2023 -DNA Ethnicity Reports and Ancestry, MyHeritage and 23andme

I do not place much confidence in the ethnicity reports at any of the companies. I feel there is just too much variance in how much DNA we get from any ancestors to really draw any conclusions. I do look at the ethnicity reports and consider them when researching a family, but it rarely sways my opinions one way or the other on pretty much anything. However, for many people, ethnicity reports are the reason they were DNA tested.

This is my ethnicity report at 23andme:

This was report was generated in March of 2023. It reports 99.3 Northwestern European, and .7% split between .3% Nigerian, .3% Cypriot and .1% Filipino & Austronesian. This was with the Confidence setting at the loosest it can be (50%) “Speculative”

This is my ethnicity report from MyHeritage, report also generated in March of 2023.

MyHeritage Ethnicity Report

MyHeritage reports that I am 78.6% English, 13.7% Iberian, and 7.7% Irish, Scottish and Welsh.

Ethnicity Report at AncestryDNA

Ancestry feels that my DNA comes from 77% Scotland, 10% Ireland, 8% England & Northwestern Europe, and 5% Germanic European

As you can see, each company varies widely in how it reports my ethnicities! In time perhaps the reports will get more accurate.

Ethnicity reports often cause confusion when siblings are tested. People expect that the Ethnicity reports of full siblings will be identical, after all, they have the exact same ancestors, right? Except that is not how DNA works. Each sibling will have received a different combination of DNA from each of the 4 grandparents, and so each sibling may very well have a very different ethnicity report.