Have you explored the new SideView feature at AncestryDNA? Now, in addition to reporting a DNA test taker’s biogeographic origins (Ancestry calls this ‘Ethnicity Estimate’), the DNA Story page now offers a ‘view breakdown’ option to see ‘Your regions inherited from each parent’. Here is mine.
Do I think mine are accurate? Let’s dive in. My results are fairly easy to analyze because my grandparents’ DNA is so distinct.
Parent 1 is clearly my mom. Her mom was 100% Irish (Grandma’s grandparents emigrated to the US between 1840-1855). Mom’s dad was 100% what is now the UK (his ancestors emigrated to the US before 1800, and may include some Scotch-Irish).
Note that my parents have not tested. I can’t double my Mom’s results and say that if I’m 41% Irish from Parent 1, then Parent 1 was 82% Irish. The 50% of my DNA that I got from Mom might be, say, 30% from Grandma (who’s Irish) and just 20% from Grandpa (who’s mostly not). That could skew my Irish results higher. Or … it’s also possible that more of Grandpa was Scotch-Irish than I expect. (I guess I need to do more research on those 1700’s ancestral lines!) So far, Ancestry’s predictions are not unreasonable.
Parent 2 is clearly my dad. His dad was 100% Irish (Granddad’s father and maternal grandparents emigrated from Ireland between 1840 and 1885). Dad’s mom was 50% German (half of those are from Bavaria, I think, and half actually from Alsace; they all came to the US between 1825 and 1850). Nana’s other 50% came from what is now the UK, but includes a smidge of Dutch. Here, again, with my 31% Irish from Parent 2 and 19% England and Northwestern Europe, it could be that my 50% from Dad was 31% from Grandad (who’s all Irish) and 19% from Nana (who’s not).
Again, these results are not unreasonable. Of course, AncestryDNA doesn’t accurately distinguish my German roots from more generic Northwestern Europe, but that’s okay. German biogeographic origins, with their ever changing borders, can be challenging!
Do take a look at the Ancestry’s online article on ‘Ethnicity Inheritance’, which explains in more colorful details about the impact random inheritance has on your results.
It will be *very* interesting to see what Ancestry does next, to perhaps tie this analysis in with genetic communities and even our matches.
Now … off to explore the updated reports on my other family members who tested!
© April 2022, Ann Raymont, CG®
DNAsleuth 
My results, as expected, were boring. My ancestors all came from what is now Poland. Parent 1 is my dad, whose ancestry included Baltic tribes. Now my grand-kids’ results, on the other hand, are quite a mix, and will take some time to figure out. I am looking forward to it!
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My BGOs (we surely can’t keep saying “biogeographic origins” longform in the land of the initialized abbreviation) are even more distinct for my parents as they came from completely different places. So it was easy to attribute my BGOs to each of my parents and unsurprisingly they were 100% correct on that. The BGO estimates themselves are actually worse, with even more “Scottish”. It’s actually 6% Scottish and 19% Cornish, but they don’t have a Cornish panel. Their Communities get it right with a Cornish one for me, but they have not woken up to needing a panel. There is quite an extensive Cornish diaspora who went all over and consequently are heavy testers of their DNA.
Meanwhile MyHeritage has a panel for Croatia that gives me a hit. For me it’s a proxy for my people who did not go so far south but remained around Berlin to Leipzig and into western Poland. But I view with envious side side looks people in USA who have Polish communities. Signs are that I have at least two other Slavic and two Polish German BGOs.
Maybe next year.
I agree Ann: the phasing software itself should allow a variety of useful possibilities to better identify family. I remain hopeful there too.
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