Adoption: Ancestry DNA results
Well, I got my Ancestry DNA results last night at midnight. That was fast! Some factual stuff and pondering thereof:
The bad news is that other than one of the maternal first cousins I already know, the closest connection I made is to someone who is almost certainly a third or fourth cousin. I really doubt I will reach out to her. Untangling the connection seems like more trouble than it's worth, especially when I might not even have the names of the ancestors we have in common.
That said, I'm still glad I did it, because the ethnicity information was very interesting. Note: all percentages are estimates, so I won't repeat that every time.
I was always told that both sides were "English and Irish," which I kind of took for nun-speak for, "well, you're white..." Still, I wasn't surprised that Great Britain took up nearly 45% of the estimated profile. I was surprised that the next largest area (18%) was Scandinavia, and the next after that (12%) was "Europe East" (Quote: "Primarily located in: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia. Also found in: Germany, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Estonia, Bulgaria.")
Ireland (which is "also found" in Scotland and Wales) was also 12%, and then a bunch of European "trace" regions, particularly Italy and Greece and the Iberian peninsula. The latter showed up on my cousin's profile, so it seems likely that comes from my birth mother's side.
And then there's 5% from trace regions of "West Asia," narrowed down no further than "Caucasus," which is interesting, but pretty itty-bitty in the scheme of things.
So, much like my adoptive family, I'm kind of a European salad, with the general UK/Ireland region serving as the lettuce. I'd love to be able to get more actual family history some day (my maternal cousin is working on some of that, so I expect to find some). Still, I think this was worth doing. I'm not going to suddenly start hunting up Scandinavian recipes or otherwise building an identity on any of this, but I always like to know stuff.
So, that was fun! And I mean that non-sarcastically.
This entry was originally posted at http://cereta.dreamwidth.org/1139740.html. If you can, please speak there.
have spoken there.
The bad news is that other than one of the maternal first cousins I already know, the closest connection I made is to someone who is almost certainly a third or fourth cousin. I really doubt I will reach out to her. Untangling the connection seems like more trouble than it's worth, especially when I might not even have the names of the ancestors we have in common.
That said, I'm still glad I did it, because the ethnicity information was very interesting. Note: all percentages are estimates, so I won't repeat that every time.
I was always told that both sides were "English and Irish," which I kind of took for nun-speak for, "well, you're white..." Still, I wasn't surprised that Great Britain took up nearly 45% of the estimated profile. I was surprised that the next largest area (18%) was Scandinavia, and the next after that (12%) was "Europe East" (Quote: "Primarily located in: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia. Also found in: Germany, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Estonia, Bulgaria.")
Ireland (which is "also found" in Scotland and Wales) was also 12%, and then a bunch of European "trace" regions, particularly Italy and Greece and the Iberian peninsula. The latter showed up on my cousin's profile, so it seems likely that comes from my birth mother's side.
And then there's 5% from trace regions of "West Asia," narrowed down no further than "Caucasus," which is interesting, but pretty itty-bitty in the scheme of things.
So, much like my adoptive family, I'm kind of a European salad, with the general UK/Ireland region serving as the lettuce. I'd love to be able to get more actual family history some day (my maternal cousin is working on some of that, so I expect to find some). Still, I think this was worth doing. I'm not going to suddenly start hunting up Scandinavian recipes or otherwise building an identity on any of this, but I always like to know stuff.
So, that was fun! And I mean that non-sarcastically.
This entry was originally posted at http://cereta.dreamwidth.org/1139740.html. If you can, please speak there.
have spoken there.