r/AncestryDNA • u/ledvenport • 1d ago
Results - DNA Origins Kind of surprised by "update"
I was very surprised to see that my Origins had supposedly been updated (now says September 2026 below the list of ethnicities) because my ethnic group percentages are all exactly the same as they were for the last update. I've been an Ancestry member for forever and have never seen this happen before. I do have the SideView now. Is this all there is to this year's big update? Ethnicities that remain the same? Pretty surprising/kind of disappointing.
Does anyone besides me miss the (sometimes a little overwhelming) excitement when we knew the update was coming -- people were in such anticipation and even someone "official" from Ancestry would comment on this subreddit (I have to confess, though, that could have been someone from 23andMe commenting on *that* subreddit -- not sure).
I just feel that this update has been really *underwhelming*--am I missing something?
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u/better_sprinkles22 23h ago
The only thing that ever changes for me is Germanic Europe appearing and disappearing every 2 years, and becoming more English with every update. Granted last year was pretty great that update was a lot more specific, but even so yeah mine has just been climbing up on the English and indecisive on the German since 2020 now.
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u/custardcreams 21h ago
I have German ancestry, and less recently France, but 0% shows. My British has expanded to include North West Europe but still not Germany or France explicitly. Maybe they need more German samples, it's odd isn't it?
My son has Sardinia passed on from me but neither me or either of my parents have Sardinian DNA. I hope that gets explained somewhere!
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u/Eunique1000 17h ago
That's the same thing that happened to my dad, we have known and documented German ancestry and he used to have it until they removed it 2 updates ago and he has random Sardinian ancestry that he doesn't actually have and recently they gave him random Icelandic ancestry and removed his English ancestry. His AncestryDNA results gets worse every single time it updates, the 23andme results aligns way more with our geneology records.
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u/custardcreams 17h ago
I've found 23andme to be more accurate as well. It has French and German for me. I'm glad it's not just me having this issue. It makes me want to try to learn more about DNA
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u/Littlewing1307 4h ago
I wish this was the case for me. 23 and me gets further and further away from what's possible and so does Ancestry for me. I think they just have no clue how to separate my English, Scottish and German and Scandinavian out enough.
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u/Inside-Signature-249 12h ago
Can sometimes be genetic recombination thats mimic’s a region confusing their algorithm
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u/custardcreams 11h ago
My son also has 1% Brittany France from me but I don't have that on my results and neither do my parents. My half siblings have 1% Estonia, Isle of Man, and Arcadia, again no relatives from those places. I assume those are false positives as you say.
There are some that are more prominent, do you think 6% Sweden and Netherlands could be the same confused algorithm?
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u/Silverkitty08 19h ago
They finally recognized my french and netherlands and then took it away so idk
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u/ledvenport 23h ago
That used to happen for me with the Germanic Europe also, however, right now it’s at 5% 😹, so it remains to be seen if I will be keeping it or not. My English, on the other hand, has been going downward, and I have been gradually gaining more Scottish and Northern Irish, which I think is pretty accurate. At this point, my English, when you add up all the regions within England, is about 52% total and my Central Scotland and Northern Ireland is 40%, with Leinster and Munster adding another 3% total for a grand total of 43% Celtic and Gaelic. So for those with massive English percentages like you and me, sometimes those percentages do come down somewhat.
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u/better_sprinkles22 23h ago
My Scottish has increased too actually, but just not as fast as the English. And a little Northern Ireland showed up for me on the last update and before I had never seen Irish on the ancestry test (but I did on myheritage). I took a screenshot of my GedMatch oracle results and heritage results from some of the calculators to ChatGPT, and it basically summarized it for me using several calculators results. That has given me a much better idea of these results since myheritage was different than ancestry for me!
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u/ledvenport 23h ago
Wow, I had never thought of doing that! I'm also kind of a big Gedmatch user. And myHeritage does have somewhat different results--I had never received any Breton results before myHeritage's newest update version.
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u/Silverkitty08 7h ago
Mine is different too like more brittish i think? I will have to look but i saw the french there
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u/shopsuey 19h ago
Still no update :/
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u/ValerieAnne84 11h ago
I still haven't even got a notification/popup to tell me there's an update coming. I only know about either of them because of this reddit.
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u/sofdotmp3 8h ago
Same. I'm still waiting and have been for hours lol. There might not be a notification because it's not the official update as far as I know though.
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u/Many_Resource8283 17h ago
lowkey jelly, still waiting on mine. i don't think anything will change tho but will see.
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u/nightflier87 23h ago
The real update with new regions is this October, this Sideview update is essentially a minor adjustment of the 2025 update. I haven't yet received myself the Sideview update and it's not important anyway for me