Moldovan/Romanian GEDmatch Results v2

[Ion Basescul]

4/8 Ungheni county (129cM relative of person from previous post), 2/8 Transnistrian Moldovan/Romanian (Slobozia town), 1/8 Transnistrian Ukrainian (Slobozia town), 1/8 Transnistrian Russian (Slobozia town)

N_Atlantic	Baltic	West_Med	West_Asian	East_Med	Red_Sea	South_Asian	East_Asian	Siberian	Amerindian	Oceanian	NE_African	Sub-Saharan
27.27	29.73	13.28	8.74	13.39	2.24	1.26	1.16	1.09	0.92	0.55	0	0.36

Distance to: Grozesti_Slobozia
2.98924740 Hungarian_Transylvania+Székely
3.49535406 Bosniak_Krajina_West
3.53721642 Romanian_North-Moldavia
3.57026610 Romanian_Maramureş
3.62732684 Csángó-Ceangău
3.72033601 Croat_Kvarner
3.78255205 Croat_Dalmatia
3.81139082 Croat_Istria
3.98780641 Croat_Bosnia
4.17239739 Croat_Lika
4.41641257 Bosniak
4.59702077 Croat
4.64697751 Serb_Croatia
4.70935240 Moldovan_Central
4.71931139 Serb_Republika_Srpska
4.98301114 Serb_West
5.00433812 Croat_Herzegovina
5.02637046 Croat_Slavonia
5.02853856 Moldovan
5.07168611 Bosniak_Southeast
5.28690836 Serb
5.33551310 Hungarian_Alföld
5.41140462 Serb_Central
5.56009892 Moldovan_North
5.64645907 Serb_Vojvodina

[Catnip]

Hi! Do Romanians/Moldovans have Hellenic contribution, or is the preslavic part of countries mostly related to Dacians/Romans from the region?
I've seen some do score Greece on My Heritage,but I know that it can be also just adaptation,I don't know how to interpret it.
When some people are having dominant West Asian+East Med components on K13,what is the source population? Or is it from the natives as well?

[Ion Basescul]

Hi! Do Romanians/Moldovans have Hellenic contribution, or is the preslavic part of countries mostly related to Dacians/Romans from the region?
I've seen some do score Greece on My Heritage,but I know that it can be also just adaptation,I don't know how to interpret it.
When some people are having dominant West Asian+East Med components on K13,what is the source population? Or is it from the natives as well?

Hi, the pre-Slavic part is different from that of Greeks, but in Romania there are people with genuine more recent Greek ancestry. In Moldova that's rare and limited to the village of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (old Hadji Abdula), which was settled in 1809 by 27 families of Greeks and 118 of Romanians.
In addition to this, the surname "Grecu", meaning Greek, is the 60th most popular in Moldova. But it is unclear if it is tied to real medieval Greek settlers or people of any ethnicity who returned from Greek lands and received this nickname.

[Ajeje Brazorf]

This is an average of scy192, scy197, scy300, scy305 and MJ12 samples. How accurate is it to represent the Dacians of Roman times?

Moldova_IA,0.1233842,0.136487,0.0193838,-0.020349,0.018834,-0.0091476,0.0034782,-0.0041074,0.00135,0.0303242,0.0014292,0.0041362,-0.0089792,-0.0019818,-0.0116176,-0.0026782,0.006806,0.002559,0.010609,-0.0031264,-0.0097828,0.006974,-0.0009368,0.0023136,0.0011256

[Ion Basescul]

This is an average of scy192, scy197, scy300, scy305 and MJ12 samples. How accurate is it to represent the Dacians of Roman times?

Moldova_IA,0.1233842,0.136487,0.0193838,-0.020349,0.018834,-0.0091476,0.0034782,-0.0041074,0.00135,0.0303242,0.0014292,0.0041362,-0.0089792,-0.0019818,-0.0116176,-0.0026782,0.006806,0.002559,0.010609,-0.0031264,-0.0097828,0.006974,-0.0009368,0.0023136,0.0011256

No idea, because there aren't any Dacian samples yet afaik. Maybe some of the Hungarian "Scythians" are related to them.
But these from Moldova seem to be consistent with Thracians.

[Vega7]

Hey so I posted in this thread a few months back and said that I was going to post my sister's results. My background is 5/8 (62.5%) Ukrainian and 3/8 (37.5%) Romanian from what used to be Northern Bukovina (now Chernivtsi), Ukraine.

I got her results a while ago, but kind of forgot about it. Did a lot more research recently and managed to compare it to various reference populations using Vahaduo K13.

Here are the results:

24.23,37.67,14.3,6.77,10.93,2.01,0.58,0,2.27,0.48, 0,0,0.74

I tried to compare her results to various reference population combinations that I considered equivalent or 'equidistant' from where my family is from.

Distance: 2.41%
57.7% Ukrainian
42.3% Romanian

Distance: 2.55%
59.9% Ukrainian Northwest
40.1% Romanian Muntenia

Distance: 2.44%
60.6% Ukrainian North
39.% Romanian Wallachia

Distance: 3.58%
67.6% Ukrainian Galicia
32.4% Romanian Moldavia Average

Distance: 3.39%
63.1% Ukrainian Lviv (from page 1 of this thread)
36.9% Romanian Moldavia South

These findings are all very consistent with my ancestry. The only one that yielded a less expected result was:

Distance: 2.57%
84.1% Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk (from page 1 of this thread)
15.9% Romania Moldavia North

This last comparison is pretty close to what her 23andme results state, which is more or less 77% from Ivano-Frankivsk and 23% Romanian from Suceava.

My assumption is that, since all of my ancestors are from what is now Ukraine, many of them simply moved to Ivano-Frankivsk and made it more Romanian. Also, in the 1700s, many Ukrainians from Galicia moved to Chernivtsi. They would have mixed with the Romanians and, after WW1, any Ukrainian speakers (even ones who mixed with the native Romanians) were apparently exiled and would have moved to, for example Ivano-Frankivsk.

Ivano-Frankivsk itself was apparently also always Romanian influenced. There was the Pokottiua dialect of Ukrainian in Ivano-Frankivsk that was apparently influenced by Romanian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokuttia

"The local Ukrainians' language was influenced by Romanian, and the Pokuttia-Bukovina dialect was formed. It is distinct from other Ukrainian dialects because all of them are influenced by other Slavic languages, while the Pokuttia-Bukovyna dialect received influence from a Romance language (Romanian)."

[Vega7]

Hey, so I posted in this thread a few months back and said that I was going to post my sister's results. My background is 5/8 (62.5%) Ukrainian and 3/8 (37.5%) Romanian from what used to be Northern Bukovina (now Chernivtsi), Ukraine.

I got her results a while ago, but kind of forgot about it. Did a lot more research recently and managed to compare it to various reference populations using Vahaduo K13.

Here are the results:

24.23,37.67,14.3,6.77,10.93,2.01,0.58,0,2.27,0.48, 0,0,0.74

I tried to compare her results to various reference population combinations that I considered equivalent or 'equidistant' from where my family is from.

Distance: 2.41%
57.7% Ukrainian
42.3% Romanian

Distance: 2.55%
59.9% Ukrainian Northwest
40.1% Romanian Muntenia

Distance: 2.44%
60.6% Ukrainian North
39.% Romanian Wallachia

Distance: 3.58%
67.6% Ukrainian Galicia
32.4% Romanian Moldavia Average

Distance: 3.39%
63.1% Ukrainian Lviv (from page 1 of this thread)
36.9% Romanian Moldavia South

These findings are all very consistent with my ancestry. The only one that yielded a less expected result was:

Distance: 2.57%
84.1% Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk (from page 1 of this thread)
15.9% Romania Moldavia North

This last comparison is pretty close to what her 23andme results state, which is more or less 77% Ukrainian from Ivano-Frankivsk and 23% Romanian from Suceava.

My assumption is that, since all of my ancestors are from what is now Ukraine, many of them (including ethnic Romanians) simply moved to Ivano-Frankivsk and made it more Romanian. Also, in the 1700s, many Ukrainians from Galicia moved to Chernivtsi. They would have mixed with the Romanians and, after WW1, any Ukrainian speakers (even ones who mixed with the native Romanians) were apparently exiled and would have moved to, for example, Ivano-Frankivsk.

Ivano-Frankivsk itself was apparently also always Romanian influenced. There was the Pokuttia dialect of Ukrainian in Ivano-Frankivsk that was apparently influenced by Romanian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokuttia

"The local Ukrainians' language was influenced by Romanian, and the Pokuttia-Bukovina dialect was formed. It is distinct from other Ukrainian dialects because all of them are influenced by other Slavic languages, while the Pokuttia-Bukovyna dialect received influence from a Romance language (Romanian)."

[Ion Basescul]

Hey so I posted in this thread a few months back and said that I was going to post my sister's results. My background is 5/8 (62.5%) Ukrainian and 3/8 (37.5%) Romanian from what used to be Northern Bukovina (now Chernivtsi), Ukraine.

I got her results a while ago, but kind of forgot about it. Did a lot more research recently and managed to compare it to various reference populations using Vahaduo K13.

Here are the results:

24.23,37.67,14.3,6.77,10.93,2.01,0.58,0,2.27,0.48, 0,0,0.74

Cool results and very similar to my grandma's who is from an ethnic Ukrainian village in Moldova situated only 6km away from Chernivtsi oblast.

Bunica,24.71,38.15,11.21,7.63,12.21,0.31,2.15,0.89 ,1.72,0.59,0.43,0,0

Nowadays half of her village self-identifies as Moldovan/Romanian, so it would be curious if she has some assimilated Moldovan/Romanian ancestry that we were not aware of. We do know her grandparents, but only 2 out of her 8 great-grandparents. One of her grandmas has a Moldovan/Romanian sounding surname, Trestian, but since she was Ukrainian, to me that just points to ancestry towards the nearby village of Trestieni, which at that point was fully Ukrainian (now majority).

Ethnic situation at 1907 census

[Vega7]

Cool results and very similar to my grandma's who is from an ethnic Ukrainian village in Moldova situated only 6km away from Chernivtsi oblast.

Bunica,24.71,38.15,11.21,7.63,12.21,0.31,2.15,0.89 ,1.72,0.59,0.43,0,0

Nowadays half of her village self-identifies as Moldovan/Romanian, so it would be curious if she has some assimilated Moldovan/Romanian ancestry that we were not aware of. We do know her grandparents, but only 2 out of her 8 great-grandparents. One of her grandmas has a Moldovan/Romanian sounding surname, Trestian, but since she was Ukrainian, to me that just points to ancestry towards the nearby village of Trestieni, which at that point was fully Ukrainian (now majority).

Ethnic situation at 1907 census

Yeah I have been trying to trace my ancestry as far back as possible. I have traced all 16 of my great-great grandparents and 22/32 of my great-great-great grandparents. There are some Romanians with Ukrainian surnames, but also some Ukrainians with Romanian surnames.

I signed up for a free trial to ancestry.ca and have managed to trace at least 2 generations back to Northern Bukovina for every side of my family.

There isn't a single name ending with -escu though. There are names that end with -u, or, as is the case with your username, -ul, and various other obviously Romanian names. It seems that Bukovina perhaps never underwent the surname reform that Wallachia and Moldavia underwent in the mid-1800s (taking your dad's name and adding -escu). At least not prior to when my family came to Canada between 1900-1910. It's pretty surprising that every single person traces back to northern Bukovina. My mom and dad are both from villages that were settled by people form that region, which is just coincidence.

With regard to my own Romanian ancestors, they were from villages that were apparently ~75% ethnic Romanian and the rest Ukrainian. The Ukrainians were from villages that were either entirely Ukrainian or ~75% Ukrainian and the rest Romanian.

That entire region south of the Dniestr and Northeast of the Carpathians seems to have both East-Slavic and Romanian heritage going back 1500+ years. I've seen some youtube videos about the Chernivtsi region and, inevitably, the youtube comments are full of Ukrainians and Romanians bickering about who the region belongs to. In reality it's both.

I guess Ukraine is currently going through a process of Ukrainianization and is forbidding Romanian (or Russian or any other minority language) from being the language of instruction in schools. So we might see the Romanian minority in that region die out as they, in the future, will just know Ukrainian and identify as such.

Romanian grandmothers in my family were called "buna," which is pretty close to your "bunica."

[Ion Basescul]

Yeah I have been trying to trace my ancestry as far back as possible. I have traced all 16 of my great-great grandparents and 22/32 of my great-great-great grandparents. There are some Romanians with Ukrainian surnames, but also some Ukrainians with Romanian surnames.

I signed up for a free trial to ancestry.ca and have managed to trace at least 2 generations back to Northern Bukovina for every side of my family.

There isn't a single name ending with -escu though. There are names that end with -u, or, as is the case with your username, -ul, and various other obviously Romanian names. It seems that Bukovina perhaps never underwent the surname reform that Wallachia and Moldavia underwent in the mid-1800s (taking your dad's name and adding -escu). At least not prior to when my family came to Canada between 1900-1910. It's pretty surprising that every single person traces back to northern Bukovina. My mom and dad are both from villages that were settled by people form that region, which is just coincidence.

With regard to my own Romanian ancestors, they were from villages that were apparently ~75% ethnic Romanian and the rest Ukrainian. The Ukrainians were from villages that were either entirely Ukrainian or ~75% Ukrainian and the rest Romanian.

That entire region south of the Dniestr and Northeast of the Carpathians seems to have both East-Slavic and Romanian heritage going back 1500+ years. I've seen some youtube videos about the Chernivtsi region and, inevitably, the youtube comments are full of Ukrainians and Romanians bickering about who the region belongs to. In reality it's both.

I guess Ukraine is currently going through a process of Ukrainianization and is forbidding Romanian (or Russian or any other minority language) from being the language of instruction in schools. So we might see the Romanian minority in that region die out as they, in the future, will just know Ukrainian and identify as such.

Romanian grandmothers in my family were called "buna," which is pretty close to your "bunica."

Ancestry is good for their raw data and ethnicity estimate, but absolute shite for researching lineages. And that's because only a small fraction of people from this part of Europe use it. MyHeritage is the most comprehensive database. I found real relatives through it. If you have the opportunity, I suggest uploading the data there and working through the matches.

"-escu" is a rare surname ending in Romania, despite the stereotypes found in Western media. And it peaks towards Bucharest.

Scroll to the bottom for most popular surnames: https://forebears.io/romania