Using LivingDNA

Because my ethnicity is basically British and Irish, I thought it would be interesting to find out exactly where in these countries my ancestors came from.

Here are the top results for my parents, my brother and myself. I had to pay extra to get the results for my parents and brother as they hadn’t tested with LivingDNA, instead I uploaded their raw data from Ancestry instead.

Mum

  • North Yorkshire 15.5%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 14.9%
  • Cumbria 13.2%
  • Devon 11.6%
  • South Central England 10.7%
  • South East England 9.5%
  • South England 8.6%

Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Somerset (South Central England)

Kent, Sussex, Essex (South East England)

Hampshire, Dorset (South England)

Dad

  • Devon 29.8%
  • Ireland 24.8%
  • South Central England 11.9%
  • South England 11.5%
  • Northumbria 8%

The rest are 3% or lower including Orkney and Shetland Islands at 1.5%

Philip

  • South East England 20.6%
  • Ireland 17.2%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 15.1%
  • Central England 12.5%
  • North Yorkshire 9%
  • Northumbria 7.1%
  • South Central England 7%

But Devon only 1.8% and Orkney Shetland 1.7%

Sue

  • Devon 32.8%
  • Northern Ireland and SW Scotland 13.5%
  • Northwest England 12.8%
  • Ireland 6.3%
  • Lincolnshire 6.3%
  • Northumbria 6%

So looking at these results:

  • I got the Devon genes from dad while Philip got the Irish genes.
  • Philip got the North Yorkshire genes from mum while I got the Devon genes.
  • Interesting the difference one generation can make with all the movement in England and Ireland.

We also have shared matches now on LivingDNA.

Mum  274,  Dad 179,  Philip 218 ,  Sue 209

So another job for me to do is work out where these matches connect within our family. The LivingDNA website is gradually adding other useful tools and will be great once you can add to a tree and look at a chromosome browser to triangulate matches.

Readers: Have you uploaded your raw DNA to this website? It is especially useful if you have a lot of British heritage and have paid the fee to unlock the county ethnicity.

5 thoughts on “Using LivingDNA

  1. Hi Sue

    Yeah my ancestry results (60% England/Wales and 38% Irish/Scottish) are a white-wash :-).

    I was interested in LivingDNA as well particularly as it linked to a peer-reviewed academic study (as opposed to the commerical in-confidence methods of Ancestry et al) called the People of the British Isles (POBI) project https://peopleofthebritishisles.web.ox.ac.uk/population-genetics.

    My numbers for Living DNA are:
    Europe (North and West) 8.6%
    Great Britain and Ireland 91.4%

    The latter is broken down (percentages above 7%) into:
    Central England 29.1%
    Ireland 19.1%
    South Yorkshire 17.8%

    This matches my documented tree – using the 2nd gg as a proxy – where I know their origin (three of 16 origins are unknown):

    My paternal grandfathers lines are from Nottinghamshire and London.
    My paternal grandmothers lines are from Berkshire, Surrey and Northern Ireland.
    My maternal grandfathers lines are from Yorkshire, Ireland & Cumberland.
    My maternal grandmothers lines are from Yorkshire, Ireland & Hereford.

    Cheers

    Shane

    • Hi Shane,
      Now that I have the knowledge of where most of my great great grandparents were from, I might have to also do a quick post like you have in the comments here.

  2. Hi Sue
    This is great. I need more family to take part. I think to persuade them it will have to be at my expense and I am not sure whether to use Ancestry or FTDNA .
    My results at this site fitted so well with my tree. I am overwhelmingly West of Scotland and Ulster which is so correct back to 17th century. I have not yet got further that that with any paper trail.

    Cheers
    Marty

    • Hi Marty,
      I have asked many people to test for me; some have paid as they wanted to know the results, others I have paid for as they couldn’t be bothered with results – only how it helped me out. I tested all with Ancestry and then uploaded their results to FTDNA, MyHeritage and Gedmatch. I have also uploaded a few to LivingDNA.

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