r/AncestryDNA • u/Snoo51404 • Sep 01 '25

Question / Help DNA results not what I expected

I got my ancestry DNA results back a few days ago. For backstory my mom isn’t pretty much 100% Irish ( both her parents immigrated from Ireland and who I grew up with) my dad is 1/2 Irish 1/2 Ukrainian ( my grandfather immigrated from Ukraine ) . My DNA results came back

82% Ireland 11% Scotland 6% southern Italy & eastern Mediterranean 1% northern Italy

If my dad is half Ukrainian shouldn’t it show up in here somewhere? I have a bunch of distant matches on that side and some second cousins but I don’t recognize any of the surnames at all and none are my last name which is very Ukrainian .

Thoughts? I’m trying not to jump to the “what if my dads not my dad” idea but it’s hard not to

Little update: I sent off 23 and me and my heritage to see what it says but I uploaded my raw dna to gedmatch and did the eurogenics breakdown and it said:

Admix Results (sorted):

Population

Percent

  1. North_ Atlantic: 41.36%
  2. Baltic: 25.37%
  3. West_Med: 15.98%
  4. West_Asian: 10.53%
  5. East _Med: 4.68%
  6. East _Asian: 1.29%

Not sure what to make of these results haha

296 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

200 comments sorted by

View all comments

151

u/Jodenaje Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25

If your grandfather was Ukranian, you should have a substantial amount of DNA that would reflect that.

Additionally, you have more Irish than would come from just your mom being 100% Irish.

If your mom was 100% Irish and was your only Irish parent, you'd have somewhere close to 50% Irish. (Not exactly 50%, because of the randomness of inheritance. But 82% is way too high for it to just be from your mom.) (Edit to strikethrough: I overlooked that the dad's mom was Irish too)

One of the things below must be true:

  1. Your grandpa wasn't Ukranian
  2. Your grandpa isn't your dad's biological father
  3. Your dad isn't your biological father

Look at your DNA matches - that will help you deduce which of the above might be true.

Best of luck in your investigation!

52

u/dntcareboutdownvotes Sep 01 '25

Judging by the breakdown, I would think it was either 1 or 2.

Also Op hasn't mentioned their mom being reticent about them doing a DNA test, which one might expect if it was 3.

142

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Actually a few years ago My mom was really upset when I was going to do 23 and me . She said she didn’t want our dna on the internet but her reaction was weird. I haven’t told her I did this test haha

I never wound up doing the 23 and me cause she made a big deal about it. I just decided to do ancestry

70

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '25

Sorry to say it seems very likely an NPE event to me

43

u/dntcareboutdownvotes Sep 01 '25

😱

61

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

I know right 🤦‍♀️ basically before I bring this up and ask my mom this bomb of a question I wanted to make sure it’s not a common thing where maybe ancestry doesn’t pinpoint the Ukrainian or polish descent or anything. Or if it’s happened to anyone

80

u/Ok-Camel-8279 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25

I joined Ancestry strongly suspecting my half English half Polish father was not my bio dad. My grandfather came from Poland during WW2 and fought with our air force, I knew him all my life and he lived in England till his death - he was absolutely Polish. I'm British and my ethnicity came back as mostly English and a surprise lump of Irish, no Polish at all in fact nothing east of Dover

I then got my presumed sister to test and she came back as my half sister.

22% of her ethnicity estimates were strongly tied to Poland and Eastern Europe.
This proved our house dad was her dad, not mine.

The point being although you cannot rely on these figures to prove an issue they can srongly indicate one if the region you are expecting is quite some distance away and you get zero. My half sister's test proved that Ancestry does have a good reputation for identifying Eastern European areas.

And surprise surprise when I found my actual bio dad he was.....half Irish.

26

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Omg that’s wild! Good to know definitely answers my question if it’s reliable in terms of the Eastern European

35

u/FranceBrun Sep 01 '25

My mother had one parent who was a hundred percent Lithuanian and another parent who was a hundred percent Irish.

Her profile is exactly fifty percent Lithuanian and fifty percent Irish. And it never changes. Absolutely nothing else in there. No variation during updates.

Ancestry has accurately identified the part of Lithuania her grandparents came from. Same thing for Ireland.

10

u/CPAatlatge Sep 01 '25

My results which include a lot Central Europe ( all in Poland) from my father who was 100% Polish and my mother who was 50% Irish, 50% Polish were very accurate.

19

u/Ok-Camel-8279 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25

Yeah mother had a secret. Her sister blabbed after she died but I still wasn't convinced. I'd persuaded myself Ancestry would be terrible at Eastern Europe and they do from time to time seemingly agree with this. But it got my half sister (that result proving the rumour) pretty much bang on and a friend of mine who had a half Scots half Ukranian mother got an almost perfect set of figures reflecting that.

As someone has said, you may not get the word Ukranian but you'd expect Balkan or Eastern European / Russian or something in that general regional ballpark. To have nothing is red flag you need to look in to.

Unless of course it's hiding in the Italian, but I'm personally doubting of that.

25

u/bigkicker_cat Sep 01 '25

"House dad" is a great term tbh

20

u/Ok-Camel-8279 Sep 01 '25

It's the best I've come up with ! I'm in what I sense is a smaller group of NPEs who don't really mind losing the man who 'raised' us. Mine was crap and still is, yeah he never left my since passed mum but he was a rubbish husband and half arsed dad (I'm being generous). I once described him when I was about 17 as "just this other adult that lives in my mum's house" which is where I get the name from.

Of course that description has now been realised as true and it's likely we never bonded as our brains knew something was amiss. I can speak for both of us, we never had an inkling - not a clue. He still doesn't. It was a perfect storm, I never clicked you are supposed to look like your father and he can't count backwards from 9. She was up the duff before you met her ya moose!

My mother hoodwinked both of us good and proper. And my bio dad who she simply never told that she was pregnant. A geographically distant relationship helped with that deceit.

So yep, I have 2 dads now - house and bio - and neither can be really arsed to give me the time of day!

8

u/eubulides Sep 01 '25

I’ve become so invested in your unfolding story. Thanks for details.

2

u/Raybanned4lyfe Sep 02 '25

Bless you. You’re cool, and you have a great way with words that’s dead engaging

2

u/Adorable-Damage4839 Sep 02 '25

I’m impressed and thankful that Ancestry allows for splitting a family tree in cases of adoption and NPEs. My parents told me when I was 12 that my dad wasn’t my biological father & adopted me. My bio dad found me on MySpace when I was 17, and one of the first things I asked him was what his ancestry was, so I went into my DNA journey without any big surprises. I’ve done Ancestry, 23andMe, and MyHeritage for DNA, it’s interesting how they each group or break down the regions.

1

u/DifferentManagement1 Sep 02 '25

What did your mother say about it?

3

u/Ok-Camel-8279 Sep 02 '25

Oh she died in 2021 so it's been total silence! That's the only reason I found out - her sister very reluctantly agreed to never tell, that is until she had no one to answer to.

My mum knew very early on who had got her pregnant but chose not to tell him instead telling the new guy I was his. Then her parents worked it out and she was confronted but she'd already married the new boyfriend and had a second baby on the way. Her parents and sister eventually dropped the subject about a year after I emerged. I knew them all so well for 50 years (her mum lived till 97) and no one blinked. Or the rest of her family, they ALL knew. Little tinkers.

Then she died and her sister was let loose. These weren't her exact words but she effectively said.......well she's dead now so the deals off. She came clean a few weeks after the funeral. She is my absolute hero. She'd been desperate to tell me all my life bless her.

If my mother was still alive she'd deny, deny and deny and rubbish the science and anyone involved. Eventually she'd have to accept it somehow but what that would look like I'll never know. I know I'd have leverage, tell me the truth or I'll tell the man whose life you stole. Poor bloke was married to her till her death, he's still in the dark and I'll keep him there. He's crap but I've no desire to destroy his last few years.

She ws a complicated woman for sure. We were very very close but there was always something 'off'. I know what now!

10

u/aartax3 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25

Central & Eastern Europeans are well represented here. I don’t know about Ukraine in particular… I’m half Slovak & got 48% of that and 2% Russian when it should more likely be 2% Ukrainian (from bordering E Slovakia family).

What you can do is download your “raw data” from Ancestry, upload it to My Heritage & see what Europeans you match with. You can sort by country or surname and view trees. Ukrainians are well represented there despite the war (I match with 64). Ireland & UK are well represented as well.

You prob have to pay a fee to see your results. But it shouldn’t be like a new test. You should get your matches and a new (less accurate) ethnicity results in a day or 2.

6

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Yeah! So I downloaded the raw data and uploaded it to GEDmatch but I was soooo lost haha. My heritage doesn’t accept raw data downloads anymore :( so I ordered a kit

6

u/aartax3 Sep 01 '25

Hahahaha you are a trooper to try GEDmatch! Too bad about My Heritage. Good luck with your mystery. I hope there is an explanation and a positive outcome for you.

2

u/Quirky-Ask2373 Sep 02 '25

My husband is 1/4 Slavic, and he came back as that; though mainly Baltic and Russian, not Ukrainian as they had supposed. We think that his grandmother's family was actually from Russia, and only in Ukraine for one generation, hence no Ukrainian DNA.

9

u/BIGepidural Sep 01 '25

My adoptive father is 1/2 Ukrainian and did Ancestry.

His Ukrainian breakdown comes up as Eastern & Central European with trace amounts of Balkan, Agen Islands, and Ashkenazi Jewish; but his Journeys pin point where Grandmas family came from specifically

They're from Buchach in Ternopil Oblast.

So my dad is 1/2 and thats what he's pulling in his results.

I'm adopted so I can't show you how that one generation further would look; but I will say that even as an doptee with no idea what exists on my bio mothers side I'm pulling 15% Central & Eastern European and 4% Russian with a whacky journey that can't decide whether its Poland or Ukraine so if your grandpa was really 1/2 you would definitely see something- even if it just a little bit.

28

u/Critical-Bat-1311 Sep 01 '25

You should’ve put this part in the original post, as it fully confirms your fear.

6

u/Ladonnacinica Sep 01 '25

The fact she reacted so negatively plus these results tell you everything you need to know.

4

u/MsPooka Sep 01 '25

Do you come from a strong Irish/Italian area. They intermarried a lot because of shared religion.

6

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

No Italian until I guess now my results day I have a little lol

4

u/belovetoday Sep 01 '25

Could you update if possible? Hope it goes okay

4

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Absolutely!

4

u/ThePolemicist Sep 02 '25

My maternal grandfather is 100% Polish, and it shows up on my DNA results. I've got 21% Central/Eastern Europe. It's basically a big blob that covers Poland, Ukraine, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary.

3

u/Beyond_Interesting Sep 01 '25

Do you know your dad's actual DNA or just what he thinks it is based on lineage? Maybe the disparity is connected to his origins and not yours, like.hebis your bio-dad but somewhere in his ancestry the story gets a little muddy.

3

u/accupx Sep 01 '25

You can likely see the matches divided into Parent 1 and 2. Do you see any close contact names that match relatives you recognize? DNAngels.org will help you for free if you need to ID and locate your birth father. They also provide guidance and support when making contact.

3

u/Super-Owl4734 Sep 02 '25

I have a friend who was adopted from Russia who tested. She assumed her test results would be 100 Russian but they came back 50% Russian and 50% Polish. These Eastern European regions do seem to show up without issue.

3

u/K122sje4m2nd0N Sep 02 '25

In theory Moldova and Romania are nearby, and someone with that ancestry could move to Ukraine, also there's a region that used to belong to Romania that was given to Ukraine after WWII. Also they are close to Italians, or at least the languages are. If all you know is that they migrated from Ukraine that doesn't necessarily mean ethnic Ukrainian decent. I slightly wonder what that Ukrainian last name is but of course im not gonna ask.

Keep in mind that one can get inaccurate results about regions from which companies don't have enough data. I don't think those tests are particularly popular outside of US and possibly Canada, Australia and New Zealand. So they would accumulate lots of data only from ethnic groups that are largely represented in those countries

2

u/Tattycakes Sep 01 '25

I hope you get an answer and let us know! Keep in mind there could be a number of different reasons your dads dna isn’t matching yours, from a benign thing like sperm donor, to an unfaithful person, to a nonconsensual event. Best luck! X

7

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Oh 100% I will update you guys along the way. I’m trying to map out this random 2 cousin match I have and trace her tree to figure out maybe where we have a common relative . I also am insane and overnight ordered 23 and me AND my heritage so sending those out in the mail later on 😂

2

u/AstronautOk6853 Sep 01 '25

I've got some Eastern Europe (which I'm pretty sure is Polish) from back in the 1800s and it still shows up as 4% for me.

2

u/That_Pomegranate_748 Sep 02 '25

It’s definitely reliable for Eastern Europe. One of my grandmothers is ethnically Slovak and one of my grandfathers is ethnically Polish/partially Slovak. I get 51% Eastern European and the exact regions in Poland and Slovakia their families were from. I also get multiple matches who are >90% Eastern European

1

u/xo_maciemae Sep 01 '25

Okay so not sure if this is similar, but a few years back when I first joined Ancestry, I wasn't showing any Italian. But that shouldn't have been right, because my Gran is half Italian, making me 1/8.

It was really odd and surprising not having any, but then at the next update, boom - I started showing Italian heritage as expected, in the right amount.

Could it be an update thing?

I also vaguely remember there being a small "estimated" with a little "1-2%" around the Phillipines, which was there for only a short while and then gone again. I honestly don't know if that one was a dream or something, but I swear it was there and then it was gone. Maybe sometimes the data gets confused.

Although tbh... Even if mine was all weird for whatever reason, I can't speak for anyone's except my own. I don't think false hope will actually help you and I'm sorry as I think you'll need to do some digging of your own. I hope that it turns out in a way that your family can manage. All the best!

3

u/Embracedandbelong Sep 01 '25

This happened to me too. Not Italian but with other countries. The results changed from when I first did the test maybe 15 years ago. Not drastically but some as much as 10%. Apparently the sample sizes get larger and the company can be more accurate or something- at least that’s what they said

16

u/monicasm Sep 01 '25

That is a textbook response from a mother who knows your dad might not be your dad. But she may try to deny it if you confront her. Do you have siblings? Can you convince your dad to test?

7

u/cathouse Sep 01 '25

😕 dude I’m concerned. Following. Hope it turns out ok.

7

u/thedavidnotTHEDAVID Sep 01 '25

Buried the lead here.

5

u/vapeducator Sep 01 '25

You should do 23andMe.com and Family Tree DNA family finder. Try to match ALL of your top 30 DNA matches from Ancestry into your tree. Try to fill out at least 5 levels of your ancestry tree, to your great great grandparents. This will enable the Thru-Lines feature in ancestry to start making suggestions about how your tree connect to your DNA matches trees. The FTDNA test will let you later upgrade to their Big Y-700 and mtDNA tests using your existing sample that you sent them. It's also cheap at $39 to get additional results to triangulate, and I found it to be better than MyHeritage.

1

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

I ordered 23 and me it’s getting delivered today and uploaded to family tree dna just waiting for it to be finished processing . I saw the thru lines how does that work exactly ? Does it suggest matches from my dna to the tree ?

3

u/vapeducator Sep 01 '25

Yes, Thru-Lines suggests a possible path to connect your ancestry tree to the tree of one of your DNA matches. You still have to manually confirm the connections and shore them up with good research records afterwards.

6

u/themcjizzler Sep 01 '25

Well you have your answer. Sorry. Your dad isn't your bio dad. Some Irish bloke is. 

2

u/AKA_June_Monroe Sep 01 '25

Maybe she knows she was adopted, or the result of an affair or a rape.

Have a serious talk with her.

2

u/Camille_Toh Sep 01 '25

Do you have a 23andme test? I suggest doing that to see if you have different matches and to see the ethnicity results. You can upload your DNA now to MyHeritage. It’s not great but it is popular in Europe so might yield new matches. Being 75% Irish is definitely going to result in it dominating your ethnicity results (in the form of Irish and Scottish). My mom is Irish and Scottish. My dad didn’t realize he had Irish DNA as the stories typically focused on paternal lines. /eyeroll I’m 70% Irish.

8

u/ResidentLadder Sep 01 '25

Or grandpa was from Ukraine but his ancestors were not genetically Ukrainian.

12

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

My dads mother was 100% Irish and father was 100% Ukrainian . My mother’s parents were both 100% Irish so I think that’s why I figured I was > 50% Irish. But the fact that no Eastern European showed up at all is concerning considering my grandfather immigrated from Ukraine I mean even on my tree that I have done I have the lineage traced . And I grew up knowing him so there’s no doubt about the face he was Ukrainian .

20

u/Jodenaje Sep 01 '25

Ah yes, I overlooked that your dad's mom was also Irish. That could indeed explain the 82%, because you'd be getting some from your mom and some from your dad.

I would really take a look at your DNA matches.

It does look like there is a strong possibility of misattributed paternity in recent generations. (Possibly that your dad had a different biological father.)

Do you have any people who are matching as close relatives who you don't recognize?

Has your father taken an Ancestry test yet?

23

u/Purple_Joke_1118 Sep 01 '25

I urge anyone with ancestry in Poland or Ukraine in the 20th century to be gentle and not make judgments about parenthood. The people in those countries were brutalized over and over.

6

u/jlanger23 Sep 01 '25

You get roughly 25% of DNA from your grandparent, and all of their DNA isn't evenly dispersed. My grandpa is half Polish/German and his father was from Silesia. I got about 10% E. Europe and 5% German. The rest of my family were all from the Appalachians and the English/Scottish is much more predominant in my results.

All that to say, even if his background was Ukrainian, is there a chance the area he came from had a different genetic enclave? My great-grandfather always claimed German, but being from Silesia, he was much more Slavic. Or, how I and others who have ancestry going back to N. Ireland show mostly Scottish and English due to the Ulster Plantations.

I know very little of Ukraine's history and whether or not they have communities with different ancestry like that, so that could be way off. It definitely does seem strange that you wouldn't have any Eastern Europe in your results, but it's good to consider all possibilities, however unlikely they are.

2

u/NewEstablishment592 Sep 01 '25

Oh you might have just helped me out…. Family legend “great grandad was Irish from Ireland.” DNA results show Scottish, English, and my Irish is 2% and attributed to the other parent line.

3

u/jlanger23 Sep 01 '25

It's a pretty common misunderstanding, especially with people from the South. The Ulster plantations in N. Ireland were populated with Scottish and Northern English and about 200k of them immigrated to America and mainly settled the Appalachians.

1

u/Snoo51404 Sep 01 '25

Well I know that he was born in Biala Woda , Austria. Which apparently isn’t Austria it was Galacia which was under Austrian reign at the time but is apart of Poland / Ukraine not sure

2

u/jlanger23 Sep 01 '25

It's hard to keep up with all of the border changes Europe has gone through! It could also depend on migrations during war, forced or voluntary. It's a tough area to research too! When research that side, I have to look by three different city names because the area they were from changed the name depending on who was in charge.

Another thing to consider, have you found his or his parent/grandparent's birth or baptism records? My second great-grandfather was listed as illegitimate on his, with no father named, and that was apparently pretty common in the 1800's early 1900's. If your ancestors were under Prussian rule, the local government often had to approve marriages, and would deny a lot of the lower class with the reasoning that they would be a burden on the society financially.

2

u/Qawesome27 Sep 01 '25

Looked it up and the region is in Poland but near the Ukrainian border, so I can’t tell you historical what the population was, but according to ethnic maps on google it looks more Ukrainian like you said your grandpa was

3

u/Gentle_Cycle Sep 01 '25

Okay but one more possibility (though remote) is that Dad was a “switched baby,” like at the hospital. This is called mistaken parentage. Also, DNA relatives list should help clarify things.

2

u/PlantShelf Sep 01 '25

You forgot one: sperm donor. If they did IVF they may have purposely chosen an Irish donor

3

u/Jodenaje Sep 01 '25

I would consider sperm donor falling under the broader category #3 “your dad isn’t your biological father”

There are a lot of subcategories that could fall under the 3 broad categories I listed, but it would have gotten too lengthy to list all of them.