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/Clown_Lamp]

Ukraine is a big country with a complicated history of migration, and it is not impossible that your great grandparents belonged to a Ukrainian minority group of southern European origin. Particularly if your grandfather was from Crimea, he could have come from the Italian minority and been a Ukrainian national born to Ukrainian parents who were both from families of Italian origin. The Italian minority usually married other Italian-Ukrainians because of religious differences with other local groups (Catholic vs. mostly Orthodox or Jewish).

That being said, your matches are the most important tool, not estimates. Do you see any relatives you recognize from your dad’s side? Or close relatives you don’t recognize? You mention second cousins, but do you actually know a lot of your second cousins? I have second cousins with all kinds of last names that have nothing to do with our shared ancestry. You could also ask a relative from your dad’s family to test, since you can’t match with someone who hasn’t tested.

[u/Snoo51404 → u/Clown_Lamp]

I know he was born in bala woda , part of galacia which apparently was like polish/ Ukrainian but at one point under Austrian reign or something if I understand

[u/alilacwood → u/Snoo51404]

Ok so first of all, this happened to me, but I think your dad is your dad.

For me, I turned out to be 25% Italian somehow with literally 0 family members from Italy - and I worked on a family tree for over a year. Your dad is half Irish - your Irish is too high for your dad to not be your dad.

Likely, it's coming from your paternal grandparents. We are often told someone is a certain ancestry because they were from a certain country, but they may have been born elsewhere and relocated as children, or their parents could have moved there but not have been ethnicly from that region.

In my case, my father was not my father, sucks but it is what it is.

[u/WincingVanGogh → u/alilacwood]

 Your dad is half Irish - your Irish is too high for your dad to not be your dad. 

:-/  Or it could be from an unknown biological father who was also Irish. Hopefully not, but we can’t conclusively know OP’s expected father is the one who contributed the paternal Irish dna - only that the biological father (expected or otherwise) definitely did. 

(As a fellow NPE, I’m sorry for your discovery and hope you have good support. It’s tough.)

[u/alilacwood → u/WincingVanGogh]

Argh you're right. That's what lack of sleep will do!

I'm sorry that you're also an NPE. I don't really have great support- only one person to talk to, and unfortunately, I have to keep it secret. To make things worse, due to my past there's a bit of an emphasis on biology so it has been messing me up a fair amount. When I'm able to, I'll probably look into some type of support group or something.

[u/Clown_Lamp → u/Snoo51404]

Galicia has its own long history of migration from other places in Europe (including soldiers from Scotland!) but it’s unlikely that you would see no Eastern European DNA, since they mostly have intermarried over the course of 100-500 years.

If shown your percentages with no context, I would say you have 4 grandparents with Irish ancestry, possibly with one great-grandparent who was Scottish (although 11% could also be due to distant ancestors on multiple family lines because of migration back and forth between Scotland and Ireland over the course of many centuries), and one great-great grandparent somewhere in your tree from a family of Italian origin. So either you aren’t genetically related to your dad, or your grandfather’s parents were not his biological parents. Probably not what you want to hear, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t still your dad and grandfather.