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My MyHeritage Ethnicity Estimate

 

My MyHeritage's Ethnicity Estimate updated their ethnic analyses.  They claim to improve them.  Well....There was no improvement in mine. My old ethnic analysis was woefully inaccurate.  My new one is even worse. 


During over a decade, I have learned to take ethnic analyses with a strong grain of salt and focus mainly on DNA relative matches.

Here is a blog post that I did on ethnic analyses from 7 DNA companies/sites.  They're all significantly different from each other. Only AncestryDNA and 23andme were reasonably accurate, but both have significant flaws.

https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2021/09/my-ethnic-analyses-ancestrydna-23andme.html


Blog post from my ethnic analyses from the company Sequencing.  I did whole genome testing from that company.  It was woefully inaccurate. 

https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2024/01/my-genetic-ancestry-with-haplogroups.html


Ethnicity Estimates are calculated based on founder populations that can trace their roots to a specific place or ethnic group going back 6–15 generations, or roughly 100–400 years ago. You can learn more about how MyHeritage estimates ethnicities based on DNA in the following article: What Is My Ethnicity? How MyHeritage Estimates Ethnicities

When you review your Genetic Groups, you may notice that the Group Timeline below the map goes back to the year 1600. The heatmap indicates the concentrations of people belonging to this group around the year 1600, showing you where your ancestors likely lived around 400 years ago.

https://education.myheritage.com/article/how-far-back-do-dna-ethnicity-estimates-go/


I am a multicontinental American that is highly multiethnic, and I am related to many of my fellow Americans in many different ways. 

My paternal grandfather's father's ancestry was African American.  He had some European ancestry on his mother's side. 

My paternal grandfather's mother's ancestry was African American.

My paternal grandmother's father's ancestry was African American.  He had some European ancestry. 

My paternal grandmother's mother's ancestry was African American with English and Acadian (French in what now known as Nova Scotia), Polish. 

My maternal grandfather's father 's ancestry was Cape Verdean (Portuguese and Sub-Saharan African) His parents were immigrants.

My maternal grandfather's mother's ancestry was Puerto Rican (Spanish, Sub-Saharan African, and Taino) on her father's side and Madeiran (Portuguese with Sub Saharan African) on her mother's side.

My maternal grandmother's father's ancestry was Colonial European American that was mainly English ancestry with some German, Swiss, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and Frisian.

My maternal grandmother's mother' ancestry was Ashkenazi Jewish American. Her father immigrated from Romania and her mother immigrated from an area in the Russian Empire that became Latvia. 


Because of the Transatlantic Slave trade, I know very little about my African ancestry. Africa has over 3,000 ethnic groups, and that includes Nigeria having over 400 ethnic groups.  African ancestry is highly likely to consist of many African ethnic groups. I have some Indigenous American segments on my paternal chromosomes and not just my maternal chromosomes and X Chromosome. Paternal DNA relative matches show some Swiss and German ancestry on my paternal grandmother's side. They also show some Irish, Danish, and Malagasy ancestry.


My highly mixed, diverse ancestry is reflected in my DNA relative matches at AncestryDNA, 23andme, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and GEDmatch.


My Genealogical Family Lines

https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2020/12/my-genealogical-family-lines.html

Pictures of my ancestors with ancestral surnames

https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2023/04/pictures-of-my-ancestors-with-ancestral.html



My African went from 50.1% to 72.4% that include

My Nigerian went from 27.9% to 58.0%

My West African went from 12.1% to 14.4%

My Masaai, Sierra Leonean, and North African from the old ethnicity estimate are gone. 


My European went from 46% to 23.9% that include

My Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese) went from 16.3% to 18.4%

I gained Ashkenazi Jewish with 4.4% 

I gained French with 1.1%

My Italian and Finnish from the old ethnicity estimate are gone.


My Indigenous American went from 3.6% to 2.0%


I gained Middle East with 1.7%.


My African is greatly overestimated. I went from being around 1/2 African to around 3/4 African.  Others with significant mixed African-European ancestry showed large African increases too.

I wasn't assigned any ethnicities that reflect the ancestry of my maternal grandmother's father whose ancestry was mostly English with some German, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and Frisian. I have many DNA relative matches on his side. 

My Portuguese and Spanish amount fits with my ancestry from my maternal grandfather who identified as a Portagee.

My Ashkenazi Jewish amount is low for a great grandson of an Ashkenazi Jew.  23andme has me as being 9.3% Ashkenazi Jewish.  AncestryDNA has me as being 15% European Jewish, but some of it might be Sephardic Jewish in connection to my Cape Verdean, Puerto Rican, Madeiran ancestry on my maternal grandfather's side.

My French amount fits with my ancestry from my 3/4 Acadian paternal 4th great grandmother and the paternal chromosome segments that I share with people with Acadian ancestry.  I might have other paternal French ancestry in connection to having Louisiana Creole ancestry.  Acadian is the only French ancestry that I found so far though.

My Indigenous American amount seems right, but  half of it should be Taino on my Puerto Rican maternal 2nd great grandfather's side with some of the rest being Indigenous North American on my father's side. 

I know nothing about having recent Middle Eastern ancestors. 

23andme has me as being 0.1% Filipino/Austronesian and 0.2% Broadly Chinese/Southeast Asian. None of that shows in my MyHeritage Ethnicity Estimate. The 0.1% Filipino/Austronesian segment is all one segment matched with a French man whose paternal grandmother was born In Madagascar and others including some European Americans that descend from a Colonial mixed European/African-American couple that lived freely in Marion County, South Carolina. Some African Americans including some in my father's home state Louisiana match on the segment. AncestryDNA hack has me as being 0.1% Northern Filipino.




My Old MyHeritage Ethnicity Estimate




My New MyHeritage Ethnicity Estimate
































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