At any rate, this is why we need to take all ethnicity estimates with a large grain of salt. One canot be sue there are enough people tested to compare against. What do they really mean anyway?
Some of these estimates are the functional equivalent of, “Hi! I’m Pisces! What are you?” 🙂
My husband’s German does not show at all on MH. He has one grandparent 100% (=25% for him), and one grandparent at least 50% (=12.5%+ for him), so he should have about 37-40% German total. His maternal side is 100% Italian, which would translate into 50% Italian for him. But he is said to be:
55% Italian
18% Scandinavian
12% West Asian
11% total of Irish/Scottish/Welsh/English
2% Middle Eastern
1% Finnish
And there is 0% for the North and West Europe line. So clearly there is work to be done on a German reference panel at MH!!!!
Ain’t that the truth… Iberian. Snort.
I’m completely confused, also. After using MyHeritage, I decided to try again on Ancestry – the same as my half-brother.
MyHeritage calls me 98.9% Swedish – then changed it to Scandinavian. The remaining 1.1% is “South Asian”.
Ancestry estimates me to be 100% Scandinavian.
Either they are painting with the broadest brush known to man, or I’m the product of some serious inbreeding. Lol
Just keep in mind that these are estimates, not take-it-to-the-bank scientific results, and that they’re most accurate at the continental level. You’re likely 100% European — whether that’s 100% Scandinavian or not is a whole ‘nother story.
Hej! Welcome to the best records in the world!…Scandinavian. Seriously, Scandinavians were everywhere–all the way to Turkey. You do have a big chunk but your Bremen side would explain that—well, that ubiquitous Hanseatic League. I highly recommend Michael Pye’s book, “The Edge of the World, A Culture History of the North Sea….”
I totally get the Hanseatic League bit. Minor little issue, of course, is that other companies DO have a decent German reference population panel and can detect the German… plus what in the world happened to my mama’s English????
Well, their website does promise “the most diverse ethnicity breakdown.” Maybe a little too much diversity?
Iberian… Snort…
RE The swimming Spaniards from the Armada, John Grenham’s blog post (www.johngrenham.com) of June 3 2019, “The normal laws of space-time do not apply”, suggests that in 1596, only 8 Spaniards survived to be repatriated with the help of a Spanish legate.
Clearly, according to my DNA, all eight of them got together with women in my family… snort…
My father’s side mostly 3rd generation Irish, maybe 12 % NW German… mother’s mostly English… MyHeritage says I’m no Irish, but I have 280+ matches who live…… IN IRELAND. bonkers
Sigh… and I do DNA-connect to cousins in Germany…
The other companies have learned how to tell Iberian Celtic from Irish/British Celtic; apparently MyHeritage has not. Personally, I assume anything less than 5% is noise. Also, have your parents and their siblings results changed? If not, may e the update hasn’t been run on their tests yet.
My parents both were gone before the advent of autosomal testing.
I understand that these ethnicity results are really guesstimates, but compared to all the other testing companies, the MyHeritage results are off the wall. They tell me that I am 69.5% Scandinavian, 22.6% Irish, Scottish and Welsh, 3.8% Iberian and 2.5% Italian. My ancestors going back to 1800 and earlier are 100% English except for one Welsh 3rd g grandmother. My LivingDNA results say that I am 100% English, but MyHeritage thinks that I have no English ethnicity. I have no faith at all in their estimate.
The total lack of Germanic Europe in my generation and the tiny amounts of English for us compared to my mother’s siblings is sure undermining credibility here…
My husband’s DNA ethnicity at both Ancestry and FTDNA is 97% to 98% British Isles and Central Europe/Germanic Europe. His MyHeritage results are 75% British Isles, 0% Central Europe, and the remaining 25% is split rather evenly between Scandanavia, Greece and Italy. Given his paper trail, they’ve either found traces of DNA from 5th to 8th century invaders of England, or they are far off the mark.
Loving these comments… I’ve been doing my family tree for 40+ years… I actually should have Iberian… my gt.gt. grandfather jumped off a whaling ship from the Azores. I have a similar set of gt.gt. grandparents who are Welsh, and apart from a missing gt. grandfather’s line…(99.99% certainty of English) I’m absolutely English, not Scots nor Irish, with a teensey bit of Jewish, which does turn up on every DNA testing company’s results, along with my Mum’s. But it’s driven me nuts that I show more Scandinavian than my husband, who has Danish born ancestors!
I’ve never noticed who’s the worst at allocating incorrect guestimates, but I only pay MyHeritage their hideous amounts of money, because I hop that missing gt. grandfather’s family have tested with them only. Once I find him… they’re not getting my hard-earned cash ever again…. their record-keeping is abysmal.
I’m saving my money (and my DNA) by not getting involved in such tests! I have a enough documentation to satisfy my needs.
MyHeritage assigns me 3.0% Middle East (not supported by my tree), despite both my parents having 0.0%. I wish the other major sites would follow 23andme’s lead and, when available, consider your parents’ ethnicity estimates when determining your ethnicity estimates.
Sometimes I think these companies just aren’t doing a good job of eliminating glitches, validating their results across a wide range of input prior to each release, and generally ensuring quality of their product. Describing all issues as “they are estimates” (not you) doesn’t really capture all the facets of what could be going on, particularly when it is observed that there are trends with each release across the board with each specific vendor. It’s like Ancestry does a new release and tons of complaints suddenly that “it says I’m Scottish” and more recently “where’s my Italian gone” also a very common complaint. Of course the “they are estimates” description is not as bad as the “they are just going far back in history” refrain. Trends are trends and reveal something there. Those things are _flaws_ when a significant portion of the results across a significant group of customers cannot be considered numerical approximations of the truth.
What strikes me about the observations about Scandinavian here the most is that I’m Scandinavian and my results at the exact time as this Internet post was being written up were that I had 0% Scandinavian on myheritage. No, I am not 100% Scandinavian. Specifically, my grandfather was born in Sweden and his paper trail is very well documented going back to 1700’s. I am related to many Swedes at precisely the right centimorgans to verify not only was he my grandfather but also their relationships and each side of his family tree.
So you’d expect me to be ~25% and if it were an estimate, perhaps we could be forgiving if it read 10% or 40% because there are also other issues with not expecting exactly 25% in the first place. Ancestry some years prior had me at 23% Scandinavian and now has gone crazy at some 31% Norwegian and my Swedish has been getting smaller and smaller with each release, now at 12%. Meanwhile, Ancestry had identified my correct traditional community within Sweden, Alvsborg Vastra Gotaland, but now they’ve got 7 possible communities….but at least there are communities there, unlike Norwegian. Well, I could be Norwegian and Swedish but I’m not quite willing to be too forgiving on a total of 43%, even if perhaps some of my English and some of my German roots could also be construed as Norwegian, you know “far back.”
But…
now recall I had written that I was 0% Scandinavian on myheritage while the author of this page was near to 60%. And MyHeritage has now updated their algorithm and/or reference data recently. During the last update, they correctly identified me as belonging to Swedish community of Vastra Gotaland where my grandfather’s family tree goes back to 1700’s but still have me at 0% Scandinavian…while also I have large matches to many Swedes in ranges of 50 cm to 120 cm.
For comparison, 23andme now has me at 28.6% and correctly identifies my Swedish community as Vastra Gotaland. And familytreedna has me at 23% Scandinavian.
Meanwhile, a close relative of mine, …she is 25% Swedish like I am but she is also 25% Norwegian. Myheritage overcalls her 90% Scandinavian. But I share 7% of DNA with her and our common ancestor is…. (wait for it) … (wait for it) … my Swedish grandfather.