There's been a curious update to Ancestry's ethnicity profiling on its DNA platform. Before the update I was shown as being 84% Scottish, with a subgroup of Northern Ireland and Southwest Scotland, which comprised of three groups - Western Northern Ireland, Fermanagh and Southwest Tyrone, and Eastern Northern Ireland and Southwestern Scotland. That did reflect my Scottish ancestry to quite a good extent, with most of my "Scottish" identity coming from Plantation stock in Ulster (Scots who migrated to Ulster from 1609), although it neglected the Gaelic quarter of my identity that is in fact Highland Scottish, from Invernessshire, Perthshire and Easter Ross.
Switching now to the new ethnicity reading, and the Ulster Plantations have seemingly never happened. I am now shown as 80% Highland Scottish, and 20% Irish, from Ulster and Northern Ireland. Whilst I am delighted that my Highland ancestry has finally been realised, I wasn't expecting the other three quarters of my Scottish ethnicity to be swallowed up in a single area that seems to draw the Highland line from Glasgow to Dunbar!!!
And just for the craic, my wife, whose family has exclusively been drawn from Kilkenny and Tipperary in Ireland for the last 200 years, is now shown as having ancestry from all four provinces in Ireland, as well as now being 9% Scottish. Errr... no!
I was thinking Ancestry may have repeated the mistake it made a few years ago when everyone was suddenly Scottish for a few glorious weeks, but from the comments I have seen on social media it looks like a lot of people are equally confused by their new ethnicity statements.
Take one very important point to heart - the ethnicity reading should not be too closely worried about - the far more useful thing to take from Ancestry's tests is the possibility of matches with distant cousins who share DNA with you.
But fair play to you if you have shares in a kilt company just now, I suspect you'll be getting a few more enquiries from folk once again wishing to trade in their lederhosen ...!!!
Chris
Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.
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