Why am I showing so much Italian ancestry?

[euromutt]

I’ve done a ton of research on my family tree and I’ve gone back a considerable amount of generations. On my mothers side back to mid-1800s at minimum, on my fathers side back to 1890s before I hit a brick wall. Here’s what I know:

Assumed ancestry
Italian: 50% (fathers side)
French: 37.5% (mother’s side)
English: 12.5% (mother’s side)

My Ancestry DNA results:
Europe South: 47%
Europe West: 29%
Caucasus: 12%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales: 5%
Great Britain: 2%
Scandinavian: 2%
Iberian Peninsula: 2%
Middle East: 1%

Just for reference I’ve also run my raw dna through my heritage, FTDNA, and dna.land.
Dna.land gave me about the same as my assumed ancestry.

FTDNA gave me fairly high for what I’m assuming is the Italian ( southeast europe: 17% and Middle East:28%) also 9% east europe (no idea where that much is from)

My heritage gave me 65.2% south Europe and 11% west Asian. Also assuming those are for the Italian ancestry.

Why such high amounts for the presumably 50% Italian I should have?
I seemed to register far less French or English (or similar) dna than I would anticipate

Can anyone help me understand this better?

[greerpalmer]

Your Europe South is likely reflecting some of your mother's DNA as well. If you had 1 Italian parent I would guess your Europe South, Caucasus, Iberian and Middle East would be coming from them--in your instance that represents 62% so if you're mother is predominately French, its not uncommon she too would have Iberian and Italian ancestry. Also, the English and French could be interpreted interchangeably.

I have no known ancestry from Italy; rather, I'm about 30-40% German/Luxembourgian/French/Swiss and I receive 10% Europe South, 1% Iberian and 1% Caucasus

[euromutt]

If the England and France are possibly showing interchangeably that would account for the super tiny percentage Ancestry is giving me for Great Britain.

Have you (or anyone reading this) found one testing company to be more accurate than the others? Granted my raw DNA is from Ancestry so I imagine it’s still skewed a bit. The high amount of Middle East/Caucasus/West Asian made my high Italian areas always throw me for a loop considering I’d always expected more Northeast Europe, but the French also showing as Iberian makes sense too, I should’ve thought of that.

[msmarjoribanks]

The testing companies are widely variable in how accurate they are from person to person.

Mine vary from Ancestry: 42% Europe West; 28% Scandinavian; 19% Ireland, etc. (rest trace Iberian, Southern Europe); 4% Great Britain (in the low confidence region) to FTDNA: 83% British Isles; 14% Eastern Europe (rest trace Central Asia/Asia Minor).

So as you can see it's pretty all over the place. My most accurate results are probably MyHeritage, but I don't think they are a more accurate test, their guesses or algorithm just happened to fit my known ancestry better: 55% English, 17% Irish, etc., 12% N & W Europe, 7.5% Scandinavian (trace others).

I am unaware of any Eastern Europe at all, but figure it's just how things get split up that for someone mixed 83/14 British Isles/EE could look like 70-75% British Isles, and various German and Scandinavian inputs, among others.

I don't think the percentages of various European groups which are all mixed up and look pretty similar are going to be all that accurate. You need to add the paper evidence.

[greerpalmer]

Have you (or anyone reading this) found one testing company to be more accurate than the others?

Unfortunately, all of the major testing companies are good at identifying certain groups, and bad at others. LivingDNA is my favorite because of the detail it gives, but it fails to identify any German. Ancestry is an overall great estimate, but gives me 33% Scandinavian where just about every other test places me in between 0-5%. FamilyTreeDNA shows only my known ethnicities of origins, but does so inconsistently in two different tests making me almost all English and one, and 50/50 English German in another. 23andMe provides seemingly accurate groups, but is very vague/conservative at specifying groups. I could go on, but unfortunately, there is no good answer. If your parents are still around I would highly recommend testing them.

[JerryS.]

try Dodecad V3 and MDLP K23b mixed mode populations groups (regular oracle) to see what they show.

[euromutt]

try Dodecad V3 and MDLP K23b mixed mode populations groups (regular oracle) to see what they show.

Both seem super off.

MDLP 23b

1. 70% French 30% Jew_Tat. 1.3
2. 66.2% French 33.8% Assyrian Iraqi 1.33
3. 66.9% French 33.1% Georgian Jew 1.37
4. 72.6% French 27.4% Assyrian Arzni 1.69
5. 59.1% Welsh 40.9% Greek Smyrna 1.98
6. 64.4% French 35.6% Turk Kayseri 2.02

Dodecad v3
1. 61.6% N. European 38.4% Cypriots 2.15
2. 57.7% Ashkenazi 42.3% CEU 2.35
3. 60.3% Ashkenazi 39.7% Orkney
4. 59.9% Ashkenazi 40.1% Orcadian
5. 59.6% Ashkenazi 40.4% Argyll

But perhaps I’m taking them too much at face value?

[euromutt]

Also my kit is A860277 if anyone cares to give it a look. Thank you in advanced!

[greerpalmer]

The Eurogenes K36 Taux de Similitude may be worth a gander. Looks like you peak in Southeast Switzerland, West Austria. Surprisingly, K36 gives you 1% French and 14% Iberian. What is your mother's known ancestry? How far back can you trace the lines?

[RobinBMc]

I'm not sure the AncestryDNA results are that far off. Iberian and Middle East are low enough to just be noise - so even if you add Europe South and Caucasus together, that's 59%, and therefore only overestimated by 9%, which isn't that much. Additionally, AncestryDNA actually provides a percentage range for each category. What are your ranges for Europe South and Caucasus? The ethnicity report is only an estimate and 9% off is well within a margin of error and I'd consider this fairly consistent with your known ancestry.

As for FTDNA and MyHeritage.... well, in my experience, both of those companies tend to produce less accurate ethnicity reports than AncestryDNA and 23andMe (but of course sometimes it depends on the individual).

My dad is half Italian as well and at AncestryDNA he gets 44% Europe South - that's only 6% off and I consider that fairly accurate. He also gets 4% Caucasus and 5% Middle East, but those could be noise and even if you add them in, that's 53%, still very close to accurate. Meanwhile at FTDNA, he only gets 8% in Southeast Europe - and even adding in the 22% Asia Minor and 2% East Middle East and 2% West Middle east, that's only 34%, which is way off from 50%. At MyHeritage, he gets 23.7% Italian and 46% Greek, totaling 69.7%, also way off.