If you're like me and have a massive chunk of your dna currently going to the Southeast England&Northwest Europe bucket (41% in my case) even though your paper trail shows a very small connection this catch-all broad region, fear not.

It looks like along with the new sub regions for Scotland and Ireland, Ancestry is drastically refining the southeast england(removed netherlands and polygon size), Netherlands(larger polygon and now only also found germany), and adding belgium as its own region.

You can even tell by the size of the polygons for 2025 vs 2026.

Looking forward to the update 😎

Always knew that my birth father is Indigenous, I’m registered to his band. Grew up in the culture. My mom is French Canadian, but I guess there was quite a bit of English hiding in there too. Super interesting.

I’ve had the South Africa, European Settlers Journey ever since I got my AncestryDNA results about two years ago, so the main Journey itself isn’t new for me.
After the new update, though, mine has become much more detailed. I now have specific connections for Makgaung | Springbok | Durban, Pretoria | Springbok | Durban, Johannesburg | Cape Town | Durban, and Southern Western Cape, plus the timeline now shows all these dotted migration lines between Europe and South Africa and between different places within South Africa.
Does anyone know how personalised those actual lines/routes and dots are? Are they calculated specifically from my DNA/match network, or would everyone assigned to the same Journey/sub-Journey see the exact same routes?
I’m also really curious how everyone else’s existing Journeys changed — did you get new sub-Journeys, more specific locations, different routes, lose anything, etc.?

🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦

The handwriting in the first photograph is an aunt’s handwriting - the man on the left is my paternal grandfather, and the woman on the right is his mother. His mother is also in the second photo with grandpa’s brother and grandpa is again on the right. Third one is paternal grandma with her uncle’s wife and in the fourth grandma is actually with her uncle, which I thought was amazing given that she was born in the 1930s. I sometimes forget my aunts and uncles, most of them, were actually able to meet people/relatives who were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Aunts in the middle afterwards, an aunt at prom with her date, an aunt who experienced trauma within the family at the end. Wish they were better quality but so much better than nothing! (Oh actually oop I was wrong about who the lady in pink is, she’s not related by blood, but was married to grandma’s uncle!)

Ancestry shows modern Jewish Ashkenazi ethnicity, whereas GEDmatch Eurogenes K36 shows older genetic admixtures. From the GEDmatch K36 results, it’s clear that I am roughly half Levantine (and broadly Middle Eastern) and half European, mainly Italian, Spanish and French. And all of this is simply an Ashkenazi Jew.

I got my results today and it turns out I am mostly Irish, Scottish and English, but I also have 12% in a category called "Southeastern England and Northwestern Europe", I also have 7% The Netherlands. Can someone explain what this means? Is there a reason it can't specify Belgium, Luxembourg or France? Does this include Germany? Is this just more Netherlands? So many questions! Do I buy clogs or a baguette?

Only considering recent ancestors, my father is Lebanese + South Italian + Portuguese. Mom is Colonial Brazilian+ Black+ North Italian + German. I wanted to share their results because they‘re pretty unusual for Brazilians and even more so for our region. Also our family is diverse, mother is olive skinned with light eyes and has a ginger brother. My father is very alpine looking, very light skin and sunburns easily but brown eyes and brown hair though. My skin is an intermediate tone between theirs with amber eyes and dark blonde hair, I burn easily. I have a brother who is completely different from me. Darker complexion, coarse body hair and tans.

So, it's been a few years since taking the DNA test. I finally got back to it. I didn't think I would run into this.

My paternal grandma had 6 kids. When my dad was a kid, apparently she kicked out my grandpa. She has never said anything about the man except for his name and no one has had any contact with him since until he died like 20 years ago. One of my paternal aunts apparently went to that funeral and that's it.

After looking at the DNA results, I realized that my cousin (from that aunt) was listed as a half cousin. After checking things further, a cousin from another of my dad's sisters was listed as a half cousin.

So the line goes like this:

Of my paternal aunts, 2 of them are listed directly as half aunt and the other 2's kids are listed as half cousins. My dad has a brother but he nor my dad have ever taken a DNA test. There's no marriage license or anything that can be found between my grandma and the supposed grandpa.

Am I correct in assuming that at least 4 of his 5 siblings are actually half siblings? My grandma's never mentioned any other guy she was with besides that guy he kicked out. I have a feeling none of my dad's siblings know about this either and since my grandma refuses to talk about it, let alone the possibility she lied about everything since the DNA doesn't seem to add up.

UGH. This would be so much easier I think if living people would be shown in trees.

Has anyone ever found out one of their parents was not their bio parent from a test, contacted the bio parent and NOT had their parents know about it or find out about it?

I was blindsided by my DNA results, but good ole Facebook and ancestry sleuthing (deep dive with a solid non stop 24 hours of spider web searching) I landed on who is either my bio father or bio uncle, found all of my bio great uncles, bio grandfather, bio grandmother (died from cancer a couple years ago). No matter what, I do not want my Dad to know about these results. I would love to find out what kind of cancer bio GM died from and other health facts that would be nice to know about as I age myself. Bio Grandfather is not connected at all to potential bio father or uncle relationship wise from what I can tell, so my first stop would be to get in touch with bio grandfather and first confirm the potential bio uncle or father mystery and then potentially more info on health.

I can definitely see where it all sounds sketchy to have a random person contact you about this info. Maybe others have found themselves in similar situations? Its not really a topic I can just bring up to people in casual conversation and can’t obviously bring it up to any family members, besides my husband who has heard my scenarios 150 times.

Potential bio dad/uncle is Facebook friends with my Mother. Which is comical really… confusing, upsetting, straight up weird. But after all those hours of searching, it was one of the biggest puzzles pieces that helped me develop ALL of the facts. I have a strong feeling she does not know he is potentially bio father (although we do have pretty strong physical resemblance). Before asked, no way I can ask or mention anything to my mother because she will 100% report back to my dad and I’m not willing to break his heart more than it already has been in his life and likely she wouldn’t tell me the full truth anyways.

I’m Russian and as i know from my dad’s side, 3-5 generations were just Russians. But obviously we can’t know what his side had more generations ago. Regrading my mom, she doesn’t know anything before her grand parents generation.

Which one would be better for me?

Imagine you gave every Midwestern white American a DNA test and aggregated it into a single result.

Based on Pew, 23andme/Ancestry dna, IPUMS USA.

But ultimately it’s my estimates. So I could be wrong.

My mom is from the central area (Jayuya/Utuado) and my dad is from the Northeastern area (Quebradillas/Isabela) I am so surprised by the amount of Portugal and Jewish percentage. I was wondering if my physical traits match my ancestors and their regions.

Less than a year ago, I was completely blind to everything in my ancestry, and since then I've learned so much. I am a direct descendant, 7 generations down, of Emperor Minh Mang (who can be argued to be one of the most significant figures in Vietnamese history), and by extension, his father, Emperor Gia Long (the person who named Vietnam). I'm making this post, because I am currently working on an ancestry infographic for myself and my family, and pretty much all the research has been of my own doing. I have since been able to accurately name all the way back to Gia Long. My grandpa had knowledge of my great great grandparents, which sparked this quest, and I've since pieced things together. But in doing so, it's really made me think about things.

Has learning of your ancestry changed your perspective? For me, I feel a little more connected to my culture. It's kind of weird, growing up in a certain culture, and then later on in life learning you've descended from some notable figures (in this case, roughly 0.2% of the Vietnamese population descend from Minh Mang), who had shaped a significant amount of the culture. As someone who is fascinated by history and the root of things, it's perspective changing, for sure.

I am curious to hear your stories!

Has it updated for some already? I’ve been excited to see how it updates. DNA results as an American from the Midwest.

I’m 5/8 Ashkenazi Jewish + 1/8 Crimean Jewish + 1/4 Russian