mariusz99
12-16-2025, 12:06 PM
I have a riddle.
My girlfriend shares 2% of her DNA with a Romani relative. MyHeritage shows shared DNA on 3 chromosomes. And indeed, all GEDmatch calculators (K13, K36, etc.) as well as the Humanitas report show Romani admixture on those same chromosomes (of course represented as Georgia and Iran, but the signal is obvious). What’s more, the Pomeranian ancestry she has from her grandmother also overlaps with matches from MyHeritage and GEDmatch.
In my case, however, it’s strange. On chromosome 3, K13 shows 30% Sweden for my grandmother, almost 100% for my mother, and about half of that for me. Chromosome 6 is textbook — grandmother 100% Sweden, mother 50%, me 30%. According to MyHeritage, chromosome 6 comes entirely from my mother’s side and fully from my grandmother, so that makes sense. K36 and Humanitas show the same thing.
The problem is chromosome 9. Before the Ancestry update, it was Germanic (Humanitas showed Germany there). But according to MyHeritage, I have almost nothing from my grandmother on that chromosome. Meanwhile, K36 does indeed show regions attributed to my grandfather on chromosome 9 (eastern/southern Poland). But in K13, my grandmother has 10% Sweden, my mother 50%, and I have 30% on chromosome 9.
On chromosome 17, I again have a lot of DNA inherited from my grandmother, and it shows Northern Europe there — in every calculator.
But what I don’t understand is this: supposedly it should work in such a way that if, for example, on chromosome 2 my grandmother has 50% Romani or German, then I should inherit that on chromosome 2 as well. And while in my girlfriend’s case this lines up nicely and clearly shows Romani ancestry, in my case it jumps between chromosomes. It’s not even about the file itself, because three different MyHeritage files show this nonsense.
For example, if Humanitas shows my grandmother as Lower Saxony on chromosome 12 and I don’t have that on chromosome 12, it suddenly pops up on chromosome 14 (it’s true that I used an Ancestry file for myself and a MyHeritage file for my grandmother, but still).
I’m hoping that some expert here will explain this to me. I’ve already seen things like this on Ancestry, where they first classified part of a chromosome as Jewish, then changed it to Slavic, and then back to German (how is that even possible???). I’d really like to understand this, because only then will I be able to analyze my grandfather’s side properly. And as I mentioned, in our family the Germanic DNA comes only from my grandmother. The entire rest of the family has exclusively Polish roots, and specifically from eastern Poland.
My girlfriend shares 2% of her DNA with a Romani relative. MyHeritage shows shared DNA on 3 chromosomes. And indeed, all GEDmatch calculators (K13, K36, etc.) as well as the Humanitas report show Romani admixture on those same chromosomes (of course represented as Georgia and Iran, but the signal is obvious). What’s more, the Pomeranian ancestry she has from her grandmother also overlaps with matches from MyHeritage and GEDmatch.
In my case, however, it’s strange. On chromosome 3, K13 shows 30% Sweden for my grandmother, almost 100% for my mother, and about half of that for me. Chromosome 6 is textbook — grandmother 100% Sweden, mother 50%, me 30%. According to MyHeritage, chromosome 6 comes entirely from my mother’s side and fully from my grandmother, so that makes sense. K36 and Humanitas show the same thing.
The problem is chromosome 9. Before the Ancestry update, it was Germanic (Humanitas showed Germany there). But according to MyHeritage, I have almost nothing from my grandmother on that chromosome. Meanwhile, K36 does indeed show regions attributed to my grandfather on chromosome 9 (eastern/southern Poland). But in K13, my grandmother has 10% Sweden, my mother 50%, and I have 30% on chromosome 9.
On chromosome 17, I again have a lot of DNA inherited from my grandmother, and it shows Northern Europe there — in every calculator.
But what I don’t understand is this: supposedly it should work in such a way that if, for example, on chromosome 2 my grandmother has 50% Romani or German, then I should inherit that on chromosome 2 as well. And while in my girlfriend’s case this lines up nicely and clearly shows Romani ancestry, in my case it jumps between chromosomes. It’s not even about the file itself, because three different MyHeritage files show this nonsense.
For example, if Humanitas shows my grandmother as Lower Saxony on chromosome 12 and I don’t have that on chromosome 12, it suddenly pops up on chromosome 14 (it’s true that I used an Ancestry file for myself and a MyHeritage file for my grandmother, but still).
I’m hoping that some expert here will explain this to me. I’ve already seen things like this on Ancestry, where they first classified part of a chromosome as Jewish, then changed it to Slavic, and then back to German (how is that even possible???). I’d really like to understand this, because only then will I be able to analyze my grandfather’s side properly. And as I mentioned, in our family the Germanic DNA comes only from my grandmother. The entire rest of the family has exclusively Polish roots, and specifically from eastern Poland.