Greetings! I am a long-time lurker, finally registered!

Hello everyone! ;)

My name is Marie, I am a 32-year-old female,
I have been reading this site and lurking on this site for a long time,
and finally I have registered as an early birthday gift to myself! :)

I am white from South Africa,
I do not know my ethnicity because I am an orphan and I never knew my birth parents.
I believe that my ethnicity is Dutch because I look Nordic (I think),
and I was born in a very Boer, non-Anglo part of the country

I will make 15 posts so I can ask the Apricity community to classify me in the Personal Taxonomy forum ;)

Welcome!! :nod::icon_yes::nod:

Welcome, did you thought to do DNA test to figure your origin?

https://i.ibb.co/YfGfD6Y/popcorn-kopio.jpg

Thank you very much for the replies!

I have never done a DNA test to find my ancestry, I am considering it

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Originally Posted by CosmoLady

Hello everyone! ;)

My name is Marie, I am a 32-year-old female,
I have been reading this site and lurking on this site for a long time,
and finally I have registered as an early birthday gift to myself! :)

I am white from South Africa,
I do not know my ethnicity because I am an orphan and I never knew my birth parents.
I believe that my ethnicity is Dutch because I look Nordic, I do not look British/Anglo or French at all,
and I was born in a very Boer, non-Anglo part of the country

I will make 15 posts so I can ask the Apricity community to classify me in the Personal Taxonomy forum ;)

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You know that the founder Loki is also of Boer background and originally from South Africa.

Hello Marie and happy birthday to you :icon_cheers:

Can mtDNA really tell me about my specific ancestry, or will it give me a region, such as Northwest Germany or Scandinavia?

What if my ancestry is mixed? Will an mtDNA test give me 'percentages' from each region?

(As a female I cannot have a y-DNA test)

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Originally Posted by CosmoLady

Can mtDNA really tell me about my specific ancestry, or will it give me a region, such as Northwest Germany or Scandinavia?

What if my ancestry is mixed? Will an mtDNA test give me 'percentages' from each region?

(As a female I cannot have a y-DNA test)

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You can do autosomal test. It will break the ancestry of your 22 autosomal chromosome pairs (but most tests wont give you your sex pair included in it), and you'll get approximatelly where your ancestry is from in percentages. You can later download that data and convert it to G25 coordinates that we use here with various ancient population samples

What a birthday gift :p welcome

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CosmoLady

Can mtDNA really tell me about my specific ancestry, or will it give me a region, such as Northwest Germany or Scandinavia?

What if my ancestry is mixed? Will an mtDNA test give me 'percentages' from each region?

(As a female I cannot have a y-DNA test)

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Haplogroups can help to trace long term migrations through lineages. Autosomal calculators including commercial tests can help estimate admixture.

As an orphan perhaps you want to find biological relatives? That might lead you to more specific information. Finding genetic matches is another reason to use commercial testing.

Brits, Dutch, Germans all overlap each other quite extensively on principal component analysis plots, which is where you can visualize your genetic cluster/group on a two-dimensional graph, so if you have such ancestry it could be quite inconclusive. haplogroups alone don't say much usually neither, especially maternal ones, which have a much less uniform and much more scattered distribution than paternal ones. it could help if you'd find some closer relatives through the DNA test, on your DNA matches

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Originally Posted by CosmoLady

Thank you very much for the replies!

I have never done a DNA test to find my ancestry, I am considering it

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In your case particularly a 23andMe test would be suitable. It reasonably well distinguishes British Isles from continental Germanics and it's also reliable in the matter of trace ancestry which may be additionally helpful and telling regarding the background of White South Africans.

welcome CosmoLady

if you need any help around the forum, just let me know :thumb001:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CosmoLady

Thank you very much for the replies!

I have never done a DNA test to find my ancestry, I am considering it

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You can consider family tree DNA; they provide you with a relative list after analyzing your sample, but I don't know how accurate it is to find your family members.

Welkom! :)

You can feel welcome on this forum, and I hope you enjoy it. There are some good members on here, generally speaking, but we also get the odd troll. So, if you need anything, just ask! :)

I would recommend a 23andme test... Your results should be similar to most white South Africans. It can give you a detailed analysis and, for example, my majority result says "French & German", under which Dutch falls. They also suggest that more specifically, my ancestry is likely Dutch. So yours would be similar I guess, because we come from a relatively small gene pool, and most of us are cousins. Not first cousins, but from second to fourth cousins usually.

Dankie! :)

Thank you everybody, I appreciate it

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/imag...2_fpy44.86.jpg

One more blonde, welcome. : )

As others already told you, I also think you should get tested to know you actual origins.

Welcome to this forum :)

Welcome! Yes, if you choose to purchase a commercial test in your circumstance, 23andMe may be the way to go- plus you’ll get your mtDNA, which is cool.

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Originally Posted by Finnish Swede

https://i.ibb.co/YfGfD6Y/popcorn-kopio.jpg

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:rolleyes:

Welcome Marie.

Welcome Marie. Hope you`ll enjoy your stay and meet some nice people here, maybe even learn a new thing or two. :)

Welcome to the Apricity.