Americans, what is your ethnicity/ancestry?
Do you know where your forbears came from?
shareExplain how that's any of your business, creep.
share
MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Americans, what is your ethnicity/ancest...
SCOTLAND
share> Americans, what is your ethnicity/ancestry?
Neanderthal.
Sweden, for sure. Oh, and there's Dutch in the family tree, too.
shareI did the Ancestry.com DNA thing
European Jewish 50%
Germanic Europe 28%
England & Northwestern Europe 14%
Scotland 5%
Sweden 3%
I have no interest in doing the DNA thing, but anyone who decides to partake - go for it - could be interesting. I've proven some of my ancestry through genealogical research. I know my great-grandparents on my dad's side were born in Sweden. I also have proof that a great-great-great(?) grandfather came from what was then known as the Dutch Republic, now known as the Netherlands.
shareMy opinion it was a waste of 100 bucks.
I have a Danish great-grandmother, and am not aware of any Swedes. She must be spread out over the above (non-Jewish) percentages, which is not very satisfying.
Yikes! Glad I didn't waste the $$. I've often wondered how helpful the Ancestry DNA thing really is. I imagine a lot of folks use the info just as some sort of conversation input?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
shareThere is a feature where you can elect to have your DNA matched with other people who have done the test and also agreed. I did not elect to do so, because I am not interested in being matched with any distant cousins. But it could potentially be very useful for someone who is orphaned and/or adopted.
For me, it was pure curiosity, a curiosity that wasn't satisfied in any significant way. People should be aware that this test only goes back a few generations. It's not going to tell you that you are related to Napoleon or George Washington or Charlemagne.
My understanding is that more extensive tests do exist but are more expensive. I'm not familiar with them.
Interesting. I wasn't aware Ancestry's DNA test doesn't go back very far. I'm not interested in finding cousins or anyone like that.
shareThe test goes back as far as 200 years or 8 generations. After that, the dna inherited from ancestors would be nominal.
I allow relatives to contact me and they're very helpful. Most ask a few questions and move on. I was able to get a lot of information and family photos about my ancestors from them.
For an extra fee, I can see their family trees and do document searches. So far, I was able to reach the mid 1700s. I'm able to verify and dispel information which was told to me since I was a kid. Each ancestor has a story which unfolds with the new information.
I also have Danish great-grandparents. According to my grandmother they were born in Denmark (we even know the name of the town they were from) and spoke Danish at home. A family member did the Ancestry.com test and the results came back as Swedish and Norwegian. On the map provided it showed the region of Scandinavia with the points of origin highlighted. One region was in Sweden and the other in Norway with an overlapping section in the middle, but none in Denmark.
So either (a) my ancestors were Swedes and Norwegians who at one time emigrated to Denmark, or (b) these DNA tests are inaccurate and a waste of money.
I don't have the exact percentages handy, but my ancestry is comprised of the entire islands of both Ireland and Great Britain; northwestern continental Europe (the region which includes northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and western Germany); and the above-mentioned central Scandinavia.
Sweden is very close to Denmark though, so I guess your great-grandmother had a Swedish grandparent.
That said, I have not seen anybody getting a more specific result than "Scandinavian" on a DNA test before.
And a Danish person would most likely be a part of the "Germanic Europe" cathegory as well.
Germanic Europe covers a pretty large area.
I wonder how they define the results. Britain has been invaded so many times by so many European civilisations that I would imagine there's quite a large mix in dna here amongst the "native" white folk. Never mind the past 100 or so years of ethnic diversity.
Another reason not to waste your money with this test
share50% German from my father's side - we still have family in Germany
25% English from my grandmother's side - My great grandmother was a Wyatt - Thomas Wyatt of Wyatt's rebellion was an ancestor
25% Scots - Irish from my grandfather's side - I don't know a lot about that side of the family - just a few surnames.
Scots-Irish. Scotch in an alcoholic beverage or a brand of tape.
See at 1:44 for my conclusive, absolute proof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kptp9SmM5Y
EDIT: I protest against the name of this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans
they are a subset of the scots, mainly of calvinistic stock, who settled in ulster, and thereafter emigrated to the states, settling largely in the south.
shareanother wrinkle of this is that a significant portion of scottish folk derive from irish gael-speaking people who settled there during the post-roman area. so we're all mixed together, actually.
https://archive.archaeology.org/0107/abstracts/scotland.html
LOL - so right. I will correct that. Damn, I just should have said Celtic.
sharefor a yank, remarkably homogeneous,
7/8 irish, 1/8 welsh
my sis did dna, 98% ancestry from norther europe
i'm assuming a healthy 3-4 % neander.
German/English/Irish
I'm so white, I actually bought a TV during the last riot.