I was also surprised because I have a pretty extensive genealogy of my wife's side of the family and there's no ancestor from Ireland. Her grandparents—the aunt's parents—have typically Scottish surnames and they are the product of several generations of Scottish ancestors from a small community in Eastern Ontario.
I know of all the ancestors of the aunt (and my wife's mother) for five generations. That's 32 ancestors—their great-great-great-grandparents (Ms. Sandwalk's great4-grandparents). There were four ancestors born in England and 28 born in Scotland, mostly around Glasgow. The original settlers of this district all came from Scotland. That means that to a first approximation about 87% of the aunt's DNA comes from Scotland.
No ancestor was from Ireland.
Looks a bit strange, doesn't it?
Here's the Ancestry.com description of what they mean when they say your DNA is from Ireland.
IrelandIt seems pretty clear that when they say "Ireland" they really mean "Celtic."
Primarily located in: Ireland, Wales, Scotland
Also found in: France, England
Ireland is located in the eastern part of the North Atlantic Ocean, directly west of Great Britain. A variety of internal and external influences have shaped Ireland as we know it today. Ireland’s modern cultural remains deeply rooted in the Celtic culture that spread across much of Central Europe and into the British Isles. Along with Wales, Scotland, and a handful of other isolated communities within the British Isles, Ireland remains one of the last holdouts of the ancient Celtic languages that were once spoken throughout much of Western Europe. And though closely tied to Great Britain, both geographically and historically, the Irish have fiercely maintained their unique character through the centuries.
Isn't it strange to refer to people from Scotland with Celtic ancestry as "Irish"?
Look at the table below showing the average "Irish" ethnicity in various locales throughout the British Isles. If you are from Scotland then you probably have about 40% Irish DNA!
That's nonsense. You don't become Irish just because you have Celtic DNA in your genome.
Recall that about 87% of the aunt's DNA was from Scottish ancestors. Most of them were from Southern Scotland where there's about 47% "Irish" haplotypes. Thus, my wife's aunt should have about 0.47 ×: 87% = 41%
Lots of people who had their DNA tested by Ancestry.com are as puzzled as we were. There are many forums where the issue is being discussed. See, for example: So am I Irish or Scottish?.
Ancestry.com screwed up. They shouldn't be saying that their client's DNA is 61% "Ireland." They should be saying it's Celtic. There are an awful lot of people like my wife's aunt who don't know how to interpret their "Irish" DNA and they are going to be very confused.
1. 61% Ireland; 24% Europe West; 7% Great Britain; 7% Trace Regions; 1% West Asia.
69 comments :
My mother's ancestors were Irish by geography, but Scottish by descent and by culture.
AMEN. I watch this stuff a little on youtube because of my interest in history.
I am suspicious of DNA things like this anyways.
they are indeed just doing a celtic origin. In Britain today they are all, weirdly, starting to identify themselves by race and not historic identities. So they would take away the word scottish but leave in Irish.
its true and common as i say. in fact they say the english are more celt then German.
Scotland and Ireland at the time of cHrist were the same big tribe even with divisions. only later did segregation change things.
They do say they can focus it down to areas but if so the IRISH tag would be more confusing.
I'm 75% English by bio identity but probably 50-75% bio celtic. i don't know.
Yet thats not who I am. i'm a canadian boy and that DNA trail is another trail and another story. Byers is a Scottish name. I understand it means a cow pen or the like.
We are all Irish on St. Paddy's day.
That's nonsense. You don't become Irish just because you have Celtic DNA in your genome.
That's why one should carefully distinguish labels from various classifications, referring to different aspects of identity. "Irish" is mainly a geographical/ethnic/cultural label today. It used to be linguistic as well, but precious few modern "Irish people" have Gaeilge as their mother tongue. Hiberno-English is a variety of English, which makes it technically a Germanic language (like, say, Black English in the US). But "Germanic" and "Celtic" may mean completely different things to linguists, historians, archaeologists, folklorists, etc.
Scottish Gaelic was brought to western Scotland from northeastern Ireland in the early Middle Ages, replacing the local Brittonic Celtic languages (closely related to Welsh) and Pictish (whatever it was -- probably also Brittonic). The Highland regions of Scotland became part of the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata. At about the same time the Old English-speaking Northumbrians annexed the Lowlands, and then speakers of various Scandinavian dialects settled here and there. So late medieval Scotland was a melting-pot of peoples and languages, with immigrants from Ireland accounting for a large percentage of the population. Little wonder that there's some genetic affinity between the ex-Gaelic-speaking groups on either side of the North Channel.
By the way, in Old English the term "Scottas" referred to the inhabitants of Ireland as well as the Irish colonisers in Scotland, but not the "aboriginal" Scots, speakers of now-extinct Celtic languages.
What I find odd is that there is no hotspot for these Celtic haplotypes in Cornwall when the Cornish people are supposed to have descended from the Celts just as much as the Scotts, the Irish and the Welsh.
Perhaps it doesn't mean Celtic after all or perhaps these haplotypes just refer to a subset of the Celts
http://www.geocities.ws/reginheim/celts.gif
"Celtic" is primarily a linguistic term. Once upon a time, "the Celts" were speakers of any of the Celtic languages. Those languages (and the ethnic groups speaking them) did not originate in the British Isles. They arrived there in several different waves of migration (from different continental "homelands" in Western Europe), imposing their languages the earlier populations of Britain and Ireland, and of course partly absorbing their genetic traits. Before the Roman conquests, most Celts lived in Gaul, northern Italy, the Alpine region, and Central Europe.
This is going to ruin the "would you like a little Irish in you" joke
Larry,
You are very secretive about your ancestry for some reason. All I know is that you don't talk about it and your last name is not your real name. It was changed. There must be a reason why you are uncomfortable to reveal your true ancestry. I wonder why?
I would so love to know what you are trying to insinuate here. Could you be a bit more forthcoming?
Why? I'm not insinuating anything here. If Larry is not comfortable with his father's side of ancestry, so be it.
90% of Australians probably are.
Just because most of them are descendants of the British criminals sent there, it doesn't make them criminals does it? Violence is not genetic is it Hirschman?
Why? I'm not insinuating anything here.
Of course you aren't. And it's Hirschmann. Or used to be.
@liesforthedevil,
Anyone who is interested can look up my family tree on Ancestry.com. It's public and it's called KDRM Canada.
My father was Laurence Victor ('Vic") Kirsch, a fighter pilot in World War II who was killed in a plane crash while ferrying lend lease planes back to the USA in September 1946. I was 4 months old.
My mother remarried a man named Moran and I was adopted.
I didn't talk about this very much out of respect for my mother but she died a few months ago.
Why did you think it was important to bring this up here?
Here's a partial list of posts about my ancestors.
Sleepy Hollow
Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages
My New York Ancestors
The Hanging of Goodwife Knapp in 1653
Emma Hale Is My (Distant) Cousin
Bouillon
Losing Charlemagne
Cousin Lucy
Daniel Belden and the Deerfield Massacre
My Connection to Geoffrey Chaucer and Medieval Science
I'm Related to a Philosopher! Edwin Proctor Robins (1872-1899)
The Burghers of Calais at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Why did you think it was important to bring this up here?
I didn't think it was important to bring your father's ancestry up here. I was just curious why you brought up your wife's and not yours. I'm a curious person. It's my nature.
I thought it may have been or still is a sensitive issue for you.
No kid I know would have loved to be raised without their real father, that's why some kids are not told the truth at all or just when they are old enough to handle it.
I didn't think it was important to bring your father's ancestry up here.
Really? Why did you mention Australians?
I was just curious why you brought up your wife's and not yours. I'm a curious person. It's my nature.
Why did you ignore all of my posts about my own ancestors?
You are a liar. You and I know full well why you brought up my father.
Say "goodbye" liesforthedevil.
This puts my mind at ease. Ancestry.com defined me as 42% Irish , 37% British 13% Scandinavian with the rest as Slav, West European and Iberian.
Irish? I am of Welsh, Scots and Manx descent with a wee bit of English thrown in. There is no sign of Irish lineage at all in my family tree.
I thought Ancestry had messed up the analysis especially as Family Tree DNA who also did an analysis for me provided me with a "heat map" showing the closest matches for my DNA in the British Isles as to be found in Southern Scotland, Cumbria, Lancashire and North-East Wales. [ But not Ireland!]
Now that I realise that Ancestry has redefined "Irishness" to include all the Celtic regions it makes sense. The old folk were right - we Celts really are of one stock!
By "British" I suppose they mean English? A little disappointing to discover there is so much Saxon in me - but we can't have everything!
Delighted to find this blog as I have, this morning, just received my Ancestry DNA results and have been identified as 29% Irish even though I haven't found a single Irish ancestor going back over 200 years. Certainly have some Yorkshire ancestry (a paternal GGF) but the majority are from south / south east and south western England which might explain my 48% European West result I guess. Surprisingly despite thinking I was pretty English I only have 7% United Kingdom.
I believe Ancestry DNA should reclassify "Irish" as "Celtic" in order to avoid all this confusion. I had the same problem with a 29% Irish result. Surely the western migration of the Celts classifies the DNA group, not the occupants of their westernmost destination.
Spot on Sandwalk. My fig dont make sense.. 39% Irish , 55% Western Europe . 3% Brit , 3% Something else. Traced my male line back to the 1700's all from Wales.
Question, hope someone can help!
My family have always believed that my great grandfather was Irish. My Ancestry DNA shows that I am 93℅ Britain, 4℅ Eastern Europe, 3℅ Western Europe, so no mention of Ireland. Is it possible that my great grandfather's Irish-ness has not been passed onto my DNA or was our belief unfounded?
The Scottish are descended from the Irish. The Picts in northern Scotland are their own people, not Irish. You can go further back to the firbolgs, which are a part of the Celts. My ground mother is from Scotland, my other grandmother is an O Driscoll. My grandfather is from Wales ( Morgan) and the other grandfather is from Alsace-Lorraine. 99.6 Western European, 60.6 British Irish. 23 and me?
I am glad to read this post. I had the same issue. I agree with the conclusion. Ancestry.com is erroneously designating Scots as Irish. They should really be saying Celtic. Irish specifically refers to someone from the island of Ireland, not the genetic group of Celts which are spread over Scotland, N England, Wales etc.
They need to re-define their categories to make sense, otherwise they are misleading people.
I agree.
I'm about to do an ancestry DNA test. It'll be interesting to see what it says because my research shows that i'm 50/50 Scots/Irish but I can only trace some of my Scottish roots to the mid 19th century. I suspect based on the names Fanning and McEnearney that half of those Scottish roots are actually Irish. But if ancestry dna doesn't distinguish, I may not get my answer.
Does ancestry ever say than anybody is *any* percentage "Scottish"? If Ancestry doesn't even do that, then all we have to go by is family trees. Being further labeled as Irish is just about as effective as being labeled "white" and being called "Caucasian".
I had my Ancestry DNA back yesterday and I was disappointed to see my highest % was Irish, only for the fact that I, family & ancestors were born in Cornwall.
So thank you for this
If you upload your raw DNA results to GED Match.com (its free) they will give you a deeper analysis , I have just dome this.
Their definition of "British" means ancestral Britains, which are the pre-Anglo Saxon and pre-Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles, and these people were closely related to Iberian Peninsula. The Stonehenge people
I know my ancestors were Irish, Scottish,Manx and English.At first glance I thaught I was 48% Irish.l am disappointed it's not broken down more.
How do you upload it to GED match?
Celtic is a linguistic term, not a genetic one which is why Ancestry.com did not use it. By using the term Irish, Ancestry.com was indicating how genetically similar the participants were to the people of Ireland.
Thank you for this informative post. I am one of those who was rather surprised by the percentage of Irish ancestry. I chalked it up to my English ancestors once I saw how "Ireland" was identified on the map.
The LivingDNA test is the OPPOSITE. I know that I am solidly 25% Irish descent because my paternal grandfather was ENTIRELY Republic of Ireland Irish. Yet Living DNA gave me 3.9%. Now I know that you inherit varying amounts from each family member.....but REALLY ??? One girl online who states she is entirely Irish only got a 20% score with Living DNA !!!
On my Ancestry.com test, I was 42% Irish !!! - which is TOO high I think. My mother got an even HIGHER score for Irish, and she's not the one with the Irish father -her mother/my maternal grandmother is from England (her mother is about 7/8 English and 1/8 Welsh) and her father/my maternal grandfather is at least half English with a small amount of German and an even smaller amount of Welsh and a VERY VERY tiny, tiny bit of Ulster Scot. That would be a gigantic coincidence for her to have inherited half of her DNA from that ONE Scottish ancestor.
So according to one test, I'm 42% Irish and according to another, I'm 3.9% Irish.
Maybe I should take an average; that would make me about 23% Irish. That sounds about right, :).
What bothers me though, is now I'm questioning all of the other scores for parts of the UK/Germany/Northern Europe/Scottish/Scandinavian that these DNA companies gave me.
There is a wonderful ancestry.com commercial where a pleasant middle-aged woman says she always thought she was "hispanic", but now she finds from her DNA results that she isn't Hispanic but instead is "from all over". I was in Mexico talking to evolutionary geneticists there, and mentioned this and they roared with laughter. The woman was probably Mexican-American and when Mexicans are tested the same way would get the same result, a mixture of Native American and European, with a smaller fraction of African. But she was so excited to be something other than Mexican, even though the test was just giving the results expected for a Mexican.
My MacLellan family showed up very Irish, yet we know we have Scottish roots from the Highlandds. It's indisputable. I just assumed whatever out Scottish roots our DNA had more in common with Ireland. The funny thing is, in terms of genetic community - we all were connected to Nova Scotia and Highland Scots despite showing up Irish. I may take 23and me and other tests to see what maybe they have to say about my Irishs/Scottish DNA. Though, the problem with 23andme and is they don't separate British and Irish.
I like the commercial where another women is surprised to discover that she's 26% native American. How could she not know that one of her grandparents was 100% native American? (Or several great-grandparents?)
How could she not know that one of her grandparents was 100% native American? (Or several great-grandparents?)
I lived in Oklahoma for a while. There, native Americans were consigned to lousy farmland that later turned out to be sitting on top of oil. So there has been a constant claiming of native heritage by non-natives for about a century, leading to lots of litigation to get ancestry sorted out. I could see how people in this sort of atmosphere over decades could get a little confused (were great-grandpa and great-grandma really natives, or were they saying that to try to get their hands on oil money?).
They need to rename it either: Celtic; Brythonic & Irish; or Insular Celtic.
Let's be honest this is a cynical business decision by ancestry.com. Their main market is the USA and they are trying to tell american customers what they want to hear that they are 'irish'.
My father's came back as 15% irish although we have no irish ancestors at all. Indeed the heat map corresponded, as expected, to the English midlands but somehow that means he's 'irish'. All thats being picked up is the base celtic genes.
23and me coming from a more medical background is more honest and accurate and puts british and irish together.
Actually you will find that originally the people referred to as Scots WERE in Ireland. At a certain point they migrated to Scotland. I believe what they are referring to as "Irish" is actually Celtic.
The 3 types would be Celtic or Irish, Norman or French and (Anglo) Saxon which is Germanic. You could originate from the British Isles but show any of those 3 DNA and it would be correct.
Now I'm really confused. What is a haplotype and how is it there are many in southern Scotland? What is a haplogroup? My haplogroup doesn't tell me if I'm Celtic, Scottish or Irish. I agree with Little Me.
Exactly! I know my mother's ancestry because my grandmother wrote everything down . My ancestry came back as mostly French an German. Under that British and Irish under that Scandinavian. Here is the kicker ...yesterday they added Japanese ...umm.I think I was taken . I would never recommend23 and me
To be fair quite a lot of Scottish family's came from other countries such as France where Gordon came from .
Any genetic contribution from Norman/French families was diluted out in ten generations. It won't show up in modern Scots even if their surname is derived from a Norman family (e.g. St. Claire --> Sinclair).
@Larry: How so "diluted out"? If 20% of the ancestry of a population were from Normandy, the gene frequencies in that population basically move 20% of the way toward the Norman ones. Then in subsequent generations the association of those genes with each other gets lost (everyone gets likely to have 20% Norman genes, and there are fewer and fewer people who have noticably more Norman genes).
But the percentage of Normanness in individual copies of the genes remains about 20%, and does not go down to zero.
@Joe
As far as I know, the major Norman families established their estates in Scotland between 1066 and 1200. There were probably about 1000 individuals. After that, they interbred with the native population. I don't think there was much gene flow from France or Normandy after the Middle Ages.
I can trace my genealogy to ten different Norman families but the lineages have been entirely Scottish for the past 600 years (~20 generations).
It seems to me that most French alleles will have disappeared by that time although some may have increased in frequency. Am I missing something?
@Larry: 1000 Normans wouldn't be a large fraction of the population in the first place (as dominant as they might be in terms of power). That power might somewhat amplify their gene frequency, by ensuring that they had a more than average number of offspring. In subsequent generations the alleles descended from those Norman individuals would get spread around and no longer be packaged in the same individuals -- there would be a lot of people who were a little bit Norman. There would be random genetic drift, with some Norman copies ending up with no descendants in that population, and others with higher-than-expected numbers of copies. But the average number of descendants would not go to zero, it would stay about constant. Just because they are at low frequency they don't get diluted out. Consider a population that starts with 50:50 contributions from two populations. Which gets "diluted out"?
Now I understand where you're coming from. You are referring to the population - Scots would still have about 1% Norman/French alleles in the population.
I was talking about individuals who have their DNA tested in 2017. Even if they descend from an old Norman family it's unlikely that this will show up as recognizable haplotypes after 30 generations. Right?
It's possible that 1% of their alleles come from Norman/French families but that's far less than the 100% of the first children born to Norman nobility in Scotland.
Since people with Norman names are still wealthier than other Britons, perhaps they (or the men anyway) had more offspring than average for lots of generations?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8424904/People-with-Norman-names-wealthier-than-other-Britons.html
@Larry: Rereading your question, I see that it refers to descendants of Normans, not just the general population. In descendants of the original Normans, the fraction of their descendants' genes that are from the original Normans will drop, as locals marry the descendants. So in that sense you are quite right. Ultimately everyone becomes a descendant of the original Normans, and the fraction of these descendants' genes that are from the Normans settles down to a lowish fraction.
I think you'll find that the majority people in Scotland had ancestors who came from Ireland over hundreds if not 1000+ years. Check your history.
I have 3% Iberian and 1% Western Europe. I can't find any Spanish/European sounding name in my family tree, but I'm not going to dispute it:)
Irish DNA doesn't change to Scottish DNA just because of where you're living. Irish DNA will undoubtedly be in Scotland going back millennia. This won't be surprise to anyone from Scotland or Ulster.
41% Ireland; 48% Europe West; 8% Great Britain; 1% nothing really. The 41% Ireland is from my Scottish ancestry and that sounds right and my DNA map had most of Scotland lit up with big orange dots. The 48% North West Europe does not make sense because it contradicts the high level of Ireland/Celtic DNA and the low level of Great British DNA. Generally the higher the level of Ireland or Celtic DNA, the lower the level of North West European DNA and the higher the level Of Great British DNA the higher the level of North West European DNA because that is referring to the Anglo Saxon and Normans, who had more influence on the area covered by GB DNA. Confused.
Professor Moran,
Thank you for your blog!
I hope you are well and enjoy your retirement...
I read this blog with some interest..personally i would not use Ancestry other than a bit of fun.. start with a ydna test with FTdna.com then do a snp test ..BigY... this will give you solid biology to work with. This only tests male line Ydna which is fairly constant across the years.. it is the slow mutations that give you an individual fingerprint.
Scotland's indigineous population was the picts now less than 10% of the population. the scots from Ireland invaded in 350AD. Normans about 11C.. in between the Angles from Northumbria in the lowlands.
Hi Larry; I don't follow the argument here - first, you wouldn't need anyone born in Ireland in the last 5 generations to have 29% Irish DNA (if you go back to before the Norman invasion of Ireland you'd have over 1 million ancestors - so the most recent 32 don't count for much). Second, the description you used can't be how they decide your DNA is Irish - that's simply a description of Ireland. At 23andme they use, basically, a clustering method - checking to see how much in common different populations have. If they give you '29%', that means that 29% of your DNA has enough in common with a population based in Ireland to count as being genetically related to them. Finally, changing Ireland for 'Celtic' would be pointless, since that's a broader population. Given the genetic information available, they can distinguish between subgroups of Celts (they can distinguish Irish and Welsh).
You are missing the point. When you have no direct ancestors from Ireland for more than five generations, it’s very misleading for Ancestry.com to say that you are mostly Irish according to your DNA. I know that many of the common haplotyes in Scotland overlap with those in Ireland but that doesn’t mean they all originated in Ireland. They have higher frequencies in Ireland because they weren’t diluted as much as in Scotland.
Could this be happening the other way around as well? Maybe you can help me to understand. My results were mostly Scottish/Wales but I know we have Irish ancestors but there was a very small percentage that just "included" Ireland with other countries.
@Laurence and Just curious. I too find my ancestry results perplexing, though I have the reverse situation. I have five sets of gr granparents immigrating directly from Ireland. I am not adopted and all my first cousins show up as first cousins. My father’s grandparents were all immigrants from Galway/donegal area of Ireland yet my dna results say 91 % England Scotland and just 3% Irish. If my father showed over 85% Irish, how can this be. Did I Only get his 15% non Irish genes. If so why do my Mostly Irish first cousins show as so genetically close to me?
I had my DNA test done by My Heritage. They group Irish, Welsh and Scottish together as one combined percentage of my DNA ethnicity. I have 0% English. My conclusion is that the three groups share DNA to the point of being a single "ethnic group". I can trace ancestors to all three. I was surprised to have 0% English but in tracing my "British lines" way back, I found they originated in Normandy, Scandinavia, and other places not considered English. Based on my own DNA, I would say Scots, Welsh and Irish may be British subjects, but they have different DNA and aren't English.
Fact is that the Scottish have a large percentage of Irish DNA from the original migrations from Ireland (called Scotia by Romans) while Celtic only refers to a language group.
The Scottish came from Ireland to Scotland, and became the main populace mixed with various over the years. But the Scots are from Ireland if you read the history all the way back. 😁
The people pf Scotland have mixed ancestry dating back several thousand years. Beginning in about 400 AD, some people (Scots) migrated to Western Scotland from Northern Ireland. It's not clear how many settled in Scotland but it was certainly fewer than the people (mostly Picts) who already lived there.
But that's not the point. The point is that the ancestors of my wife and I lived in Scotland for more than 1000 years. It's silly to refer to them as "Irish."
Current ethnicity estimates on Ancestry.com no longer have a category called "Irish." It has changed to "Ireland and Scotland" and they've changed "Scandinavia" to "Norway" which is a much more accurate description of the Norwegian contribution to Scottish ancestors.
Actually, all of us are "African" and that settles that. But these ancestry tests compare our genes to those of mixtures of present-day populations of various countries. So the fact people in Scotland themselves had some ancestry in other places such as Ireland should not cause them to be labeled Irish. My ancestry is part English, but I do not get told by the tests about the earlier invasion of England by the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Jutes, nor about where they in turn came from. Why the tests are following back further in the case of Scotland I don't know.
Great point, well made. I dont understand how a lot of these DNA testing companies can come up with results like you are 50% Irish or 60% British. What is the name of these distinctive genes that say you are Irish, British etc. There is definititely no defining gene for Britishness. Considering the UK is made up of very diverse ethnicities like Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Scandinavians. For example they all have their own distinct Y Chromosone haplogroup too. Genetic identity is never simple. So I dont know how these companies can make such definitive statements.
I'm black...very lightskinned but black. I traced my ancestry through records before getting a dna test. The results of my search was unbelievable. I managed to get about as far i could go on my grandfathers' line(dark skin men) that petered off around slavery where I found no more. My grandmothers' lines(both passing for white) was another story. My maternal grandmother i traced back to the 1400s of the Earls of Cunningham in Scotland and paternal grandmother to Ireland. When both grandmas thought they were English. Surprisingly tho I didn't expect much caucasian blood bc all 4 grandparents are black with the ladies having at least 1 mixed parent. Nobody in my family believed my research so i took a test to prove it. I also expected Nigeria like most African Americans and supposedly full native Americans in the mix...turned out i only had 1% native American meaning we had to have a bunch of half black half white liars escaping slavery(i would too tbh slavery sucked) my conclusion for biracial "native Americans" was I have 13% Irish and Scottish 9%English and wales(my 3rd maternal great grandfather was half English(father) and irish Scottish mother and my great great paternal grandfather was Irish with a little Quaker which explained the 2% "Germanic Europe" dna. Also 1%of Norway...i have more Germanic Europe than native American...smh lol. 17% Benin and Togo which explains the family legends of voodoo queens and kings in our blood. 40% Congo lol blew my mind. 7% Mali 5%Nigeria 5% Ivory coast and Ghana. If you do the math I'm 25% white which I didn't expect since its not recent generations. 1% native American and 74% black. My husband has been told that he is 100% irish but no one is 100% anything but my 25% white explains why our kids look ahem more like their father than me...people confuse me for mixed 50/50 all the time. My one kid just looks Italian and my other has subtle African features with a leaning my way nose and lips and hair texture but has blonde hair and blue eyes like dad(didn't see that coming). Im glad though to FINALLY know for sure and this explains my obsession with Ireland and Scotland(seen brave a million times with princess and the frog since my paternal grandfather is from new Orleans) and my mother gave me an Irish name(i confuse the hell outta people when I show up...i show my id card alot since my name isn't lafaunda Jackson (married white guy remember hahaha) it was so fun to tell my paternal grandmother her grandfather was Irish bc she didn't know she always thought he was English.
Yeah that came on my dna test. My 3rd ethnicity was 13% Irish and Scottish and 1% Norway. 9%English and wales was my third. My 1st two were 40% Congolese and 17% Benin and togo.
The term Scot or Scotti was used by the Romans circa 1500 years ago to refer to the Irish. Scot or Scotti literally meant Irish. Lot of laughs for those opposed to being considered Irish, but Scotland's name in its earliest translation would mean land of the Irish. I think 1/2 a millenial of conflict between Britain and the Irish, coupled with sectarinism has left an undue negative connotation toward the Irish. And tyhe British wrote our history and controlled for ages media on this.
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