You might know that I have a thing for family history. I spend tons of time pouring over my genealogy records and seeing the cool places my ancestors were from. Caleb on the other hand, never really cared much until recently. I've always harbored this secret hope that we would do a DNA test because I thought it would be THE COOLEST! I've mentioned it a couple times to Caleb and he would say yeah, sounds cool. Maybe sometime. Well, when I brought it up in November, I was anticipating that same response. I was really surprised when he asked how much it was instead of brushing it off. I'd found a really great Black Friday deal (it lasted longer than black friday though) and after seeing the price, he said we should do it.
Our kits arrived to us pretty quickly on Dec 1st and then came the joyous (I say that with absolute sarcasm) process of spitting into the tube. We sent them off right away and then waited. On the 6th we received emails saying that they had received our samples and it would take anywhere between 6 - 8 weeks for the results but because of high demand, probably longer. We honestly weren't holding out much hope that we'd get the results before Christmas because even 6 weeks would put us out until January. However, they worked quickly!
Caleb's results came in first just shy of 3 weeks later on the 19th. I was a little bitter that they processed his so much more quickly than mine. However, a little bit of info that you may or may not know: Caleb's father is adopted. I was really excited to find out where Caleb's roots are from as much as I was to find out my own because my kids have this unknown ancestry as well, and all we knew was that allegedly, Caleb's biological grandfather had some kind of Filipino background. If I remember the other details right, biological grandmother was blonde and from Utah, which could be any number of heritages. Caleb got the email that his results were in while he was at work and waited until he got home to look so that I could see too.
Scandinavia is made up of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Caleb's mom's family has a large amount of Swedish ancestry so if you take that combined with any possible DNA traits from his biological grandparents on his dad's side, it would make sense that his percentage (49%) is so high for Scandinavian.
On the Ancestry DNA site, Great Britain encompasses England, Scotland, & Wales. At 17%, neither of us know enough about his family's known background to confirm whether or not this makes sense, so we just took it as an interesting fact.
Next at shockingly only 8% was the results we'd been most anxious to see. Ever since we've been together, people have always asked me where he's from. I always said Utah because I didn't quite realize what they meant. I had a couple people stare at me like I was dumb and say "No, like his ethnicity. Where's he from? What is he?" I always told them he has some Filipino in him and that it seemed like those were dominant traits because he's got the darker skin tone, darker eyes, darker hair, just all around darker features. According to Ancestry, "People with this DNA ethnicity group may identify as Russian, Chinese, North Korean, South Korean, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Burmese (from Myanmar), Japanese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Thai, Loatian, Cambodian, Singaporean, Bruneian, or Palauan". We figure that there has to be some credibility to the Filipino descent that paperwork suggests, and Caleb was quite interested to see Japan on that list and imagine the possibilities. He's always had quite the fascination with all things Japanese, so maybe it's in his blood to some extent.
Europe West (at 6%) includes Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. Again, we didn't really know enough to identify where this would fit in or what side of the family, but it was interesting to see.
Then came the one that took us a bit by surprise, little as it may be (4%). Polynesian! We never even would have guessed that. It obviously is on the adopted side. Polynesia includes Hawaii, Tonga, and Samoa. We thought this was pretty cool. And it may or may not have given me a rejuvenated love of Moana. Just think... who would have guess my kids have th slightest bit of Polynesian in them?!
When it says "Low Confidence Levels" this is when the traces are so small that they may or may not be correct, or they're just not really worth mentioning because of the small percentage. In general, if I were to click on each of those low confidence ranges it would tell me a range number, and if that range is less than 15%, then it's so small or so uncertain that they call it low confidence.
I did think it was cool that Caleb had so many different regions included in his low confidence levels. I wondered if that means there's been a lot of mixing and spattering of different ethnicity throughout his ancestry.
After receiving Caleb's results, I had to wait an agonizing 4 more days. On the 23rd I woke up early to an email saying my results were in. We had gotten a ton of snow and I was anxious to have Caleb look at the results with me. He was a sweetheart and looked at them with me before taking the kids out to build a snowman.
Like Caleb, my DNA predominately includes Scandinavian descent. Out of Sweden, Norway, & Denmark, I can say for sure that I've seen Denmark on my line (my dad's side especially), so that makes sense for me. And I'm pretty sure I've seen it AT LEAST once on my mom's line's as well. I've also seen Sweden mixed in there on her line.
Europe West at 29% includes Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. I have seen Germany on my family genealogy on both sides, so I'm sure that's another accurate call. There is also French on both sides, although less easy to find unless looking on my dad's side on the right line. Then it's quite obvious. I took 3 years of French in high school and have a deep love for the French culture and language so it's fun to see that it's in there to some extent, ingrained into my very DNA.
What I was waiting to see the most was Ireland/Scotland/Wales at 21% for me. I've always been convinced I had a descent amount of Irish and Scottish in me because of my freckles. I know it's not cut & dry that freckles are Irish and Scottish traits, but you do see it a lot. I've seen my family search ancestry lines, and on both sides of the family there's Irish (and Scottish on my mom's side). Kind of like how Caleb has this fascination with Japan, my heart has always been drawn to Scotland and Ireland. So basically, I was quite pleased to see this. And I'd be super curious to find out if my siblings have the same ratio of results!
And last but not least for me, Great Britain at 5%. This could be that I just didn't end up with quite the ratio of Great Britain that other family members do, or maybe a lot of my ancestors from Great Britain originated from somewhere else. Either way, I do know there's connection there. I mean, one of my mom's ancestors was on the the Mayflower (William Brewster). And a good potion of ancestors I see on my genealogy records on both sides of the family are from England. So it was fun to see Great Britain on the higher confidences, even though it was only 5% for my DNA.
I want to add a little note of what some of these lower confidences are and where they're located:
The Iberian peninsula which both Caleb and I had include Spain and Portugal. This was interesting to me since I'm not sure where it fits in so maybe it's one of those cases where it doesn't. BUT ... My paternal grandma's maiden name is Despain, or if you follow the line back far enough, d'espagne -- the french way of saying "of Spain". So maybe there's something to that? Who knows, sure was interesting though!
We also both had European Jewish to some extent in the less confident areas. This includes Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, and Israel.
We both also had Europe South, although just a small amount for me. This includes Greece, Turkey, Albania, and Italy, primarily Italy and Greece.
Caleb also had Europe East and the Middle East which I did not have. To get specific I would need his results in front of me, but as a broad overview, Europe East includes: Croatia, Bosnia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, or Romania (and any smaller countries I've neglected to mention). The Middle East requires less explanation because I feel like we all know where the Middle East is located and there's so many little countries to list that I'm not sure it's worth the time, but if anyone wants to know more specifics, I can share.
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I want to talk a little bit about how these DNA tests work. Some people take them and when their sibling or parent takes them and they aren't exactly the same, they freak out and say that it was all made up and not right. However, if we go back to basic biology class in high school, you'll remember how DNA works. DNA isn't passed down from generation to generation in a single block. Not every child gets the same 50% of mom's DNA and 50% of dad's DNA. This means your sibling might get trace amounts of a different background than you do. It doesn't change how accurate it is if you've been told that you have a certain descent or noticed a certain descent on your genealogy work. This test tells you YOUR DNA, not your sibling's, and not your parents. It's pretty cool if you think about it -- to be able to see what has shaped your individual DNA.
I really liked this visual image of how a certain ethnicity can NOT show up on your results, even though you know it's there:
And this was another great visual image of how we get a mix of all the generations that came before us. So if we've got ancestry from a lot of different places, it will get jumbled and show up differently in each person:
It's been a pretty cool process to do Ancestry DNA testing. After completing the test you can even see profile matching to your results (I've seen matches to two of my dad's siblings that have done the test, as well as to one of his aunts. I've also been matched to multiple cousins of both parents and on my mom's side, even some of their kids). Caleb was matched to his mom's aunt and a lot of other people that we're not sure who they are. If you like family history at all, this may be something that's right up your alley. You can enter your family tree info and it will match you on your tree to others and put you in DNA circles. For example, it put me in a circle for Parley P. Pratt and now I can see over 100 others that are also descendants on there.
So now that you've read all about our experience with Ancestry DNA, I want to know: Have you ever tried genetic testing? What did you think about it? Are you interested in giving it a try? (This is purely me asking because I find it fascinating and I have a referral link I can send and you'll get $10 off the current promotional deal of $79. This is not an advertisement or sponsored in any way at all). I really do find it interesting, so if you've tried it, let me know. If you want to and would love to save $10, let me know and I'll send you the email with the link OR you can follow this link.
Hopefully this read has been as interesting as I find it to be!
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