r/AncestryDNA

Pretty interesting! But what irritates me and my dad a little bit is “Western Ukraine”. His family is from Moldova, so not the actual country Republic of Moldova but the Romanian region. That’s why I am curious if we actually have some Ukrainian roots or it mixes up western Ukraine, Republic of Moldova and the Moldova region 🤔

Yeah, part 2 is here. After AncestryDNA wrongfully labeled me as 23% Eastern European Romani - while I believed I have Punjabi ancestry - and I have led countless arguments with prople who insisted I actually have Romani ancestry (as if there were no Indians in Europe, ever), had to explain I have extensive numbers of meaningful Hindu/Sikh matches and a consistent Punjabi/Haryanvi visual phenotype in my family, and lost my nerves a few times while doing so, I finally have a conclusion.

One of those people arguing with me sent me whitepapers written by AncestryDNA in years 2023 and 2025. They did it to support their own claim that Eastern European Roma is detected by AncestryDNA with 100% precision and therefor I must be Roma (yeah, because having 2nd and 3rd cousins from India and sharing 20-40 cM of DNA with them apparently means nothing at all according to those people).

2023:
https://archive.org/details/AncestryDNA-ethnicity2023whitepaper

2025:
https://archive.org/details/AncestryDNA-2025ancestralregionswhitepaper

Between those two revisions, I noticed AncestryDNA completely deleted any metrics of their confidence with Indian ancestry, and deleted their recall rates of Eastern European Roma. This observation further supports my theory that AncestryDNA has problem distinguishing between those two categories.

The root cause of what happened to me is (and this is only my hypothesis, that has very real foundations however):

Eastern European Roma (~95% precision, ~95% recall - based on the 2023 whitepaper) has ancestry originating between modern day Punjab, Rajasthan (possibly Haryana?), but AncestryDNA also attempts to distinguish them from modern day Northern Indians (but with shocking ~70% precision and ~70% recall - based on the 2023 whitepaper), which has a couple of problems:

- North India is too broad to confidently catch anything as specific as Punjab

- The claimed precision of 70% doesn’t help either

- They have only 925 samples for India, but India has 1.5 Billion people, and there is countless distinct groups within India

- Since Eastern European Roma have very geographically specific signal in their genome coming from Punjab or neighbouring locations (and precision and recall of ~95% - based on the 2023 whitepaper, and even 100% precision based on the 2025 whitepaper), AncestryDNA just confidently flags you as Eastern European Roma if you happen to have some of the same signature in your DNA - and I think that happens specifically because the category for modern Northern Indians is so immensely broad and uncertain in comparison to Eastern European Roma.

But since they also deleted any confidence metrics on their Indian ethnicity estimates, and at the same time the recall metrics for Eastern European Romani, it is reasonable to assume that AncestryDNA knew about the problem but decided not to disclose it.

TL;DR: AncestryDNA doesn’t publish their certainty with Indian ancestry anymore, which points to the possibility that the most accurate and confident reference they have for Punjab and neighbouring populations is Eastern European Roma, making it possible even for people born in India being classified as Eastern European Romani by AncestryDNA’s algorithms.

This didn’t happen only to me, but also 30+ of my matches (which are the ones I discovered so far in the ~10% of all of my matches that I manually checked).

Since majority of readers come from the US and Canada: Yes, we do have Indians in Europe. Yes, they are having kids. No, I am not 300 years old - Indians were certainly already here when my grandma was born - although in sparse numbers.

Hey everyone! Here’s some more context: My mother is Swabian, and my father is a Danube Swabian whose ancestors had been living in the Banat since around 1750. His ancestors originally came from Lorraine, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saarland.
I’m a bit puzzled by the 2% Slovenia and 1% Germans in Russia results.
I assume the Southeastern England component is probably connected to my Lorraine ancestry.

Hi, habe Vorfahren hauptsächlich in Mitteldeutschland, aber auch einen Zweig in Süddeutschland. All das sehe ich im Test mehr oder weniger bestätigt. Meine väterliche Linie kommt aus Pommern, aus der Nähe von Danzig. Auch das spiegelt sich genau in den Herkunftsregionen wider, wo Danzig bzw. Pommern erscheinen. Die skandinav. Treffer kann man evtl. auf die Kriege zurückführen, die es hier mehrfach gab. Ausreißer bleiben Mähren, das Baltikum u. die Bretagne. Aber mit ca. 1% ist das wahrscheinlich nur Hintergrundrauschen.

Just curious, this is my grandaunts test and I’m very eager to see her match list

I've made a browser extension called "Enhancer for Ancestry" that enhances how you view your AncestryDNA results (and your matches' too).

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enhancer-for-ancestry/pfdfpebnpacojfibpkkajkgclbneigbg

What it does:

• Cleaner regions: See your ethnicity regions in a much cleaner layout, grouped by macro-regions, with percentages and confidence ranges.
• More details: Click on any region to learn more about it, including where it’s mainly found and a map showing the area.
• Journeys/communities: See your Journeys in an easier-to-read format, including how strong your connection is and any sub-Journeys.
• Match list: See the Journeys your DNA matches belong to directly under their names.
• Better match pages: When viewing a DNA match, you get the same improved regions and Journeys layout, and you can see all of their Journeys, not just the ones you share. Note: If a match has chosen to only share regions they have in common with you, you’ll only be able to see the shared regions and Journeys.
• Download as an image: Easily save your regions and Journeys, or those of any of your matches, as a high-quality image.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, I’m definitely open to hearing them.

I guess it’s normal

Records show most of my family came from Switzerland, Slovakia, Italy and Greece in the late 19th century early 20th. Also we know who came based on word of mouth and don’t really need records. Also traced an ancestor who came to the US in the late 1600s who was Irish (no Irish dna). My Swiss side married in with some old stock Americans but looks like a small chunk of me.

First slide: Original results, second: Updated, third: journeys. My mother is full Norwegian, my paternal grandfather is full Québecois and my paternal grandmother English with French and some German ancestry. Not sure about the trace percentages. Or why they lump Southern England and Northern France together. Are the populations that similar genetically?

I hope everyone who owns an E-M81, E-V65, or U6 will participate. I want to find my relatives.

Percentages are the average ancestry into the inhabitants (including foreigners) of each territorial division. Sources are in the description.