# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  How accurate are FTDNA My Origins?

## Ben

Of my 8 great grandparents, 3 were British Isles, 2 were Scandinavian, 1 Italian and 1 German, and 1 English/German mix. This is all for certain.

My Origins breakdown on FTDNA is:

British Isles 64%
Scandinavia 11%
Western/Central Europe 9%
Eastern Europe 6%
Eastern Middle East 5%
Asia minor 5%

This breakdown just doesn't seem to match what I know about my family's immediate origins. With two great grandparents actually from Scandinavian countries, how do I only end up with 11%? What happened to my Italian ancestry? Why is my German ancestry also getting overlooked?

My grandmother (who's the daughter of the Italian great-grandparent and one of the Scandinavians) did the FTDNA test and she came up 40% Southern European, 40% Scandinavian, 4% Eastern European, 16% Asia Minor. 

It seems odd she'd have 40/40 Southern European and Scandinavian and yet I don't show up as any Southern European and very little Scandinavian (especially since there's another Scandinavian great-grandparent on my paternal line). 

Why would these ancestries be underrepresented?

Also - if my grandmother is 16% Asia Minor and I'm coming up as 5%, is it safe to say there's a recent, middle eastern genetic input on her side? Or is this just the Italian ancestry?


THANKS!

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## Twilight

> Of my 8 great grandparents, 3 were British Isles, 2 were Scandinavian, 1 Italian and 1 German, and 1 English/German mix. This is all for certain.
> 
> My Origins breakdown on FTDNA is:
> 
> British Isles 64%
> Scandinavia 11%
> Western/Central Europe 9%
> Eastern Europe 6%
> Eastern Middle East 5%
> ...


Ftdna MyOrigins has had some issues in the past with their DNA, considering Eupedia threads in the past have had qualms over the accuracy of the results. However the elevated Scandinavian ancestry can be explained with the English Danelaw and to a lower extent, the Norman Conquest.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans

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## Ben

My problem w/ the results is just the opposite. I have a decreased, not elevated, Scandinavian result. In other words, based on my recent ancestry, my Scandinavian result should be higher - among other things.

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## Twilight

> My problem w/ the results is just the opposite. I have a decreased, not elevated, Scandinavian result. In other words, based on my recent ancestry, my Scandinavian result should be higher - among other things.


Yeah, I'd try another DNA testing site. I see your point and missed the 2 great grandparents part.

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## Boreas

This is averange,

Your grandmother is 40% Med but 12,5% of you comes from her, which makes just 5%. Where your Italian ancestry form? From South?

This is just a simple maths as what you did for your Asia Minor result.

But I don't think it is that much easy, 

According to mine and my brother result, he is 10% Western European and 2% North African, but I don't have any of those. 

You can ignore the 2% North African, but 10%. I don't think. I guess this is answer of why we simple maths don't works all the time but this is my personel view, I am also new  :Good Job:

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## Sile

> My problem w/ the results is just the opposite. I have a decreased, not elevated, Scandinavian result. In other words, based on my recent ancestry, my Scandinavian result should be higher - among other things.


*Do not try 23andme* , your numbers will change dramatically every time a family member joins .

dramatically is from 5 to 15% 

So, this clearly means they "fabricate" partly your numbers and also they use the term "Broadly" ( this means , we do not know )


Best would be to use one of the tests/program from Gedmatch

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## Ben

Any recommendations what to use in Gedmatch? As in which test/program....

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## Maciamo

In my experience, FTDNA My Origins is not reliable at all. I have 100% Belgian ancestry in the last 200 years, and yet they did not mention any ancestry at all in that region! I ended up with something like 50% British ancestry and 50% of Central European/Alpine. I tested several family members and all got similarly biased results. It seems that my origins just looks at shared ancient ancestry. British people descend from Celts (including Belgic tribes) and Anglo-Saxons, who are a West Germanic tribe like the Franks in Belgium. So obviously Brits and Belgians share quite a bit of ancient ancestry. But the migration was always from the continent to Britain, not the other way round. So it is correct to say that British people have ancient German, Dutch and Belgian ancestry, but not that Belgians and Germans have British ancestry. 

Based on these observations, the depth of ancestry of FTDNA My Origins appears to be about 2000 to 4000 years. But since they do not attempt to identify the source population of ancestry, but rather where that Bronze to Iron Age ancestry is common today, it can lead to very misleading interpretations indeed. I have long criticised FTDNA for their marketing practices. You can read more about it here.

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## HYGILI4K

I don't trust it.

As a person of full Southern European ancestry, I got 38% Western and Central Europe and 49% Southern Europe. I expected a lot more Southern European and way less Western and Central Europe on my results.

There are people of predominant iberian ancestry (and without central european ancestors) on the brazilian project scoring up to 49% of Western and Central Europe. On FTDNA map, the Western and Central European cluster spot barely touches Iberia.

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## Boreas

> I don't trust it.
> 
> As a person of full Southern European ancestry, I got 38% Western and Central Europe and 49% Southern Europe. I expected a lot more Southern European and way less Western and Central Europe on my results.
> 
> There are people of predominant iberian ancestry (and without central european ancestors) on the brazilian project scoring up to 49% of Western and Central Europe. On FTDNA map, the Western and Central European cluster spot barely touches Iberia.


The highest MED rate is in Sardinia and it is just 60% in Harappa. 49% South European feather is a bit high even in other tests, so I don't see a problem.

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## HYGILI4K

According to Harappa, I am 37,57 mediterranean.

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## kingjohn

_ftdna family finder_ pretty accurate  
*they don't know my grandmother was Bulgarian orthodox 
yet they gave me few Bulgarian matches ..... :)*
_regards
adam_

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## HYGILI4K

My distrust is towards MyOrigins only. I'm ok with familyfinder.

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## tahir0010

I have always wanted to know this I have never known if they are actually accurate or if they kind of just do it to make money.

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## Ponto

I have no issues with MyOrigins. It is like all ancestry calculators whether using Admixture or a similar program with dna segments of a certain length of cM like 23andMe uses. None is anywhere near perfect. 23andMe I prefer best, Ancestry is okay, and FTDNA I really don't care what they show. I have to say that MyOrigins is better than the first thing they had which was Population Finder. Population Finder said I was 100% Jewish plus/minus 0.01%. What rubbish! I don't get Jewish anywhere else, not even in MyOrigins mark 2 or DNALand. I am not cynical like tahir0010 probably as I am a veteran, FTDNA 2008 and 23andMe 2008/2009, Dienekes' project, Polako's project. I have seen lots of ancestry results of my raw data. Nothing shocks or surprises. I do think that the companies believe they're doing good science and using the latest techniques, and I know from experience that most people don't really know their ancestry just what some papers say or what they are told. Lots of preconceptions. I was born in Malta, my paper trail show me to be of the Maltese ethnic group barring some aliens, an Italian Giulio Pirotta, descendants of Sultan Cem, an Ethiopian slave - but that was a long time ago. The Ethiopian woman died in 1568, my paternal line ancestor was from Calabria but he moved to Malta in 1505, their dna in me would be tiny and thoroughly broken up generation after generation. MyOrigins gives a trace of Black African ancestry which they explain could be just noise. All dna testing is in the long run, a waste of time and money. I treat it as a hobby, as fun. Since most of you have just complained and not posted your results, I won't post mine. I can tell you that the majority, 73%, is Southeast European, which is to be expected as that is what 23andMe, and Ancestry both say, DNALand uses Mediterranean Islander and Balkan. And yes I do get some Northwest African.

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## Hauteville

Giulio Pirrotta looks like a Sicilian or Calabrese name, nothing of extraordinary for a Maltese to have Sicilian or Southern Italian ancestors in their bloodline. The most interesting thing is the Ethiopian slave. Descendent of Sultan Cem?an half Anatolian Turk and half Balkanites.

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## Ponto

> Giulio Pirrotta looks like a Sicilian or Calabrese name, nothing of extraordinary for a Maltese to have Sicilian or Southern Italian ancestors in their bloodline. The most interesting thing is the Ethiopian slave. Descendent of Sultan Cem?an half Anatolian Turk and half Balkanites.


 The spelling of the surname is Pirotta, one r, and according to gens cognomi italiani the surname is from Piemonte. It doesn't matter to me, on Giulio's parish marriage certificate he is listed as a foreigner, Straniero. Generally Sicilians are listed as foreigners or where they come from in Sicily. Maltese certificates were written in Standard Italian until the rise of Il Duce. If you are interested in Sultan Cem or the Ethiopian you can look up maltagenealogy.com, there is lots on her and him after all she gave rise to the Maltese family of Sant, and Cem's descendants to the Said family. Cem was a "guest" of the Borgias, I am descended from that man too via his bastard Cesare and his bastard Constanza. Not that it shows on me. Cem's wife was Italian though his mother was supposed to be Helena Palaiologos, so it is said, those Sultan's had lots of wives and concubines. If you are interested in common Maltese surnames that come from Sicily, most surnames in Malta do come from Sicily, Vella belongs to I-M223, Portelli belongs to R-M417, Camilleri is J-M172 and Caruana, reminds of Inspector Montalbano's sergeant, is T-M70.

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## Pax Augusta

> The spelling of the surname is Pirotta, one r, and according to gens cognomi italiani the surname is from Piemonte. It doesn't matter to me, on Giulio's parish marriage certificate he is listed as a foreigner, Straniero. Generally Sicilians are listed as foreigners or where they come from in Sicily. Maltese certificates were written in Standard Italian until the rise of Il Duce. If you are interested in Sultan Cem or the Ethiopian you can look up maltagenealogy.com, there is lots on her and him after all she gave rise to the Maltese family of Sant, and Cem's descendants to the Said family. Cem was a "guest" of the Borgias, I am descended from that man too via his bastard Cesare and his bastard Constanza. Not that it shows on me. Cem's wife was Italian though his mother was supposed to be Helena Palaiologos, so it is said, those Sultan's had lots of wives and concubines. If you are interested in common Maltese surnames that come from Sicily, most surnames in Malta do come from Sicily, Vella belongs to I-M223, Portelli belongs to R-M417, Camilleri is J-M172 and Caruana, reminds of Inspector Montalbano's sergeant, is T-M70.


Pirrotta is Sicilian, Pirotta seems from Lombardy, but it is possible that in the past there has been a bit of confusion between the two

https://www.tuttogenealogia.it/index...6cab4ed34605b5

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## Ponto

> Pirrotta is Sicilian, Pirotta seems from Lombardy, but it is possible that in the past there has been a bit of confusion between the two https://www.tuttogenealogia.it/index...6cab4ed34605b5


 Yes, Lombardia, I was incorrect when I said Piemonte. His surname was Pirotta with one r. Sicilians were always identified by their place of origin like Palermo or Messina or Licata never just as a straniero.

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## Ponto

23andMe is supposed to alter ancestry results when a parent or child tests. Your results on their own are unphased, so 23andMe cannot work out which of your results come from which parent except the Y chromosome for men, and haplogroups. Of course, if your parents are mixed as in one is Nigerian African and the other Korean Asian, then your results can be separated from each parent but with single type of ancestry like European, they cannot. My parents are dead so I cannot have my results phased, it would be nice if my results could be then I would know from whom I received the red hair SNP allele, and 23andMe's chromosome painting would be better. 23andMe has half of one or two chromosomes as North African, that is impossible, as my parents, grandparents, great grandparents...were Maltese not North African and every generation the dna I received was shuffled, broken up and reattached, there is no way that a parent could pass an unaltered chromosome segment to me. So, changing your ancestry results with the addition of close relatives is a good thing, and more accurate.

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## Hauteville

> Yes, Lombardia, I was incorrect when I said Piemonte. His surname was Pirotta with one r. Sicilians were always identified by their place of origin like Palermo or Messina or Licata never just as a straniero.


I guess Sicilians were not considered foreigner because at that times Malta was part of Kingdom of Sicily. Do you have run DNA Land, 23andme and Geno or just Family Finder?

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## Maleth

> The spelling of the surname is Pirotta, one r, and according to gens cognomi italiani the surname is from Piemonte. It doesn't matter to me, on Giulio's parish marriage certificate he is listed as a foreigner, Straniero. Generally Sicilians are listed as foreigners or where they come from in Sicily. Maltese certificates were written in Standard Italian until the rise of Il Duce. If you are interested in Sultan Cem or the Ethiopian you can look up maltagenealogy.com, there is lots on her and him after all she gave rise to the Maltese family of Sant, and Cem's descendants to the Said family. Cem was a "guest" of the Borgias, I am descended from that man too via his bastard Cesare and his bastard Constanza. Not that it shows on me. Cem's wife was Italian though his mother was supposed to be Helena Palaiologos, so it is said, those Sultan's had lots of wives and concubines. If you are interested in common Maltese surnames that come from Sicily, most surnames in Malta do come from Sicily, Vella belongs to I-M223, Portelli belongs to R-M417, Camilleri is J-M172 and Caruana, reminds of Inspector Montalbano's sergeant, is T-M70.


Pirotta is a well known surname in Malta. Camilleri (second most popular surname in Malta) is G-L14 in Malta dna project on ftdna (It might have multiple origins but unless many are tested we would never know). Surname Said is E-M2. Re Said origin It was widely claimed that 'Nicolò Sayd', a grandson of Cem (1459–1496, the renegade son of Turkish Sultan Mehmet II) settled in Malta and became the ancestor of all Maltese bearing the surname _Said._ is now regarded as a fantacy, inspired by the writings of historical novelists Maurice Caron and John Freely, however the dna testing seems to prove the original claims. Surname Sultana (which is popular on the Island of Gozo) has a similar story derived from a Turk nobility who arrived as a slave with the Knights of St. John from Rhodes who was later given freedom and settled on the Island of Gozo in the village of Xara (where its still common there till today). No one with the surname seem to have tested yet.

It is good to know that when the Knights of St. John moved to Malta from Rhodes they have brought with them over a thousand Rhodians and probably a few ''Slaves'' presuming Turks, North Africans and sub-Saharan. It is also known that some have converted and married locals. I am sure this event is documented somewhere as the order kept a good record to their story.

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## Sile

> Pirotta is a well known surname in Malta. Camilleri (second most popular surname in Malta) is G-L14 in Malta dna project on ftdna (It might have multiple origins but unless many are tested we would never know). Surname Said is E-M2. Re Said origin It was widely claimed that 'Nicolò Sayd', a grandson of Cem (1459–1496, the renegade son of Turkish Sultan Mehmet II) settled in Malta and became the ancestor of all Maltese bearing the surname _Said._ is now regarded as a fantacy, inspired by the writings of historical novelists Maurice Caron and John Freely, however the dna testing seems to prove the original claims. Surname Sultana (which is popular on the Island of Gozo) has a similar story derived from a Turk nobility who arrived as a slave with the Knights of St. John from Rhodes who was later given freedom and settled on the Island of Gozo in the village of Xara (where its still common there till today). No one with the surname seem to have tested yet.
> 
> It is good to know that when the Knights of St. John moved to Malta from Rhodes they have brought with them over a thousand Rhodians and probably a few ''Slaves'' presuming Turks, North Africans and sub-Saharan. It is also known that some have converted and married locals. I am sure this event is documented somewhere as the order kept a good record to their story.


Pirotta has Lombardi origins

See 402 households below
La distribuzione geografica del cognome *Pirotta* in Italia
 366 Lombardia

 13 Piemonte

 6 Sicilia

 4 Emilia-Romagna

 3 Lazio

 2 Liguria


 In Malta there are 127 households of which Fgura has 51 and Marsa 49

Apart from the surnames you mentioned for Malta, Gauci and Azzorpardi would be more popular

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## Hauteville

Pirotta could be a Maltese version of Sicilian/Calabrese Pirrotta and Perrotta too. Not all surnames correspond to an haplogroup in my opinion. Very common surnames have lot of variability. Anyway many Maltese surnames like Attard, Grech, Borg, Falzon, Muscat are a localized variety of Italian surname like Attardo, Greco, Borgia, Falzone, Moscato/Moscati etc.

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## srdceleva

Some stuff is way off. Three of my grandparents were straight from Slovakia and I've documented that side as far back as the late 1700s on some sides. My one grandmother is an American mix with mostly Scottish, Irish, and English background but with also significant ancestry from South West Germany, Switzerland, and also France. Ftdna gives me 34 % British isles...Even if it was the case that my American grandmother is 100% British isles there's no way I could get 34% of it. Any Western euro coming from my Slovak side would be under west/central euro. I also get trace regions from Siberia and South America though I'm already listed as 100 % European?? What am I 104 % of something and South America??

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## davef

> Some stuff is way off. Three of my grandparents were straight from Slovakia and I've documented that side as far back as the late 1700s on some sides. My one grandmother is an American mix with mostly Scottish, Irish, and English background but with also significant ancestry from South West Germany, Switzerland, and also France. Ftdna gives me 34 % British isles...Even if it was the case that my American grandmother is 100% British isles there's no way I could get 34% of it. Any Western euro coming from my Slovak side would be under west/central euro. I also get trace regions from Siberia and South America though I'm already listed as 100 % European?? What am I 104 % of something and South America??


Lolz.....104 percent

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## Gaga

> Some stuff is way off. Three of my grandparents were straight from Slovakia and I've documented that side as far back as the late 1700s on some sides. My one grandmother is an American mix with mostly Scottish, Irish, and English background but with also significant ancestry from South West Germany, Switzerland, and also France. Ftdna gives me 34 % British isles...Even if it was the case that my American grandmother is 100% British isles there's no way I could get 34% of it. Any Western euro coming from my Slovak side would be under west/central euro. I also get trace regions from Siberia and South America though I'm already listed as 100 % European?? What am I 104 % of something and South America??


The MYOrigins2.0 update has had tons of complaints. They also can't do math apparently.

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## castelleone

> How accurate are FTDNA My Origins?


Dear Ben, 

I recommend that you take a look at the FTDNA forum to see all the comments about results.
Accuracy is definitely low.

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## castelleone

> The MYOrigins2.0 update has had tons of complaints. They also can't do math apparently.


Dear Gaga, 

I would say they definitely can't do math. Did you read any answer from them?

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## castelleone

Dear Maciamo, 

I agree with you. FTDNA is not reliable at all.

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## kingjohn

_yes but living dna don't have sefhardic and aschenazi refrence
so for me there autosomal test is useles :)
regards
adam_

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## maratmilano

My pops Armenian, mom is Azerbaijani....so it wasn't that MyOrigins felt incorrect (they had me at 94% Asia Minor), but rather just that the way they grouped it was bland and broad, though perhaps FT's "Asia Minor" is bundling together the 70% Caucasus and 15-19% Greek/Mediterranean that Ancestry and GED define me as. After the 94% Asia Minor was 4% South Asia, and <2% Central Europe, Northeast Asia, West Middle East traces.

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## Carl Graham

I thought the first My Origins was pretty accurate.

Untitled.jpg

But ( more or less ) accurate as the first one was , the second one was junk.

Untitledf.png

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## msmajoribanks

For me, anyway, My Origins overstates British Isles and understates the rest of western Europe. It splits me between 83% British Isles and 14% Eastern Europe, with the rest trace Central Asia and Asia Minor. Paper ancestry gives me somewhat less British Isles (roughly 67-75%), and also some Swedish (a great-grandparent), German, and lesser amounts of French and Dutch. The eastern European is coming from the Swedish and German, I assume, and instead of getting Central Europe or Scandinavian it's just getting split between British Isles and Eastern Europe.

My Heritage is quite close (for my parents too -- the FTDNA results uploaded there). I have a separate Ancestry test that reverses the issue with FTDNA -- gives me 4% Great Britain (and 19% Ireland), and then excessively high (probably) Swedish, and 42% generic Europe West. In that I'd estimate my ancestry from Celtic countries at about 25% given the paper record, that bit is close, so the issue here is the English ancestry getting plonked into Western Europe and Scandinavia.

None of this is complaints -- I think it shows the difficulties of separating it all out when one has ancestry from a bunch of different places (that themselves have mixed and interconnected ancestry).

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## mwauthy

> For me, anyway, My Origins overstates British Isles and understates the rest of western Europe. It splits me between 83% British Isles and 14% Eastern Europe, with the rest trace Central Asia and Asia Minor. Paper ancestry gives me somewhat less British Isles (roughly 67-75%), and also some Swedish (a great-grandparent), German, and lesser amounts of French and Dutch. The eastern European is coming from the Swedish and German, I assume, and instead of getting Central Europe or Scandinavian it's just getting split between British Isles and Eastern Europe.
> 
> My Heritage is quite close (for my parents too -- the FTDNA results uploaded there). I have a separate Ancestry test that reverses the issue with FTDNA -- gives me 4% Great Britain (and 19% Ireland), and then excessively high (probably) Swedish, and 42% generic Europe West. In that I'd estimate my ancestry from Celtic countries at about 25% given the paper record, that bit is close, so the issue here is the English ancestry getting plonked into Western Europe and Scandinavia.
> 
> None of this is complaints -- I think it shows the difficulties of separating it all out when one has ancestry from a bunch of different places (that themselves have mixed and interconnected ancestry).


Yeah I wouldn’t put too much stock into one ethnicity estimate since the regions and reference samples are variable. If you do 5-10 ethnicity estimates like I have done you start to see certain patterns in the major regions; for example, Western, Eastern, Northern, and Southern Europe.

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## InTheMix

I am 1/2 Armenian and 1/2 British Isles. My mom is from the southern US and I have family trees going back to the 17th century...all have surnames from the British Isles. Surprise surprise, FT DNA gave me Zero British Isles. It says I'm West and Central Europe - 45%, East Europe - 4%, Scandinavian - 3%. (Asia Minor 47%, < 2% East Middle East) 

I uploaded it to GED Match and put it through a bunch of the calculators. I think my two ethnicities pull and tug at each other and want to put me in the middle of Europe.

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## felipeschmidt25

IMO my origins 2.0 isnt good, i m mostly north italian and the test show me more iberian than italian LOL

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## thewarrider7

Hi Macimo,

What is your eurogenes k13 results? My paper trail has english ancestry for last 200 years yet i always get belgium/ south dutch.

Is that typical english?

*Population*
*Percent*

1
North_Atlantic
45.65

2
Baltic
22.49

3
West_Med
14.94

4
East_Med
9.31

5
West_Asian
4.74

6
Red_Sea
1.65

7
Oceanian
0.97

8
South_Asian
0.23



*Single Population Sharing:

#
Population (source)
Distance

1
South_Dutch
2.88

2
West_German
3.25

3
Southeast_English
5.96

4
French
6.88


*

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## Jangozo

> IMO my origins 2.0 isnt good, i m mostly north italian and the test show me more iberian than italian LOL


Mine was even more bizarre. I've Italian ancestry from 75% of my family and I got 0% Italian, 40 Iberian + 20% Sephardic Jew.

When I saw I was like "WTF", but after uploading it to other places (inclsuding GedMatch) things started to get closer to reality.

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## mwauthy

> Mine was even more bizarre. I've Italian ancestry from 75% of my family and I got 0% Italian, 40 Iberian + 20% Sephardic Jew.
> 
> When I saw I was like "WTF", but after uploading it to other places (inclsuding GedMatch) things started to get closer to reality.


My origins 2.0 is terrible for Italians. My wife is half Italian and half English and she received 32% Iberian and 14% Sephardic.

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## Wheal

What you have to consider is that the tests are based on specific combinations of "reported" ancestry. So if you happen to have a certain combination of snps, you will be a ssigned to a certain group. Since I come from a large family, I am beginning to see greatly varied results. My parents who have no Sephardi results have produced a son with 9% Sephardic results. Father-in-law, with all 4 grandparents from northern Europe, has 4% Amerindian. Results just don't follow through the family.

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## davef

So suppose your sibling tested, you can't use his/her results as a rough guide as to how you would score?

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## mwauthy

> What you have to consider is that the tests are based on specific combinations of "reported" ancestry. So if you happen to have a certain combination of snps, you will be a ssigned to a certain group. Since I come from a large family, I am beginning to see greatly varied results. My parents who have no Sephardi results have produced a son with 9% Sephardic results. Father-in-law, with all 4 grandparents from northern Europe, has 4% Amerindian. Results just don't follow through the family.


It goes to show you that many snps can be found in many regions. Instead of arbitrarily assigning it to one region it might make more sense like 23andMe does to assign it to a Broadly category. It makes even less sense to me to assign it to a particular religion.

In my opinion the high amounts of “Iberian” central to northern Italians are receiving is probably due to some shared Neolithic farming component. The “Sephardic Jew” that many southern Italians are receiving is probably due to some shared North African/ Levant influence. The influence could just as easily be Phoenician or Islamic so I don’t understand why they assign it to Sephardic Jews.

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## Angela

> It goes to show you that many snps can be found in many regions. Instead of arbitrarily assigning it to one region it might make more sense like 23andMe does to assign it to a Broadly category. It makes even less sense to me to assign it to a particular religion.
> 
> In my opinion the high amounts of “Iberian” central to northern Italians are receiving is probably due to some shared Neolithic farming component. The “Sephardic Jew” that many southern Italians are receiving is probably due to some shared North African/ Levant influence. The influence could just as easily be Phoenician or Islamic so I don’t understand why they assign it to Sephardic Jews.


This has always been a terrible test. I don't know if it is still the case, but they used to put Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews as reference samples for the Middle East. You can't do that when these people could be as much as 60% and more "European". Any similarity could be picking up the common alleles.

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## mwauthy

> This has always been a terrible test. I don't know if it is still the case, but they used to put Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews as reference samples for the Middle East. You can't do that when these people could be as much as 60% and more "European". Any similarity could be picking up the common alleles.


Now that Ancestry and 23andMe are competing against each other for having the “most regions,” I wonder what FTDNA’s marketing response will be if any? In my opinion My Origins 2.0 is not competitive enough even if the update occurred less than a year ago.

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## Jangozo

You know, at first when I saw the 20% Sephardic I was ok. Like, my family has a "Morisco" surname, so I thought I would be a typical "Marrano" from Spain with other mixtures.

Than, it changed to 5% Ashkenazi at My Heritage. So well, I went back to Morisco (who returned to Morocco) since I've 16% Iberian/5% North African/5% West African. But dunno if it's 16% after all, maybe it's less since it can be just "Italian".

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## Wheal

@davef I have had my brother and 2 sisters tested and we all have very different percentages. I could understand if the results were a recombination of my parents percentages, but we each have percentages that neither of my parents show as even trace amounts in their results.

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## Wheal

I really believe that because so few snps have been tested, that eventually there might someday be a way to pinpoint more closely the origins of early civilizations

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## PabijanBrzeski

Ftdna is not accurate at all, at least in my case. I am half Polish half Italian, with some distant Balkan ancestry. On ancestry DNA, I come up 60% eastern europe, 32% Italian, 5% Greek/Balkan, 2% Baltic, and 1% French. These seem to be very accurate results, even though I do not trust exact percentages. They make sense according to my family history.

Ftdna gave me 70% South Eastern Europe, 12% Eastern Europe, 10% Scandinavian, 5% West and Central Europe, including a few trace regions. First off, my South East European (which includes my Greco Italian and Balkan DNA, seems to be wayyyy over represented, with my Slavic coming at only 12 percent. How do I jump from 60% to 12%? In addition, none of my Polish/Slavic ancestry is from the Balkans, we are as far as we know North Slavs.
Then there is the 10% Scandinavian! My ancestry results show no Germanic influences. So how do I jump to Scandinavian of all things? And West Euro. The only thing I can think off is that their calculators overestimated the South Euro, and then messed up on the eastern European, instead labeling it as a conglomerate of North European and Balkan ancestry, which included the Slavic, Scnadinavian and Balkan. Maybe because I am a Slavic/Med. mix, my dna seemed to match Balkan populations like Croats or Serbs. If that is the case, they are only matching you to what you look most similar to in their data bases, and not what you really are.

If you want accurate autosomal results, ancestry is the way to go. They have more regions and are getting very specific. Their dna regions are getting more and more narrowed down. I still identify with Ancestry results, and not ftdna.

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## Viberg

I think you can take all of the ethnicity estimates from Ancestry.com, FTDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage with a grain of salt. I think that Ancestry.com is especially misleading with their TV commercials. They hook you in by suggesting that you will learn your heritage with their test. As with any of the ethinicity estimates you may get a vague representation at best. I would put Ancestry.com last when it comes to autosomal DNA testing. To begin with you get no chromosome browser. Also, they made the decision carve out sections of your DNA because they don't find them relevant when doing match comparisons. Ancestry.com has told me I match my mother on 43 segments when in reality that is impossible. We all know that we match 22 full autosomal segments and one full X chromosome with our mother. FTDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage are all much better DNA testing sites than Ancestry.com. My opinion only.

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## Viberg

Ancestry.com's autosomal DNA testing site is the worst of the bunch. FTDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage are all much better testing sites. If anyone is testing their DNA for their ethnicity estimates from any of the DNA testing sites they are wasting their money.

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## Ghani

As a Kurd it's odd that I score SE Asian. They are confusing Mongolian which I score on calculators and makes sense with SE Asian

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## Ghani

> As a Kurd it's odd that I score SE Asian. They are confusing Mongolian which I score on calculators and makes sense with SE Asian


[IMG][/IMG]

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## SamZane

I got a 3% Asia Minor that I can't explain in any way. I consider the FTDNA autosomal ethnicity model less accurate than others, like the one of MyHeritage (in my case).

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## Boreas

> I got a 3% Asia Minor that I can't explain in any way. I consider the FTDNA autosomal ethnicity model less accurate than others, like the one of MyHeritage (in my case).


And in my case, 

My heritage: 2,7% Japanese & 1,9% Inuit
FTDNA: Not Japanese/Inuit, shows Siberian

My Heritage: 2,1% West Asian / Anatolian
FTDNA: 35% West Asian / Anatolian

Do I need to add anything else to show you, how good is My Heritage modelling?

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## SamZane

That seems quite impossible for an ethnic turk. Maybe they don't have a large enough pool in the region?

For me MyHeritage was relatively accurate:

My family comes totally from Southern (italian speaking) Switzerland and German Switzerland. Then I have some spanish ancestors (4-5 generations ago) and a branch of my family that comes from Istria, in modern day Croatia. As a result i got:

43.7% Italian
28.9% Iberian (a bit overestimated because they probably inglobe some italian dna too in this category)
20.5% Northern / Western Europe
6.7% Balkans

A part the high iberian value the rest is quite accurate.

The result from FTDNA gave really large and overlapping regions and there is this 3% from Asia Minor that I can't recall to at least 8 generations in the past.

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## Boreas

> I can't recall to at least 8 generations in the past.


8 generation is nothing for small percent. We can find Neanderthal DNA in our Structure. Probably, it is just something left in you from early European Farmer 

Bad accuration seems like those  :Grin: ;

Sample 2: 
My Mom: My Heritage 5,9% Chinese / My brother and me don't have any. 

Sample 3:
My Brother: My Heritage 7,9% Central Asian / My dad has 1,9% and My mom has none.

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