So my mom did 23andme and it phased with my results which updated them. I'm hoping to get my dad done too. This is a big reason why I prefer 23andme over Ancestry DNA. Although Ancestry broke my 70% of British and Irish down to 62% Irish (meaning Ireland, Scotland, Wales) and 13% Great Britain which was nice to know.

I like 23andme more for matching to relatives, and I like their comparison tools.

I have a question for anyone that's familiar with family trees and genetics. I have a great-grandfather who was born in Jersey in the Channel Islands, and his side of the family I can trace back in the Channel Islands to the 1600s. I'm wondering what they'd show up as genetically? I am assuming British/Irish looking at my DNA, but the islands are close to France, so I'm wondering if that's where the French/German factors in?

Jen, I'm on a lot of genealogical sites, and I'll be happy to check out your Channel Islands question. You never know when someone will show up - sort of like MysticCat and I both having a Jamestown connection.

So 23andme matches familial connections? One of my ancestors has been hijacked on ancestry.com and I've been fighting it for a few years now. It's a simple case of GIGO, with someone not doing credible research while I have an actual marriage record. I'd hate to be matched up with someone whose records aren't precise!

Residents of the Channel Islands are descendants of the Norman French, as in the Norman Invasion. In addition to English, two island-specific variations of Norman (a dialect still spoken in northwest France) are recognized as regional languages, although it's mostly older people who are still fluent.

On Ancestry.com, it starts out by telling you a broad category - "Eastern European". It then goes on to clarify a little bit - "Europe East: Primarily located in: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia." That doesn't really help too much as the difference between the Ukraine and Croatia is quite large.

However, Ancestry.com does have a feature called Genetic Communities where it compares your DNA to the DNA of other members and, through the family tree records, deduces where everyone is from. It's pretty cool and, for me, it hit the nail right on the head.

This is what a Genetic Community result looks like --

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...78&oe=596F6E0D

It got my genetic community right as well - it identified me as primarily Scottish which I am.

Thanks for detailing while I've been MIA. Ancestry does have a "European Jewish" estimate separate from any other European category as well.

The genetic communities are great when syncing with your tree - it will tag your ancestors on the map that fit into the communities provided.

Awesome! Two of my great grandparents were from Switzerland, so I'm somewhat expecting them to show as Germanic, but if there's a community, all the better!

navane, you've made my day!

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...78&oe=596F6E0D

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...e1&oe=5970CEE7


To clarify, Ancestry will give you ALL of the genetic communities to which you belong, not just one. For example, I had my "honorary cousin" in Poland submit his DNA to see if we were related. See the earlier story in this thread; but, he's not a match so far. However, he DID come up with the exact same genetic community as I did -- Poles in Pomerania, which is the graphic of Poland with the orange dots. He also had a second genetic community - the above red-dotted German region. I said to him, "Uhm...it looks like you might also be part German?" To which he laughed and replied, "Yes, my maternal grandfather is a German from Berlin." So, again, the results were quite accurate.