Why are my "Continental" European admixtures always so high?

[leo76]

Long story short: I have no idea why my Continental European regional admixtures keep coming up so high across various tests. The British Isles admixtures should be MUCH higher.

Judging by surname, virtually ALL of my ancestors for the past ~7 generations were British. I do have at least two lines of French ancestors (one line comes from Southern France), but those ancestors left France in the early 1700s (they were Huguenots) and intermarried from then on with British people; that was 250+ years ago. Apart from that, EVERYBODY in my pedigree was British.

But to look at my regional admixture results across various tests, it seems something is amiss.

FamilyTree DNA (MyOrigins) puts me at 40% West and Central Europe, and only 50% British Isles.

Geno 2.0 NG has me at 55% Western and Central Europe, and only 24% Great Britain and Ireland. (And of course a grossly inflated 20% Scandinavian.)

The various Eurogenes tools, even though they lack a specific "Continental" European category, also indicate that about ~30% to ~50% of my DNA is probably non-British (Baltic, North Sea, etc, as opposed to North Atlantic).

Even DNA.Land, I think the most accurate of them all in this regard, gives me an 11% Southern Europe signal.

Question is, where the hell is all this coming from? There's no way that two ancestors 7+ generations back are giving me ~40% of my regionally variable genome...is there? My wife, whose European ancestry is similar to mine, comes back 90%+ British on FTDNA.

Thoughts??

Thanks.

[greerpalmer]

Where in England do your roots originate? Your "British" is likely more influenced by Anglo-Saxon, Frank and other continental migrations. The fact is the British are very admixed people and most services struggle to separate out modern Germanic DNA from older Germanic DNA. Also, having some French may sway your Germanic-like British results toward continental.

I wouldn't get too worked up about it. I have two FTDNA tests done, one shows 80% British Isles, one shows 40% British Isles. Based on my paper trail about about 60%.

[Dorsetshireman]

That's very normal. I'm about 85% or so British Isles descent, the vast majority of which is English, but I only score 41% British and Irish on 23andme. 45% English and 0% Scottish, Welsh or Irish on MyHeritage. FTDNA is a little higher, at 66% British Isles. I also often get the wildly inflated Scandinavian, sometimes as much as ten times my recent admixture from that population. Northern Europeans are just hard to tell apart, and the English are pretty mixed as northern European populations go.