Recently, Ancestry introduced a new view of your ethnicity called SideView™. In a nutshell, AncestryDNA uses your DNA matches to attempt to divide your ethnicity into regions inherited from Parent 1 and Parent 2.
Based on your matches and the common DNA they share with you, Ancestry strives to divide your ethnicity into parental “sides,” although Ancestry can’t tell you which side is maternal and which side is paternal.
Even though Ancestry can’t tell you which side is which parent, there are tricks that might help you do just that.
Ethnicity
Before we look at SideView, let’s have a quick review of ethnicity estimates and how they do and don’t work.
Every vendor creates their own proprietary mathematical algorithm to determine their customers’ ethnicity or population percentages based on their own customer database and other resources.
“Country” boundaries change and people migrate. The article, Making Sense of Ethnicity Updates may be helpful.
If you haven’t done so, create a spreadsheet or chart identifying the amount of DNA you would inherit from each ancestor if exactly 50% of each ancestor’s DNA was passed down in each generation. Your spreadsheet may/will help you identify which “side” belongs to which parent. I provided instructions for calculating your expected ethnicity percentages based on your genealogy in the article, Concepts – Calculating Ethnicity Percentages.
My Genealogy
I’ve updated my genealogy totals slightly since that 2017 article because I’ve been able to push some of those lines back in time, either genealogically, via Big-Y or full sequence mitochondrial DNA testing and matching, or a combination of both.
Here’s an updated chart. I’ve included the last two ethnicity percentage results from each vendor except MyHeritage because their ethnicity results have remained the same for several years although they released Genetic Groups to complement ethnicity in 2020.
I’ve clustered geographies in regions because the vendors measure locations differently. Locations sometimes change within the same vendor with different releases.
The earlier “Unknown” genealogy category is gone now because I’ve been able to assign those ancestors to a geographic region if not an exact “country.”
The Genealogy Percent column, with a header and totals in yellow, details the geographic source for each of my 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents who each contributed approximately 1.5625% of my DNA. Of course, we know that DNA isn’t divided exactly in half in each generation, and I possibly inherited none of the DNA of some of those people and more than 1.5625% from others. Regardless, this is the best measuring stick of what I should expect and a way to determine if my ethnicity results are in the right ballpark.
The yellow cells in the vendor column totals reflect the “best fit” for my known genealogy percentages when compared against the expected percentages. In the Native grouping, vendors receive a yellow cell for identifying that heritage.
OK, now let’s take a look at Ancestry’s new SideView.
Finding SideView
At Ancestry, your ethnicity estimate, as well as your new SideView results, are found in the DNA Story section of your DNA Results Summary tab.
Ancestry does update your ethnicity estimate from time to time, so yours may have changed since you last viewed your results.
Ideally, if exactly half of the DNA of each ancestor was passed down in each generation, then I would have the amount of DNA shown in my personal chart, assuming my genealogy is accurate with no adoptions or unexpected parent events.
Also ideally, I would show exactly half of each of my parent’s ethnicity.
But that’s not how it works. While we do inherit half of our DNA from each parent, they can randomly give us all of a segment of DNA from one ancestor and not any of a segment of DNA from a different ancestor.
I wrote about how DNA is passed to children in the article, Ancestral DNA Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?. This explains how and why you might not inherit the exact amount of a specific ethnicity you would expect. Of course, that combined with each vendor’s different algorithms may produce results that surprise you, although the discrepancy should be relatively small.
Keep in mind how ethnicity inheritance works as you view your ethnicity results, including SideView.
SideView Results
Here are my Sideview results.
Remember, we don’t know which parent is “1” and which is “2.” Click on “How we identify this” to learn about how SideView works.
Here’s a more detailed description along with some nice graphics.
Analyzing My Results
SideView appears right beside your ethnicity map, so be sure to consult that map. Note that regions reflect populations, not necessarily countries as boundaries are drawn today.
The first thing I noticed is that my significant Dutch heritage, along with my French is missing in my ethnicity results as well as on the map.
How is this possible?
The arrows point to the Netherlands and France. These are important pieces of my ancestry on my Mother’s side. Mom was 25% Dutch so I should be about 12.5%. My maternal side genealogical breakdown is shown in the chart below.
| Mom % | I Should Inherit From Mom | |
| German | 50 | 25 |
| Dutch | 25 | 12.5 |
| French/Acadian | 12.5 | 6.25 |
| England | 12.5 | 6.25 |
| Native | ~2 in the Acadian line | ~1 |
Of course, my Native American is also missing at Ancestry, even though the other three major vendors identify those segments. The two vendors who paint ethnicity by segment, 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA report Native on the same segment on my chromosome 1, so it’s unlikely that both of those vendors are in error in exactly the same way.
While Native is critically important to my genealogy, it is a small percentage. Missing a small percentage, while frustrating, is more understandable than missing a larger percentage.
My Dutch ancestors at 12.5% and French at 6.25% are not trivial and together comprise more than one-third of my mother’s heritage and more than one-sixth of mine. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I do match many other people who descend from these same ancestors so it’s not a mistaken or misidentified ancestor issue.
My father was kind of a colonial mutt. Scottish, Irish, and English with a small smattering of African and Native along with 1.5% Scandinavian/Nordic. The African in the later versions tends to show as Middle Eastern or North African, or doesn’t show at all, but that segment with a small Native one cluster together on the same chromosome. I also match other people who are Native/African on those segments as well.
However, given that neither of those ethnicities appear at Ancestry, we don’t have those to work with, nor do we have specific segment information.
Let’s work with what we do have.
View Breakdown
I wish Ancestry did not say “Now, you can see which ethnicities you inherited from each parent,” because while that’s the goal, it isn’t always the case. Lots of people will simply accept that statement at face value.
Click on View breakdown.
You’ll see your results broken into two sides with the reported regions noted at the bottom. All regions are showing in the circle by default.
To see how this works, click on any single or combination of regions.
Determining Sides
What can we do to determine which side is which parent?
Let’s start with ethnicities or regions which should be unique to one parent and not the other.
I clicked on both Norway and Sweden/Denmark since I know that one couple on my father’s side is Scandinavian/Nordic, but I discovered that Ancestry assigned pieces of those regions to both Parent 1 and Parent 2.
I’m positive that my mother did not have any ancestors in the past 6 generations and significantly further back that were Scandinavian or Nordic, BUT, Germany and the Netherlands both border those regions. People traveled, wars happened and populations as a whole mixed, so while I’m confident of my genealogy, this actual ethnicity may be accurate even though it does not reflect genealogical locations. It may well reflect populations and admixture.
What I am sure of is that I can’t use these particular regions to identify which side is maternal or paternal.
Detailed Comparison
Let’s look at the detailed comparison you’ll see by scrolling down.
Can I identify any of these regions as solely connected with only one parent?
Yes, I can. Ancestry has assigned Germanic Europe to only one parent, and Mom is 50% German, so Parent 1 has to be Mother. I should expect to be assigned roughly half of what my mother has – so about 25% Germanic.
Mother has no Irish, so Ireland has to be Dad, which also correlates to known genealogy.
However, the rest of the ethnicity results are questionable, including Mom’s missing Dutch and her missing England and Northwest Europe which should total in the neighborhood of 37.5%. I would be expected to inherit about 18.75% of that from her. Where is it?
No Segments
I very much wish Ancestry provided segment information.
Using segment matching information from the other three vendors, including ethnicity segment information from both 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA, I’ve painted my segments at DNAPainter, so I know which ancestors or ancestral lines contributed which DNA segments.
If Ancestry, provided users with segment information, I could determine which ethnicities they have attributed to which ancestors and maybe unravel why.
Another Possible Clue
There is one additional way I might be able to figure out where Ancestry attributed Mom’s Dutch and French heritage.
Given that I know which of my closest matches are maternal and paternal, I can utilize shared matching plus shared ethnicity to look for similarities. Just click on the match with someone, then on the Ethnicity tab.
The closest match on my mother’s side is my first cousin who also descends from my maternal grandparents. My cousin’s relevant parent should have roughly the same amount of the same ethnicities as my Mom since they were siblings, taking into account that not all of our ancestors’ DNA is passed in exactly half and siblings, unless they are identical twins, don’t inherit all of the same DNA from their parents. Of course, that means my first cousin should share roughly the same amount of DNA/ethnicity from our common grandparents as I do.
My cousin’s other parent is European with what appears to be a significant number of German ancestors, so we need to take that into account when viewing my cousin’s shared ethnicity comparison with me, above.
I can see that my cousin has 4% French and 1% Native, but that percentage might have been contributed by their other parent, especially since there is a French surname in that line.
If my cousin’s other parent had been African or Asian or an ethnicity that is different from the ethnicity of our shared line, it would be easier to compare our results meaningfully.
In this case, the shared match ethnicity comparison did not help, but your mileage may vary based on your unique circumstances.
Assign the Parent
If you are fortunate enough to be able to determine which parent is which, you can assign Parent 1 and 2 as maternal or paternal at Ancestry by clicking on the “Edit parents” icon at top right on the Detailed Comparison page.
I selected side 1 as Maternal based on the 35% Germanic Europe which is very clearly my mother’s side.
What I wish we could do, but we can’t, is to explain why we disagree with some portion of an assigned ethnicity. Ancestry does have my tree and I do have Thrulines from these ancestors, so the information is available for comparison should Ancestry choose to utilize that resource.
You can undo your selections by selecting “Back” or click on “Sounds good.”
I initially clicked on “Sounds good,” even though that bothers me. I hope that I’m not confirming something that’s incorrect, given my Mother’s missing Dutch and French, and that I’m not going to make *something* worse in the future by baking in bad ingredients. I’m not comfortable confirming something that’s significantly wrong. On the other hand, Parent 1 is clearly my mother, so I’m conflicted and I really don’t know exactly what I’m confirming to Ancestry.
In other words, we don’t know what Ancestry is doing under the hood with this information, if anything, other than labeling your sides.
Ultimately, I clicked “Back”, at least for now, to leave my sides unassigned until there is some benefit to me to identify the parental sides and I know I’m not confirming something that shouldn’t be confirmed. In other words, I know which parent is which, but I do NOT want to confirm that these ethnicities are fundamentally accurately assigned, because they are not.
Does Testing Your Parents Make a Difference?
If you’re wondering if testing your parents makes a difference with SideView predictions, it does not.
Ancestry is NOT utilizing your parents’ DNA for SideView ethnicity division, even if your parent or parents have tested, which Ancestry confirms in their documentation.
If you’re wondering why Ancestry doesn’t use your parent’s DNA to improve your SideView results, remember that someone who matches you at the parent/child level can be either your parent or your child. Often trees are either absent or incorrect, so Ancestry cannot simply assume anything.
Benefits of SideView?
What do you think?
Is there a benefit to SideView or is it simply interesting window dressing?
Are your SideView results accurate?
Do you feel that Sideview is accurate enough to be genealogically useful?
Are you able to utilize Sideview for your genealogy? If so, how?
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I noticed you also have Northern Italy, mine on Ancestrydna have switched back and forth from Greece & Albania back now to Northern Italy, where do you believe this region is really located? Ancestrydna and 23andme shows my Native American ancestry but FTNA doesn’t, on that site it only shows a small amount of Malay ancestry which is very odd
For people who have no idea where at least one parent or grandparent came from, ethnicity estimates like this can be useful. I’ve recently seen the effect of SideView confirming a family rumor about a missing parent and it was powerful in encouraging further investigation.
But I have also seen people desert conventional research in the search for a “perfect” ethnicity test result, from one tester after another (including some most of us have never heard of). After a year or two, a dissatisfied person would finally return to working the tree back and find satisfaction in the hard-won personal results achieved.
Communities for those that have them seem to me much more useful – at Ancestry anyway.
SideView has its uses. But it’s mostly bells and whistles. Like the recent changes to the home page. And some results suggest that SideView may be less accurate when parents come from much the same ethnic regional origins.
Thanks for the explanation, Roberta. Great job, as usual.
I don’t find SideView genealogically useful at all. Almost all of my ancestors came to the US in the 17th and 18th centuries and came primarily from the British Isles, so I expected little difference. Sure enough, my percentages were: England & NW Europe, 34% (P1), 35% (P2), 69% (Me); Wales, 9, 6, 15; Scotland 4, 8, 12; Norway, 3, 0, 3; and Ireland 0, 1, 1. I know of only one Irish ancestor, on my dad’s side, but 1% is so small I don’t trust that to be the differentiator. I have no knowledge of any Norwegian ancestry at all…suspect it is Viking, but with ancestry all over the island of Great Britain, it could be from either side. I have not found any ancestors yet who came directly from Wales, but I have plenty of holes in 4X, 5X and 6XGGPs. Again, though, 3% is not much of a difference to hang one’s hat on when it comes to determining which side belongs to which parent.
It’s too bad Ancestry doesn’t roll parents’ DNA into the equation. I had my mom tested. On my dad’s side, my two brothers, a half-nephew and half-niece (my dad’s grandchildren, but not my mom’s), my dad’s sister and his brother, and I have all tested. With those seven tests, I expect Ancestry could recreate probably 95-98% of my dad’s DNA to compare to my matches’ segments. But to what end? The ethnicity estimates are certainly of interest to people who know nothing about their ancestry, but in my case, both my parents’ lines are so similar that using ethnicity estimates based on “typical” DNA profiles for specific areas simply couldn’t discriminate between them.
I suppose it’s interesting for people whose parents have very different ethnicities. For me, it’s useless – parent 1 has 46% Sweden/Denmark and 4% Finland, parent 2 has 47% Sweden/Denmark and 3% Finland… Oh, how I would prefer a chromosome browser!
I’m nearly half Dutch and have tested at AncestryDNA. There is no Dutch ethnicity category at AncestryDNA: instead it gets attributed to “Germanic Europe” and “England and Northwestern Europe”. In SideView, my 95% Dutch parent gets 27% England+NW Europe and 22% Germanic Europe.
My experience of SideView is reasonably positive. It correctly identifies my other parent as a mix of English, Scottish and Irish. The only major mistake is that it fails to detect the 7% or so of German that I get from that side, attributing it instead to my Dutch parent.
I was one of the early testers and have been unwilling to give Ancestry more money, so they think all my ancestors are Vikings. IMHO Total waste of server space. Just give us a chromosome browser.
Some people might find it valuable, particularly where there are clear differences. However, my results are much like yours. I think I can tell which is which, but a high percentage of 14% Scottish is reported in the parent who I think is my mother. My mother has tested and in the latest iteration only shows 3% Scottish. I can’t have inherited 14% from her if that is the case. I did not confirm the parent for the same reasons you have stated, for fear it might skew decisions on sides down the track.
Scottish ethnicity has been a problem for some time in Ancestry changes for my mother. In 2019 she showed 50% Ireland and Scotland, I have no evidence of any Scottish in her genealogy but she does have Northern Ireland which could amount for some of the Scottish and 2 problematic paternal great grandfathers, so it might be right. Her mother is predominantly Irish. However in 2020 her Scottish went up to 48%. Now in 2022 its back down to 3%. There is clearly some issue at Ancestry re Scotland.
Given Ancestry claim they examined at the level of AGCT level they clearly have done a lot of work to produce these results however they must be fraught with errors due to not taking known parents into consideration, compared to phased kits at GEDmatch. I understand they can’t distinguish a parent/child but many of us would have marked those relationships in the system already. Oh, for a chromosome browser to be able to see the Scottish segments! Even a chromosome browser just for ethnicity like at 23andMe would be a step forward.
The improvements at AncestryDNA continue to be very valuable so I don’t want to sound negative. However being the largest database there is some much more valuable segment evidence that is being hidden from us, it continues to be frustrating!
Thanks for all you do Roberta and being our voice in these matters!
My parents had broadly similar backgrounds, so I can only guess which is which. I continue to hope for a chromosome browser – and, yeah, I know, someday my prince will come!
😂
“If you’re wondering why Ancestry doesn’t use your parent’s DNA to improve your SideView results, remember that someone who matches you at the parent/child level can be either your parent or your child. Often trees are either absent or incorrect, so Ancestry cannot simply assume anything.”
Often they wouldn’t have to assume anything. Many customers elect to show their ages, and for all those parent-child pairs or trios who have done so It’s quite obvious who is the parent and who is the child. The birth year shown for my wife and me is 1956; for our daughter it’s 1985. There’s only one possibility.
In fact, Ancestry *does* know who her parents are, and makes use of this fact. Most of her matches are shown with either “Father’s Side” or “Mother’s Side”.
Admittedly, not everyone shows an age or birth year. However, even without this information Ancestry has to know when a parent-child (or child-parent) relationship exists. Although full siblings can show the same amount of sharing as parent-child, *how* the DNA is shared will be different. Parents and children share across the full length of every chromosome. Seldom will this be true for siblings, except identical twins (and there are other ways to tell identical twins.)
There is another way, though, to tell which is the parent and which is the child. A child cannot inherit more of an ancestry from a given parent than that parent has. There can be situations in which this seems to be untrue, but then something else is going on. For *most* parent-child pairs or trios, it really shouldn’t be difficult for Ancestry to infer which is which.
However, in a way I should probably be thankful if they don’t use parent-child relationships to improve the results. They might be tempted to “fix” situations in which a child inherits an ancestry or ancestries that neither parent has.
This is the case for my daughter. According to Ancestry, she has 2% Germanic Europe and 2% Norway, but these ancestries are shown for neither her mother nor for me. But, SplitView shows that both of these ancestries were inherited from the same parent who have her her 1% “Indigenous Americas – North”. That would be me.
Yet as of this latest update, Ancestry has gone from saying I have just a small amount of Germanic Europe to saying I have none at all. In fact, over a third of my ancestry consists of immigrants who were part of the German Palatine migration — 35% to be more precise, all on my father’s side. I also have an Alsatian 2nd great grandmother and a small amount of colonial-era Swiss ancestry (from Grissons) on my mother’s side.
It is extremely unlikely that this much of my ancestry has simply disappeared. Rather, Ancestry is simply categorizing it as something else. That “something else” is a very large chunk of my “England & Northwestern Europe”.
Yet it is interesting that in my daughter, at least a small part of this same ancestry is identified as “Germanic Europe”. Not only that, while her “score” is only 2%, her range is 0-23%. So Ancestry concedes that even if it is less likely, it’s actually possible that nearly a quarter of her ancestry could be from Germanic Europe. That may be a bit high, but 23andMe’s of 12.4% is much more reasonable than Ancestry’s 2% — and 23andMe attributes 10.4% to me and 1.8% to her mother.
This brings up another change I really believe Ancestry should implement. Actually, it would represent going back to something they once did. Report ranges even for ancestries with a final score of 0, wherever a range in fact exists.
I’m pretty confident that Ancestry’s algorithm did not decide on every one of its 1000 iterations that I have NO Germanic Europe. It simply made that decision more often than any other decision. The same thing is presumably true for my daughter, except that the algorithm found 2% to be the “most likely” number — even though anything from 0 to 23% was also possible. (I would not be surprised if I actually have a similar range to hers, or an even greater one, with the only difference being that the final score was 0, and therefore Ancestry decided it needn’t both reporting a range.)
Sometimes having simple ancestry helps!
My wife’s Sideview is pretty consistent with genealogy:
Maternal Paternal
Ireland 49% 3%
England & NWE 29%
Scotland 17%
Norway 1%
Sweden & Denmark 1%
Her father has English ancestry from 200+ years ago, ie before they came to Australia (voluntarily and otherwise), the Scotish must be the usual Ancestry aberration. Does not actually help with genealogy though…
Another wonderful article – and really helpful. I hear so many questions from my own matches from Ancestry. One of the problems is when Ancestry bundles them to a group, as in ‘Southern European and then Broadly Southern European. What I do not understand, is how it is possible that all of a sudden, I have Scandinavian. None of my other vendors had me at Scandinavian, and I’ve been with Ancestry for 12 years with 0 and now I suddenly have, with NO English/British. This latest Side View info you have written is so helpful, I’m sure also to those who have no parents to test and have to ‘do the math’ benefit. When I have a match to Scandinavian, though, I’m matching them as Ashkenazim. And now, with Ancestry, they’ve added in 1% Balkan and removed 1% of my 50% Ashkenazi. none the less, I feel better about it all from your charts and instructions. Thank you!!
The same thing happened on 23andme. I had Iberian, but once 23andme was updated, my Iberian was replaced with Scandinavian. This was odd to me. Balkan, Mediterranean, Moroccan, Spanish shows up on other test. I also have known Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. What populations do Scandinavian fit?
We seem to have the same issues – What I did, was download all my kits to MyHeritage from FTDNA, Ancestry, 23andMe AND ordered my kit from MyHeritage to see their take. It was very helpful in that ‘most’ of my European ancestors from those areas had been using MyHeritage and I have about 28,000 matches and I can do searches for just specific Ethnicity! Once I capture all the Scandinavian who I can’t justify, I will send it to MH and get their thoughts on it. the most helpful is FTDNA because they give us X and Y info which is a real plus. I am glad for having Full Sequencing mitochondrial at FTDNA that helps me when looking at Ancestry possibilities. I AM IN MY 70’S AND JUST GOT A 1/2 BROTHER MATCH at 23andMe and he is younger and on his way up to OR from NV. Honestly, we need all the top vendors for deep DNA diving.
I think that separating the DNA contributed from each parent is an important advance. A central question is whether or not this has been done accurately. My European ancestry is favorable for answering this question (at least in my case) based on Ancestry’s predicted ethnicities. This is because my parent’s known ancestry comes from two different regions of Europe. One parent has early Colonial New England ancestry (British Isles), while the other immigrated from the Baltic region. Thus, I can easily separate the two based on the predicted East versus West side of European ethnicities.
My predicted ethnicities from SideView were 52% West side, 48% East side of Europe, which very close to what I would expect. For my sibling, the result was a perfect 50:50 separation of the East and West sides. The combined results is evidence that the overall separation of our parents DNA using SideView was nearly perfect. I look forward to future advances using SideView.
This is worse than useless—it dangles information in front of me that I can’t reach, so it’s annoying.
The kit I manage had a known father and enigmatic mother. The parents are similarly European, so it’s hard to definitively say which is which. I’d love to know for sure which one has 13% Scottish and 7% Welsh (compared to 0% for the other), or who the heck has the smattering of Sweden/Denmark, but alas.
If they had some way to incorporate the existing half-sibling’s kit, that would probably help!
I’d be far more interested in a one-click (or as close to one-click as possible) way to tag shared matches for 2 kits. Bonus points if it auto-tags new shared matches. But no, I have to tediously add “mother’s side” or “father’s side” to each shared match, one by one.
Personally, after looking at the results for my parents’ DNA tests, I decided that I didn’t trust this tool enough to use it. My mother’s results seemed to roughly match up to what I know about her parents’ ancestry, as they came from differing regions of Europe.
However, my father is from an extremely endogamous population(Low German Mennonite). His DNA relatives are all interrelated, to the point that triangulation is useless for small segments and tools such as myheritage’s autocluster only shows one large cluster with all 100 of his comparisons related to one another. This is a situation where I don’t think there is any way to assign matches to one parent over another through DNA alone.
My father’s results show that the two major ethnicities listed, Germanic Europe and Sweden & Denmark, are shared between both parents. The percentages are close between both parents, as expected. Of the smaller ethnicities, which together add up to 16% of my father’s results, only one is represented between both parents; England and Northwestern Europe. Of the rest, one parent has Ireland and Eastern Europe and Russia listed, and the other has Norway assigned to them.
The trace ethnicities were already suspect, but even if I were to believe them I can’t see any way to determine that they could be assigned to one parent over another; all other tests show my father’s parents closely related, and their ethnicity should be similar enough that there wouldn’t be any clear divisions between the two. I think this tool might be accurate for large percentages or families from very different regions/ethnicities, but doubt its accuracy with small percentages.
I’ve been fortunate in having determined the identity of my birth parents before SideView came out, but I imagine it would be helpful to adoptees who are looking for any hints as to the identity of one or both birth parents. It’s just another piece of evidence that can be used for identification. For me, it sheds no additional light, but confirms pretty well what I already knew. Like any DNA test, its successful use depends on the circumstances and what goals the person has.
My Irish paternal great great grandparents settled in Wales in 1841. Sideview shows one parent has Irish and Welsh ethnicity, the other has none. My maternal line has no known connection with Ireland or Wales back to 1806, so it seems likely that parent 1 is maternal, parent 2 paternal. As I have no close matches to test and my parents are long dead, this seems to work for me.
I get it, totally! If Ancestry hadn’t ‘eventually’ had me at 50% Ashkenazi, I would be up a creek with trying to fit my father, who passed before Ethnicity was a real thing, I would not be able to figure out that I was NOT his biological child. He ‘claimed me. Male DNA on him, via a 1st male cousin, was similar to my bio mother. Then with this parental Side by Side, Ancestry has me down to 49% Ashkenazi and 1% Balkan. Thx for sharing!
I finally got around to poking at this today. My mom passed a few years ago, but I have had my Dad tested. And based on that, my SideView cannot possibly be right. My dad has two solid colour bars for chromosome 16 – one labeled Sweden/Denmark and the other Scottish. My chromosome 16 has England and Northwestern Europe and the other Scottish. Well, duh, you say, they match on the Scottish side. Except in order for other chromosomes to match up, the side they claim is my Dad’s should be the England and Northwestern Europe.
I didn’t realize until reading your article, but I definitely think some of mine is misattributed. I thought it was obvious which was which because my dad’s a quarter German, part English, part Cajun and my mom’s all Cajun. And his stuff was on one side with hers 46/50% French. But my dad should have some french as well, and I’m pretty sure the basque it put on his side belongs to her side.
I agree Roberta, I wish Ancestry would give us the detailed chromosome information
I get widely varying heritage estimates from all of the companies where I have tested (Ancestry, 23 and Me) and where I have uploaded (FTDNA, My Heritage)
Ancestry
86% Scotland
9% Ireland, specifically Ulster
3% Norway
2% Germanic Europe
My Heritage
45.8% English
28.9% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh
22.1% Scandinavian
3.2% Greek and South Italian
Family Tree DNA
57% Ireland
26% Central Europe
12% England, Wales, and Scotland
5% Scandinavia
23 & Me
100% British and Irish
My Heritage has me as more English than my husband, which is absurd. He was born in England, to English parents, and has English grand and great grand parents. I was born in Northern Ireland, in County Antrim, and my family names are predominantly Scottish: Johnston, Houston, Baird, Boyd, Gordon.
Hi Roberta, Thank you so much for sharing your experience and knowledge! I have a question that might be obvious for some but I’d like to confirm my understanding. My maternal great aunt was tested on AncestryDNA and her Sideview indicates that she has 7% from Scotland from one parent and 8% from Ireland from the other. I do understand that these are estimates & based on geographic locations from probably longer ago than my tree represents. What I’m not confident about is that if the 7% is for sure from the one parent and the 8% is from the other. Is there a reasonable possibility that these two could be from one parent? Or is it impossible to know this as Ancestry keeps the segment info under wraps?
It’s impossible to know.