I’m still trying to figure out how we may actually be related, because I suspect that this is a case of “we think you’re first cousins based on the percentage of DNA that you share, but because there are so many variables and so many chances for you to be a half-relative, you’re probably one of those and our algorithms can’t suss that out yet”. I did send her a message though as soon as I saw her take the place of the person that I formerly shared the highest percentage of DNA with in the Ancestry app, so I’m hoping that someone is interested enough to respond. These people probably have no idea that I exist given the… complexity of all of this, which has been one reason why I’ve wanted to try out 23andMe and Ancestry. I want to get to know some of the relatives that I wouldn’t have had a chance to get to know were it not for that because I would have had absolutely no idea that we were related, let alone how. (And because there is an unknown grandparent on both sides of my family, I get the fun from both sides, so it isn’t as cut and dry as “oh, this is from the side of my family that I don’t know”, let’s try sides. There is more than one unknown side at play…)

Based on the math that I did with the help of an online site, we share 13.8% of DNA in common.

I’m speculating that these may be people that have no idea that I exist, let alone the parent that we share relation to. Still, though, it will be nice once I start hearing back from more relatives of mine from Ancestry.

One of the things that I’ve found is that genetic tests such as Ancestry and 23andMe seem to have a difficult time discerning the status of “half-” relatives. In my case, I have an uncle on 23andMe that was classified as a first cousin because he is the half-brother of one of my parents, meaning that we share less DNA than we would if he were a full sibling. Even though his daughter also took a 23andMe test and is linked to him as his daughter, he is still listed as a first cousin on my list of DNA matches, even though the family tree seems to get it right listing him as my uncle and her as my cousin — the algorithm behind the family tree function that 23andMe provides seems to have been refined, and improved upon, with recent updates, which I like a lot…

However, had I not known that this first cousin of mine was actually my uncle because of contact with his daughter (and, again, the family tree function) I would probably never have known that someone who really seems like they are my aunt was classified as my first cousin on Ancestry. She seems to be a half-sister to my other parent if the information that I’ve been putting together is correct, is so much older than me that it seems implausible that she would be my first cousin, has a child who Ancestry has guessed is my “second cousin” who seems like he is much closer to me in age, and shares nearly the same percentage of DNA in common with me as my established half-uncle. I sent her a message on Facebook inquiring about this, because, you know, having a sibling that you might have had absolutely no idea about is a hell of a thing to miss. I’m not sure if she’ll respond. She may or may not know about this sibling. But it would really do for both Ancestry and 23andMe to refine their algorithms a bit better to correctly identify when there is a “half-” relationship like this. I’m not sure if they even can, but at least looking into it and trying wouldn’t be all bad.

I tried to use the crop feature on my phone as well as I could, I really did.

But according to Ancestry, this is all I am. White bread. White on white. I can make these jokes all day.

These are recent screenshots of my ancestry composition as… estimated by 23andMe, or however you would word that. Of course, the only thing that I omitted from the screenshot was my full name, which would have shown up to the left of the 100% percentage on both screenshots. In hindsight, given that my full name can be found on our Amazon wish list if anyone purchases anything off of it, and the link can be found on the right side of my blog… maybe I didn’t need to crop it out, but since it’s a picture that can theoretically be saved to someone’s computer, I don’t exactly mind having done so. At any rate, all of these ancestry kits seem to say something completely different, which will illustrate itself when I post the screenshot that I have of my Ancestry results. I thought that those would be a lot more varied, as I’ve seen friends’ results where they have a lot of different percentages broken down and a lot more detail… and then you have mine, which I will eventually be getting to, which is a lot more boring and dull in comparison. At least my 23andMe is more interesting, even though more than half of my ancestry starts with “Broadly” and doesn’t get more specific…

For a little while, when I was checking my “DNA Story” in Ancestry, it had my ancestral computations as:
“AngloSaxon”
“Celtic”
and “German”.

Just those things. That amused me to bits. I’m not even going to lie.

I thought that they were going to keep things that way, but when I went to check on them the next morning to see if they were going to continue to name things… that way, everything was back to the way it had been. (“England, Wales & Northwestern Europe”, “Ireland & Scotland”, and “Germanic Europe” for me. I wish my DNA Story was a bit more interesting given what I’ve seen other people’s Ancestry results to have been…)

I like to periodically check my computations in both 23andMe and Ancestry to see if anything has changed, because they have been known to change as more research is done as to where genes are most likely to have come from. And it’s still interesting to note that Ancestry thinks that I am a quarter Irish and Scottish, whereas 23andMe is convinced that quarter is Germanic. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my DNA is getting into a fistfight as to where this portion of my ancestry actually comes from, and I stay living for finding out where that portion of my ancestry actually comes from, because it’s amusing to study this, and it’s just as amusing to note the discrepancies between 23andMe and Ancestry. I am that kind of person…

When I got my initial results in, 0.10% of my DNA had been read as broadly northern East African, but an update took that away… without changing any of my percentages, so my total percentages only came to 99.9% no matter how you did the math. I wondered about this for awhile, but one of their most recent updates actually gave this 0.10% back to me, although that portion of my DNA is currently allocated to the “Unassigned” section. With any luck, as they continue to update their algorithm and their systems, I will find out what portion of my ancestry that DNA is allocated to, especially since it seems like a comparatively small amount. But it had amused me for awhile that my ancestral composition did not add up to 100% like it was… supposed to, especially since so many of my DNA matches did have their ancestral compositions add up to 100% (although some of theirs, like mine, did not, and that this was to varying degrees), and I wanted to know why this was. But having watched them change what portions of my DNA have been assigned where over the course of their several updates, at least I have an idea where to expect them to assign this DNA at some point whenever it does get assigned, or where it might most reasonably be expected to come from…

This genealogy stuff is kind of wild, especially since I have the two unknown family members that I do.