My Ethnicity Part 2 — Do the Math

I knew that the ethnicity results from Ancestry DNA were estimates and how those are determined (see previous post), so I hadn't paid much attention to my ethnicity after receiving my DNA results last year. But Ancestry updated the ethnicity estimates recently, reportedly with much more accuracy, so I took a look.

My mother was 100 percent Dutch, so half of my ethnicity should be 50 percent Dutch. And of course, the other 50 percent of my DNA comes from my father. My research on my father’s side shows that the majority of my direct ancestors are English or Irish. Yes, there are family rumours that one branch of the family came down to England from Scotland, but I’ve not been able to confirm that.

Based on my research, I expected my ethnicity to look something like:

50 percent Dutch

25 percent English

12.5 percent Irish

12.5 percent ‘other,’ possibly Scottish

As noted, my DNA ethnicity estimates have been updated several times. In a recent updated, I noticed that the groupings changed. Scotland had been pulled out of the other groups and showed on its own.

My 'current' ethnicity showed as:

40 percent England & Northwestern Europe

26 percent Scotland

12 percent Ireland

11 percent Norwegian

9 percent Germanic Europe

2 percent Sweden

Those numbers don’t really reflect my research. Or do they?

Since the England & Northwestern Europe ethnicity group includes The Netherlands, I don’t know how much of that 40 percent applies to England and how much to The Netherlands. I also understand that The Netherlands ethnicity group contains a lot of DNA from the Scandinavian countries and Germany.

So if I add the 40 percent to those other groups I actually get 62 percent for Northern Europe not including Ireland and Scotland, which have been separated out. 

Since I know my mother was 100 percent Dutch, I know that I must be 50 percent Dutch (or Dutch-ish). So let’s take 50 out of that 62 percent and assume that is my Dutch. So based on my DNA ethnicity estimates from Ancestry, that leaves 12 percent for England. Which would make my ethnicity:

50 percent Netherlands (extracted from Northwestern Europe, Germany, Scandinavia groups)

25 percent Scotland

12.5 percent England

12.5 percent Ireland

This does NOT match my research, which, as noted earlier, shows that the majority of my ancestors on my father's side were born in England, with the second most born in Ireland. I haven't actually found one ancestor born in Scotland. But if Ancestry's new DNA estimates are correct, I’m not as English as I thought. Or maybe some of my 'English' ancestors had Scottish blood. But was it one or two ancestors who had a lot of Scottish DNA? Or was it many ancestors who had smaller amounts of DNA each that just happened to trickle down to me? Another possibility is that some of my 'Scottish' ethnicity may actually represent northern English ancestry, since there was a lot of movement back and forth across the border. Further research, in fact, found an article that said that some of the new Scottish ethnicity had been pulled out of what was previously thought to be northern England or north Ireland DNA markers. 

Hopefully, my research will eventually identify my Scottish ethnicity. Or maybe Ancestry will further refine the estimates and provide better or more granular results that will explain my DNA. And maybe I will get some of my English ethnicity back in the future.

Either way, I'm taking it as a justification for my love of bagpipes.