Ethnicity Testing- Is it really worth it?

As agreed, ethnicity estimates are very hit and miss and generally not worth paying for a DNA test for ethnicity alone, except possibly where someone suspects that they have a non-European ancestor, as Peter mentioned early in this thread (post #2). On this theme, I have recently come across a result I think is worth reporting here (mentioned as part of a post on another thread).

My son's Australian partner recently tested with Ancestry to try and find relatives on her Scots father's side. Her mother, a 4th generation Australian with English/Scots/Irish ancestry, had already traced her family back and found an apparent Aboriginal ancestor who would have been a 5x great-grandmother of my son's partner. Her ethnicity came back with 1% Melanesia (Australia basically) which would be about right for a 5x g-grandparent (128 of them).

I know we need to take these ethnicity estimates with a pinch of salt, but I do find this interesting.

 

I think ethnicity tests can prove very useful - I didn't really have much of an idea about my Jewish ancestry before it popped up on the ethnicity portion of my Ancestry DNA test.

Once I considered that that could be true, and started a bit of digging, I came across evidence of anglicised surnames, and then about 6 generations of a tree created by other relatives and a LOT of DNA results.

Prior to the test (and some initial digging into my closest Scottish Ancestors who I have since discovered were Ulster Scots/Irish) - I thought my ancestry was purely English/Welsh/Scottish!

 

I had a test through Living DNA not to establish my ethnicity but more as a confirmation of my genealogy research. It however did not give any West Midlands where my grandmother was from so I assumed that before my paper trail ancestors came from other parts of England and Scotland. I also suspected the line that came from Ireland were from England. Ethnicity could be considered a form of racism. The advertisement here in Canada for Ancestry has been very unbelievable given what most of us know about inheritance of DNA.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by this statement, so would appreciate elaboration please.

 

Ancestry has a woman claiming she is 25 percent native american and does not know anything about it, a man claiming he is ethnically Scottish but brought up German with a very German first and last name and another man claims he is Scottish but finds out he has some Italian ethnicity (his son and grandchildren are not fond of haggis). There are more but I can't remember them all!! All in an effort to get people to take a DNA test.

All these people (if these are real) have probably not done any research or have a NPE

On the Canadian census ethnicity used to be asked in 1911 my grandfather had Irish ethnicity but on the 1940 National Registration he correctly had English (his grandmother was born in Ireland). His daughter , my mother had Scottish ethnicity on her 1940 National Registration form (all her ancestors that I have found were born in England except the one born in Ireland)

The Canadian census no longer asks ethnicity but my sons would need to answer German even though they are at most 25 per cent because it is determined by the father's father.