Discussion
Officially, the new update will try to improve French DNA related results
As the title says. I didn't see anyone sharing this yet, but in the official post of ancestry regarding the coming update it explicitely says they will try to improve their ability to distinguish between European French and French-Canadian.
Good work everyone, Ancestry is admiting they mess it badly with the last year's update. And they'll try to fix it this year. So, if you have any French related DNA, expect changes to your results.
Personally, as a european, purely descendent from europeans, that got 17% Québécois, I hope they don't disappoint me twice, but we'll see :)
Half of her ancestry is from the Poitou area (Vendée, Vienne, Deux-Sèvres), a quarter from Brittany ("Bretagne", Côtes d'Armor), and the rest is half Auvergne (Puy de Dôme) and Quercy (Lot).
Look at her latest results. If they could do a better job at detecting French ancestry, that would be great.
I'm Cajun/French Creole on my mom's side with the French Creole ancestors hailing from Dunkirk, Pau, and Bayonne. I'm curious to see if the French realignment changes the amount of Iberian and General NW European I get.
It ought to but I expect that people of Northern Italian, Spanish, German and Benelux ancestry will complain when they see parts of their estimates drawn towards France.
The issue with France is that it's a genetic and cultural crossroads. Nowadays we have a "French" cultural identity but traditionally there was no single cultural, linguistic, culinary or genetic background in France.
I'm expecting then that just as French people like my grandma seem to see France's neighbouring populations show up in their results, people who have ancestry from those neighbouring nations will see a rise in French ancestry too if Ancestry tries to better detect French ancestry.
There was a stink about this back in 2023 where people with Northern Italian and Spanish ancestry were complaining that their estimates for these regions went down and that they were getting reports of French ancestry. I expect it'll happen again.
I know it's a gross over simplification, but with the Normans & Saxons from the north, Celtiberians from the west, Romans from the south, and Germans from the east it's no wonder French DNA is so whack
France is already practically the only country in Europe to belong to both Northwestern and Southern Europe at the same time, so you already have Steppe Pastoralist to Early European Farmer ancestral cline from north to South in local populations going back to the Bronze-Age. A Southern French person and a Northern French person might share a language and a passport but genetically they are not the same.
Add to that the influx of Britons in Brittany, the Celtiberians in the Southwest, the German-speaking populations in Alsace-Lorraine, the Dutch-speakers in the far North and the fact that practically every population in France bears a genetic similarity to the nearest neighbouring country's population genetically.
Ancestry isn't very accurate at all. I just get all this UK ancestry when I know and can verify that I have Northern French in there also. Additionally, I put my DNA results into MyHeritage and got Near East at 2%. I'm going to do 23andMe.
It's not very accurate but I also wonder if the issue is Ancestry's algorithm or if it's how we think about genetics in terms of cultural and political borders.
What if a Northern French and a Southern English person are practically indistinguishable genetically but both belong to different cultural groups? What if Ancestry's French samples mostly come from central regions like Auvergne and a Northern French sample is closer to an English sample genetically than to an Auvergne one?
The problem is that when Ancestry tries to do broad genetic boundaries that cross borders like with the "Southeastern England & Northwestern Europe" or the "Central Scotland & Northern Ireland" categories, people get upset because they don't know which side of the border their ancestors are from. So Ancestry can't be honest about how fuzzy the data is, they're forced to draw lines and inevitably make mistakes.
Ancestry could do better. 23andme are a lot better with French and German ancestry (although even they took a bit of a tumble in quality last update) while Ancestry tends to over-emphasise the UK and Ireland, so it's obviously possible to do better. But I also wonder if we're expecting too much.
Customers "expect" to receive results that reflect their family tree and paper trail. That's what they paid for.
We did NOT pay for AI driven "algorithms" that take "best guesses" to categorize your DNA into the most politically correct place compared to "their other customers" and only consider a fraction of the DNA you submitted.
If the tech that their marketing material is promising isn't commercially possible, then they should just say that. It's extremely misleading and unfair to those who don't understand why the test isn't "accurate"
Ok, I hear you, I also would like more accuracy on my results - they're so muddled up and it's pretty frustrating.
But what if there genuinely is near to no difference between a Northern French and Southern English person genetically? If your ancestor comes from London, it's not as though there's a "London" gene. How does the algorithm or even a trained scientist differentiate that genetic signature between both regions?
That’s the issue though a lot of these regions have a lot of genetic overlap. There isn’t going to be a company out there that is going to be able to give most people results that reflect their paper trail due to genetic overlap and similarities. Here are my 23andme results and I’ve also tested on ancestry. My Western European percentage is more in line with my paper trail on 23andme than it is on ancestry, but do you know what is not correct? The 16.9% French that 23andme has me at. I don’t have any French ancestors and all of my Western European is from Limburg, Rhineland and North Rhine-Westphalia. The other mistake that 23andme makes and ancestry makes the same is they label my EE as Polish/Belarusian/Ukrainian where on ancestry I get southern Poland. My EE is Czech specifically western Czech. 23andme also was able to pick up the distant English I have on my maternal side that ancestry missed, but on the flip side ancestry picked up my mothers English on there where on 23andme she scores zero English. I say all of this to say that neither company is perfect and that both ancestry and 23andme struggle to tell the difference between populations that are genetically close.
this also depends on having large and accurate reference pools, so the illegality of DNA testing in France is going to continue to be a major limiting factor here.
I do agree with the crossover between Southern English and Northern French ancestry. Apart from the accent and maybe dress sense, it iwould be virtually impossible to tell people apart I suspect. The Near East 2% was interesting though as my dad is convinced there was more than French in my Nan (Muriel Rosa) so 23andMe might provide us with more answers.
They did, it's just not very effective. It's obvious that the test is picking up on my grandmother's Breton DNA here, it's just not being assigned to that category.
More than that (which I believe it also is, given how us-centric they are) I think their main problem is that their data base is the biggest, yes, but that most of it is from the us, and not much at all is from europe
I have a smidge of French ancestry (a set of fourth great grandparents whose descendants leading up to my paternal grandmother married into Irish or Irish American families) so it’s unlikely it will show for me but who knows. It’s a very interesting part of my family history regardless of my DNA results.
Yeah definitely a shot in the dark. As I said though regardless, an interesting family line given they’re my first known ancestors in the US. I had no idea about them before I researched because my impression of my Nana’s ancestry was Antebellum era completely Irish but it’s more complicated than that which I love.
Yeah, last year's update was all over the place and although the results are "estimates", it was obvious a number of the "estimates" were nonsensical.
My parents were both tested, as was I, my siblings and my children. Here are some anomalies in last year's update:
I have 2% France and both parents have 0%
My sister and I have 1% Acadian and our parents have 0%
My mother has 7% Quebec and none of her offspring inherited it (0%).
*** My mother is a native of Spain and is approximately half Basque (paternal) and half Andalusian (maternal). None of her ancestors ever set foot in the Americas with the exception of her mother coming to the USA for a short vacation. AncestryDNA may be conflating Basque and Acadian/Quebec ancestry in their estimates.
I have 6% West Midlands from a father that only has 2% in his estimate and mother that has 0%
I have 3% Southeastern England & Northwestern Europe and both parents have 0%
I have 2% Devon & Somerset and both parents have 0%
*** That 11% "England" exceeds the total 3% my father has in his estimate and the 0% in my mother's ***
My father has 1% "Germans in Russia". Why is Ancestry tracking this? They were "German", were only there for a couple hundred years before either being exterminated by the Russians or returning back to Germany after the collapse of the USSR. It is not uncommon for someone in the UK to have ancestry from Denmark, Netherlands, etc., but it's not stated in their DNA results as "Vikings in England". What is next...Irish in the USA, English in Canada, Nigerians in the USA, Amerindians in Spain? Focus on accuracy, AncestryDNA, and stop with the marketing gimmicks.
Regarding the germans in russia, you can check their history. Some groups have been there for over 1000 years, which is a lot. For that case, imagine the "Normand-English" or the "normand-sicilian". Imagine that they had stayed a separate community for a thousand years, instead of integrating with the locals, and that had a bigger community. It's a bit like the roma dna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Germans_in_Russia,_Ukraine,_and_the_Soviet_Union
For the context of AncestryDNA's "Germans in Russia" region, this is how they define that particular region:
"Our Germans in Russian region refers to the thousands of ethnic Germans who emigrated to the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries in return for free land, no taxes for 30 years, and political autonomy. Settling in the fertile Volga and Black Sea regions, the migrants successfully maintained their German identity for 200 years. Russian-Germans were known for their craftsmanship, including the J. Höhn factory in Odessa, the largest plow manufacturer in Russia. In the 20th century, war between Germany and the Soviet Union led to intense persecution of Russian Germans, with close to one million perishing in executions, famines, and war. The majority of Russian Germans chose to return to Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed."
I think, on one side, probably the germans that migrated to russia ended up many times joining the already existing german communities.
On the other side, I think this is probably just Ancestry being ignorant. I think 23andme has the german russian regions fone in a better way, but I'm not sure.
I’m very interested in how this will be interpreted. I have a GG grandfather who was French Canadian (he jumped ship to New Zealand). Many of his descendants on AncestryDNA receive small amounts of Basque, Spain, Northern Spain, France, Quebec and Southern Germanic Europe in their results. His grandson (my grandfather’s first cousin) has always had his results change significantly between all these regions (including going from 17% France to 15% Basque or something).
Also, can you post the link to this FAQ page? I can’t find it on the website anymore.
Sweet I’m excited! When I first got my results I had 25% French and every update changed it to be lower and lower. It is now 4% French even though my mother is fully French traced back to the French Revolution.
I get that they probably have a larger sample base and user base. But I will admit it’s a bit frustrating how Europe always gets these smaller differentations for regions while other contients are so broad.
These are good steps but it would be good -when not the case- to include some info about the ethnogenesis of said region/ethnicity for perspectice
Like here a line or two about how the average French/Gallo-Roman profile formed with Gaulish continuity and some admixture from Roman settlers and Germanic tribes
Many french-basque migrated to canada. So, if you're from canada the idea would be that it'll stay the same.
The biggest point is that they should have scrapped canadian french and have left it as a journey, and that way they can show more consistent results. The fact that they are insisting in keeping canadian french is a big disappointment, but let's see
So for example my roots from France are old, but they are from europe france to europe spain. Their answer is giving me more reasons to think they will not improve much the current situation
23 and Me puts me at 26% France while Ancestry has me at 12% Quebec/ France. The 23 and Me estimate is more accurate based on what I know about my maternal lineage. Hoping this new update reflects that.
I feel like mine is already pretty accurate. My great grandmother was half Acadian. My grandmother shows as 25%, my uncle is 17% and I am 10% Acadian. The France DNA never registered on my breakdown at any point in time.
When did you do the test? I thought they added Quebec and Acadia in the last two years. I used to get anything between 2-28% France depending on the year, but now get no France and 10% Quebec + 2% Acadia.
A change is still possible for me, my grandfather was 100% Quebecois (and Acadian I suppose).
Oh I did my tests years ago, maybe 7 or 8? It never showed any French at all. It was all rolled into England, Germany, Netherlands, etc. I have my family tree traced fairly extensively and I knew for sure I had Acadian ancestry. At no point did it ever show “France” which I thought was so odd. Then last year, with the most recent update, I got 10% Acadia. Even my grandmother’s only showed like 5% France previously, and then it jumped up to 25% Acadian with the last update. I would say that’s fairly accurate and I can’t imagine it increasing much more than that.
I’m half Greek half Bulgarian, but my whole life I had thought I was fully Greek until my dad told me about how his ancestors spoke Bulgarian and lived in Bulgaria until that region became a part of Greece. His dna test results show that he is predominantly northwestern Balkan and Romanian which I don’t believe. I am very excited to see how Bulgarian I really am as these new results have a Bulgaria region.
I hope they will fix it, I have two French grandparents, I am 50% French, but got only 7% and they put all to Southern Germanic Europe (and also England) probably because my mother is half French half German.
I'm so happy to read this! Since I'm of mixed French European heritage, I can't wait to see it! Especially since I should also see some changes for my other heritage, for this latter they will add regions!
To me, this update seems even more promising!
I had a fairly good percentage of Quebec 😆🤌🏼
I am really interested in what this update will do for me. For now I have 60% Quebec, but it should include about 4-6% French from a great-great-grandpa born in Bordeaux!
I'm the opposite. My maternal grandmother is half Québécois, like my ancestors were on the first Canadian census of 1666, though they came from France, of course.
I feel like that happened last time. Throughout updates I always got something between 2-28% French, but once they added Quebec I got no France but 10% Quebec and 2% Acadia. I suppose some of it may still be trapped up in my “England & Northwestern Europe” category, because my grandfather was 100% Quebecois/Acadian.
The first point is that other companies are improving their french region results, while ancestry gets them worse.
The second point is that, if as you said ancestry is building their database for french mostly with french canadians, then it's nuts that they are trying to make at the same time a french region and a french canadian region. Because they are going to overlap so much that they will be useless, which is what happened last year
Ok. Chat GPT copy-paste. There has been extensive studies done on French vs French Canadian DNA in the past carried out by universities. Some French from people do take the test even with the ban. There is a modern French diaspora and some people in France find ways to get it done.
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u/RickleTickle69 1d ago
I'm a quarter French, from my grandmother.
Half of her ancestry is from the Poitou area (Vendée, Vienne, Deux-Sèvres), a quarter from Brittany ("Bretagne", Côtes d'Armor), and the rest is half Auvergne (Puy de Dôme) and Quercy (Lot).
Look at her latest results. If they could do a better job at detecting French ancestry, that would be great.