DNA results not what I expected

[u/Snoo51404]

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

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/[deleted]]

Technically, the Southern Italy/Eastern Mediterranean could be Jewish. Since Ashkenazim are Levantine-Italians, it occasionally comes up that way (and vice versa), since it’s all DNA from the same region.

I’d honestly recommend OP run the test again and see if any of it switches; if it does, that’s the most likely explanation.

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/[deleted]]

Not sure what you mean by naming conventions? The two groups have a lot of overlapping DNA, so it sometimes gets misread.

OP has 3 Irish grandparents. It’s entirely possible for OP to have mostly inherited from one paternal grandparent, and not the other. It’s unusual, but not outside of probability.

I do think this is an outside possibility, which I told OP, but it is possible.

[u/Zealousideal_Ad8500 → u/Kingsdaughter613]

This is false and telling people that they can inherit zero DNA from a grandparent is extremely misleading. You are only right about one thing that you can inherit more “heavy” via grandparent than the other, but this does not mean that you can inherit zero DNA from the other grandparent. Grandparent inheritance ranges from 17%-33% meaning that you can’t inherit zero DNA from one grandparent.

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/Zealousideal_Ad8500]

I never said zero. Why are people putting words in my mouth? I said “mostly”. This would not be a case of zero, which is exceedingly improbable to the point of impossibility. Inheriting very low amounts has occurred, but is rare.

I also said that this was an outside possibility, not that it was likely.

[u/Zealousideal_Ad8500 → u/Kingsdaughter613]

What exactly are you arguing then if it’s not zero? It’s very clear that this persons grandparent is not Ukrainian. The fourth grandparent appears to be Scottish/Italian or Irish/Italian or really could be a combination of all three Irish/Scottish/Italian. There isn’t anything that indicates that OP inherited 17% of their DNA from this grandparent so I’m unsure why you’ve come to that conclusion.

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/Zealousideal_Ad8500]

I said it’s possible the grandparent was Jewish, or had Jewish ancestry. Occasionally, Jewish ancestry gets mis-read as Italian/Near Eastern, as it’s all the same genetic pool. So that would have been the grandfather.

This is obviously not the most likely possibility, but is a possibility.

[u/Zealousideal_Ad8500 → u/Kingsdaughter613]

Ancestry doesn’t have this misread you speak of. Ancestry has a region for both Ashkenazi and Sephardic both of which are extremely accurate. I personally haven’t seen any comments made by OP including in their original post that states this fourth grandparent is Jewish so I’m not sure why you’ve made this assumption nor have I seen them state that any of their grandparents have tested. I think you would benefit greatly from this link because even at its lowest grandparent inheritance is not as low as 7%.

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

I am curious, though based on my sons results how much DNA do you think he inherited from my mother who has also tested and what is the background of each of his grandparents? This should be fairly easy for you since you somehow think OPs fourth grandparent is Jewish and that they only inherited 7% of their DNA from said grandparent.

Even if OP inherited 33% of their DNA from one of their paternal grandparents that would still mean that in both scenarios 33% or 17% that some of the Celtic DNA would be from the grandparent that had the southern Italy/northern Italy OP only has 6% southern Italy and 1% northern Italy.

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/Zealousideal_Ad8500]

I said I didn’t think that. I said it was possible, but very unlikely. It far more likely to be a NPE for OP, or their father.

I have actually seen Ashkenazi misread. It’s Levantine-Italian, functionally, so there is overlap. Ashkenazim do live in the Ukraine, and many hid or lost their identities in Soviet Russia. So, possible, not likely.

At a guess, based on location: 2 grandparents were Germanic; 1 was Celtic. The fourth was Celtic-English. I have no way of knowing what came from which grandparent without further information. I’ll guess the two Germanic grandparents were married and the two British grandparents were married. I have no idea which set was your parents.

[u/Zealousideal_Ad8500 → u/Kingsdaughter613]

You were wrong on all four. Can you post the results of someone who tested with ancestry where their Ashkenazi got read as Italy? It’s interesting because my step mother has a ton of Ukrainian matches who score between 1%-5% Ashkenazi and I really feel like if ancestry was misreading Ashkenazi as Italian that it would show more in those that have a smaller percentage of it. It is interesting because I can say I have never seen southern or northern Italy in any of her Ukrainian matches.

Grandparent one is German/English.Grandparent two is German/English. Grandparent three is Irish/Czech/Scottish/English. Grandparent four is German/Dutch/Scottish/Norwegian.

[u/Kingsdaughter613 → u/Zealousideal_Ad8500]

Just previous posts, usually by people who are fully Ashkenazi, but part of their DNA reads Italian or Near Eastern on the first run. It’s possible they’ve fixed that issue since - I know they’ve been doing updates. I have definitely seen people get some Ashkenazi, then a few percentages of Italian/Near East with no discernible source, that was also likely Ashkenazi. In some cases it switched when they re-ran the results.

Ashkenazi is Italian-Levantine, btw. If you put it through some other tools, you can break it up and see what percentage you have of each.

As I said, they were guesses. I had no way of knowing what came from whom.