AncestryDNA | Possible Relationships | Ancestry

hi everyone Krista Cohen here with another episode of the barefoot genealogist today we are talking about ancestry DNA and specifically we're going to talk about possible relationships that show up in the various categories that are displayed in your cousin matches now this is kind of a difficult topic to wrap your head around and I've tried to make it as simple as possible to explain I'm also going to provide you with some additional resources so that you can go out and read up on it and maybe learn a little bit more about it yourself so let's go ahead and dive in I've given you some of my own and DNA results to walk you through some of these possible relationships so that you can start to like I said wrap your head around what's possible but let's just first start with some basic principles about how DNA is is inherited and also how the relationship levels are assigned in ancestry DNA first relationships are estimated based on how much DNA you share with any given match so if you've taken the ancestry DNA test your DNA has been compared to more than a million people who are currently in our database and each time a new person takes the ancestry DNA test their DNA gets compared to you and if you share enough DNA that we think that there might be a genetically or a Jennea logically relevant relationship meaning something within the recent past then we will show you that match now there are averages for how much DNA you share at each relationship level but they are just averages okay and there's some things that will affect those averages we'll talk about that in just a minute the thing to understand is is that the further out a relationship is the more dramatic the range is around that particular average hopefully you'll understand that more here in just a few minutes now things that might affect the amount of DNA you share between yourself and a match one is random inheritance and we've talked about this before so there are a couple of videos on the ancestry YouTube channel on the ancestry DNA playlist that explain this but I'll just briefly explain to you that each of us gets 50% of our DNA from our father and 50% of our DNA from our mother but it is a random 50% what that means is that a sibling is not going to have the exact same DNA that we have they're also going to get 50% from them from your mother and 50% from your father but they might get a different 50% from each parent than you do multiply that by generations and now you can see how it is very possible that at a third cousin level you will have matches with whom you share or you will have cousins with whom you share no DNA to match okay so because you each inherit different things from your parents who inherited different things from their parents and so on by the time you hit a third cousin level it's possible that you share no DNA with a third cousin and each time you go up a cousin level that the amount of DNA that you share decreases decreases dramatically and so it's even more possible that you don't share any DNA with fourth cousins than it is with third cousins and it's even more possible that you don't share any DNA with fifth cousins than you do with fourth cousins and so on okay so that random inheritance is going to make a difference other things that might affect the amount of DNA you share with a match one is multiple relationships meaning if your grandparents were second cousins to one another which happens then you might share more DNA with your first cousins on that side of your family than you do with the first cousins on your other side of the family okay remember first cousins have common grandparents so you have put colonel grandparents and maternal grandparents if your paternal grandparents were second cousins to one another then the cousins on your paternal side of the family it's possible you'll share more DNA with them than you do with the cousins on the maternal side of your family where your grandparents have no relationship to each other outside of marriage okay so those kinds of relationships start to muddle up the family tree or muddled up that random inheritance of DNA a little bit another thing that might affect it is half relationships so if you have a half-sibling you're going to share significantly less DNA with that person than you do with a full sibling and as you have children and they have children and then you have grandchildren and they have grandchildren because of that original half relationship the amount of shared DNA between the subsequent generations is going to be about half of what it might be had you been full siblings now if you extrapolate that back into your own ancestor you can see that within just a couple of generations if you have and you know a great-great grandfather whose father was not the same person as all of the rest of his siblings that's going to cause and your relationships to look a little different than they might have they been full siblings okay now we'll look at some specific examples here in just a minute but these are just some principles I want you to start wrapping your head around another thing that I would encourage everyone to do and you'll see very quickly that I have done this I've taken my own advice is to test multiple family members and because it will help you look for patterns it will also help you establish some base data to work with and it's always best to work and this is true of genealogy as as well as genetic genealogy it's always best to work with known relationships before looking at or looking for those unknown relationships so you may have lists and lists and lists of cousin matches but if they're all fourth cousins or greater you may be struggling to figure out how to Connect how you connect with some of those people so testing you know siblings or parents or aunts and uncles or first cousins on both sides of your family that's going to help so that you can start to understand how you inherited DNA from different sides of your family so you can start to understand who matches other of your matches so that you can start to separate them into at least paternal and maternal now I recognize I say that with the sensitivity that there are some of you who take the DNA test specifically looking for biological family and so you don't have that opportunity or that luxury but the more of us who do know who our family history and you know who do have an understanding of our genetics get more people tested the more we're going to be able to help some of you so I still encourage that and encourage you to encourage others to test because of that now let's look at what the different relationship categories are on ancestry so these are my parents I've had both of my parents tested and they came up as my parents which is good news that doesn't always happen sometimes there are surprises but in my case my mother came up with my mother my father came up as my father now parents and children share 50% of their DNA remember you get 50% of your mother's DNA you get 50% of your father's DNA that's about 3,400 centimorgans now we're going to talk a little bit about Sinha Morgan's there is a new feature on ancestry that you may have noticed and we actually share with you that information so here is the match to my father if I clicked on his name it brings up this other screen and right over here there is the little eye for information next to that relationship information and if I click on that it pops up a box that tells me exactly how much DNA I share with him after our DNA has been run through some of the proprietary algorithms here at ancestry and so I should share about 3,400 centimorgans with my father and in fact I do I share 3388 centimorgan of DNA with my father okay so if you start thinking about that um that's going to help you're going to have to do some math but that's going to help you start to understand some of these relationships as we get down instead of these lower levels so anytime you want to know how much DNA you share with an individual click on their name it'll bring up the match page click on the little eye next to them out of the relationship information and it will bring up this little box that shows you the amount of shared DNA and those number of centimorgans is is what you're looking for okay so 3400 is half of the total number of centimorgans that we're looking at okay so if we come next to the next category on ancestry the next category is immediate family now I have four siblings and I have tested all four of my siblings now I didn't have to do that because both of my parents have been tested I didn't need to test myself for any of my siblings because we can't inherit anything they didn't give us right but I wanted to look at the data my siblings wanted to know their ethnicity mix and so that was the gift I gave them this year for birthdays was a DNA kit so that they could be tested and the deal was if they wanted to be tested to receive their ethnicity results I got to use their their tests and their match information in some of my teaching materials and so here you go so I've had all four of my siblings tested now full siblings that means siblings who have the same two parents full siblings share approximately 50% of their DNA now here is where random inheritance starts to come into play I could share more than 50% with any given sibling or I could share less than 50% with any giving given sibling it just depends on what we inherited from each parent and so you can see over here here is all four of my siblings listed out and this is the number of shared centimorgans that I have with each sibling and you can see sister and I share the least amount of DNA and my youngest brother and I share the most amount of DNA and that is all kind of surprising actually because a lot of times we tend to think about the way that we look or act or you know some of our physical characteristics as if that is is specifically connected to how much DNA we might share or not and that is not necessarily true my sister and I look a lot alike we sound almost identical and yet we share the least amount of DNA and the brother that I get along with the best that I have the most in common with as far as our likes and our dislikes and he and I do not share the most amount of DNA it's actually my youngest brother and so those things aren't necessarily connected and I sometimes hear some of you and talk about this or or write about this out on Facebook or wherever and those two things are not necessarily connected so don't get too wrapped up in that but recognize full siblings okay they're going to be categorized on ancestry as immediate family they're going to be under that orange banner there is this range but recognize that almost always in this case if it's under the immediate family banner it's going to be a full sibling okay okay the next relationship banner on ancestry is close family okay and the range is close family to first cousin and I'll share with you in just a minute why that is but close family is the next category and you can see here I've had three women tested this is my paternal aunt this is my maternal aunt and this is my paternal grandmother so in order to be in the close family category close family members share about 25% of their DNA so you can see over here I share about 1,700 I share 785 centimorgans of DNA with this aunt 1600 with this aunt and the least amount here thirteen hundred and seventy one with my paternal grandmother and I have found that that is pretty consistent so for example I have tested several of my grandmother's grandchildren I've also tested two of her children and several of her nieces and nephews and what we're discovering is that my grandmother shares less DNA with her grandchildren and more DNA with her nieces and nephews so so there's something of a pattern there in my family that we've been able to start to follow and to understand a little bit better now close family members can be any number of relationships now here I just have a few of them that I've exhibited in my own family but it can be an aunt or an uncle with a niece or a nephew so when you're looking at who those people are in that close family list these are who they could be to you it could be a grandparent or a grandchild close family members can also be half siblings now remember full siblings share 50% of their DNA a half sibling would share half that amount so in this case 25% of their DNA and that becomes a half sibling another relationship that we see show up in the close family bucket is double first cousins okay and what I mean by that is time is if a brother and a sister okay so say you have a brother named John and a sister named Sarah and John marries a woman named Ann and Ann has a brother named William who marries John's sister Sarah okay and so what you've got is you've got a brother and sister from one family who married a sister and a brother from another family their children then would be first cousins on one side of their family and first cousins on the other side of their family and we call those double first cousins okay and double first cousins share the same amount of DNA as a half sibling so you'll see them probably in that close family bucket as well so start to think again about the relationships in your own family how some of this might play out also start to think about how this would mathematically extrapolate down to some of those further generations so maybe your parents aren't Ferb you know aren't married to siblings of your cousin's parents again but maybe you had great-great grandparents who were double first cousins or you know start to think about where those relationships show up in your own family tree and how that might affect how the DNA is inherited okay now let's run through these next categories really quickly and then I'm actually going to give you a resource to where you can go to find out more about the possible relationships because I started to list them and the list kind of became exhausting not just exhaustive but exhausting and there are you know dozens and dozens of different permutations of relationships so these are the categories on ancestry if you don't have anybody in these categories you won't actually see the orange labels on your cousin match list and so I just wanted to show them to you so that you understand how ancestry handles these so we'd start with parent-child then we go to immediate family then close family then the next category here is first cousins first cousins share about twelve and a half percent of their DNA the kinds of relationships you're going to see in that category first cousins that's easy right but great-grandparents or great-grandchildren great uncles and aunts two great nieces and nephews also half uncles and aunts two half nieces and nephews so I have a half aunt and she shows up is as a first cousin and it's not because she's my first cousin it's because she shares 12 and a half percent of her DNA with me and so ancestry has categorized that in this type of a relationship because a computer algorithm doesn't know exactly what the relationship is all it knows is you share this amount of DNA and so it looks like this or it's most commonly going to be this kind of a relationship but we know our families don't always fit in tonight nice neat little buckets and so we can put it into a general category like first cousin but we have to recognize that there are other possible relationships that that could represent hope that makes sense okay the next category ancestry shows you is second cousins second cousins share about three percent of their DNA and now you can see how really quickly we have just this small amount of DNA that we share with each other when you get down to the third cousin level third cousins share less than 1% of their DNA that's why you could have a third cousin tested and they might not show up on your genetic match list because you may not have any DNA in common okay now beyond this ancestry goes to a fourth cousin list that's going to be your broadest or largest list because that's kind of a sweet spot that's where we're related to more and more and more people and then there's going to be a category called distant cousins so from first cousins through fourth cousins there's quite a bit of certainty that we are definitely related to these people but the way in which we might be related to them could be any number of things so for example I would show you my match list but I'm a little concerned about privacy and I don't want to just pull up my match list and have you able to see all of the names and relationships there and so I'm just going to try and explain this to you a little bit so I have people on my fourth cousin list who are actually second cousins twice removed or third cousins once removed and again it's all because of the amount of DNA we share and so random inheritance just so happens that we share less DNA than might be expected at that particular level so here is one of the tools that's available on ancestry anytime you're looking at your match list next to every one of your matches you're going to see a little question mark when you click on that question mark it's going to bring up a little bit of information about that degree of a relationship and then it will provide you with some charts and I keep these kinds of charts handy all the time at some times I also find myself drawing them out when I'm trying to understand things but this really helps me to start to make some sense of some of the different kinds of relationships and I love the way that this has been created because it goes several different ways here so the chart typically starts with you over here on the left and then there's your parent and your grandparent your great grandparent and so on up to what we call this common ancestor and then from that common ancestor back down the tree to the person who is your match okay now remember you share 50% of your DNA with a parent and 25% of your DNA with a grandparent and 12 and a half percent of your DNA with a great-grandparents okay and you just kind of keep moving your way up and down the list now each time you take a step you have to have it okay and that happens even if you go across the tree as well so these two people would share 50% of their DNA because they're siblings this person and this person would share 25% of their DNA because it's an uncle and a nephew okay these two people would share twelve and a half percent of their DNA because they are first cousins these two people would share 6.25% of their DNA because they are first cousins once removed okay and then second cousins would share about 3% of their DNA do you see how that works so each time you take a step in either direction you're going to have the amount of DNA that they share so like I said yeah it sometimes takes a little bit to wrap your head around it there are some handy charts available one of my favorites is found on the ice agua key so I saw it stands for the International Society of genetic genealogy I saag their website is is a G G dot org and they have a wiki and on their wiki they have an article called autosomal DNA statistics that explain exactly what we've just talked about today in some pretty great detail my favorite thing on this particular website however is this chart or this table and what it does is it shows you the percentage of shared DNA between specific relationships and how many centimorgans that is so you should be able to go on to your ancestor DNA count look at one of your matches click on that little eye for information to pop up the amount of shared centimorgans you have with a person and let's say I share 16.2 centimorgans with a particular person on my fourth cousin list well the average is thirteen point two eight for them to be a fourth cousin it's possible that they could be a third cousin or a third cousin once removed or a second cousin twice removed and somehow we just inherited less shared DNA it's also possible that they could be a fifth cousin or a fifth cousin once-removed and we just inherited more shared DNA than expected okay so keep so just remember these are averages and random inheritance is really going to mess with that but it's always going to be within kind of an expected range okay I have never seen anybody who is a half sibling who only shares three centimorgans of DNA okay that's that's likely not going to happen the opposite is also true I've never seen anybody who's a third cousin who shares the same amount of DNA as an aunt or an uncle okay so just remember that the further down this list you go the more you know the more of a range there might be but the higher up on this list you are the more narrow that range is going to be and I actually have a printed copy of this chart that I've taped to the wall of my desk so that I can see it as I work with my DNA matches so that I can start to understand exactly how so those connections are made and so that I can start to make some discoveries with some of those matches crew we made it lots of information like I said it was a little bit of a difficult topic mostly I just wanted you to see what the different categories were of relationships that are possible through your ancestry DNA connections because like I said if you haven't had people in those categories tested you won't even see the category listed so I wanted to have that understanding and that I wanted you to start thinking about the math of it all about how the breakdown of the percentages of shared DNA start to happen and why different people might show up in different categories if you are watching this live I will be on chat in just a few minutes to answer any additional questions you may have if you're watching this on youtube please leave comments if you have questions and I will check in regularly over the next few weeks to make sure and that those questions get answered this is really important information but it's also really exciting information I love working with my DNA matches and as a matter of fact just last night had the opportunity to connect with a DNA match who it turns out is related to my father's family in Germany back several generations and we were able to extend the family history back another generation on our German line which was something we didn't know if we were ever going to be able to do so lots of really great breakthroughs being made every single day with ancestry DNA and hopefully this helps you work with your matches enough to continue to make those breakthroughs for yourself until next time this is Krista Cowen have fun climbing your family tree

Channel: Ancestry

Views: 75,515

Rating: 4.8585634 out of 5

Keywords: ancestry.com, ancestry, family tree, family history, genealogy, Ancestry DNA, autosomal DNA, genetic genealogy, DNA matches

Id: NWqpPgD0QnM

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2015