Both of your participants fall into this category – and one of your participants has several exact matches! That is good. I would strongly recommend contacting the potential matches to collaborate on family history and a possible common ancestor.

Sometimes, if there is a match, and the surnames are different there could have been an adoption, illegitimacy or name change. It is with the marriage of DNA and paper genealogies that will show where the actual common paternal ancestor is.

For your information: The “Paternal DNA Matches” screen displays matches in a ranked order based on the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) between the user and the individual in the list. (MRCA refers to a statistical calculation that determines the likely range of generations in which two individuals share a common ancestor.) MRCA calculations are based on the number of markers tested, the number of matching values and the mutation rate of the markers. This calculation does not take into account the surnames of the individuals involved.

Neither your haplogroup prediction nor your DNA test result will reveal the percentage of a given ancestral ethnicity nor the precise tribe from which you may descend.

There is great controversy over “ethnicity” type testing and many user experiences can be easily found by doing Google searches on the web. Articles and scientific papers can also be found discussing this type of testing which would be helpful for you and others to evaluate.

Just last week, an article arguing for tighter controls on DNA Ancestry testing was published. From it, we read “In the past year, scientists, sociologists and bioethicists, among others, have come to agree that the technology of these direct-to-consumer tests, which run between $100 and $1,000 apiece, is problematic and that the test results can be misleading and lead to problems including skewed ethnic data and questionable membership claims to Native American tribes.”

The issues the folks in the article are upset about are largely due to the differences in inheritance patterns of the various types of DNA used in DNA genealogy i.e. Y DNA, mtDNA and autosomal DNA and the limitations of each and what definitively can be determined or not determined using these in DNA genealogy testing.

I left the following comment on 10 July 2009 at 12:15 pm (see Comment #3). I have not received a reply yet.

“Thank you for offering the Genetic Genealogy Webinar — it was very informative. However, I still have questions regarding testing for ethnicity. I do understand that ancestry.com does not offer a “product” for ethnic testing, but I hope that you will provide an informative discussion on the topic — other than the suggestion of “buyer beware.” I’m sure that you have information that would help those of us who seek such a testing device, even though you do not offer such.

Thanks again for the webinar.

Taylor”

I do hope to receive a reply regarding this issue. Thank you once again.

Taylor

A note of caution: standards for genetic genealogy have been slow to form, so there are some differences in nomenclature among the organizations. Therefore, in some cases conversion may be necessary to compare apples to apples. A good resource to consult on marker standards is can be found here.

Thanks again.

Alexander Corcoran