My Updated LivingDNA Ethnicity Results

Back at Rootstech in 2017, I purchased a LivingDNA test kit and awaited my results.  I was intrigued to see what they might say about the regions of the United Kingdom where some of my DNA would be from. For whatever reason, I have failed to write about the results before.  This week there was an ethnicity update.  The key to remember is that ethnicity estimates are just that, estimates, and they depend on the reference populations.

My original ethnicity estimates showed 96.7% Europe and 3.2% Near East, including some interesting mix of Turkish and Kurdish

The most recent update is a bit more in line with known ancestry, showing 100% European.  My previous 2.9% Scandinavian has been refined to 3.2% from Finland.  My Near East seems to have been collapsed into the South Italy at 11%

On their Facebook page, there are a lot of complaints about the update, something that happens to all companies when they issue an ethnicity update.  My results are more or less in line with what I know about my ancestry and doesn't affect my self-identity.

As for matching at LivingDNA, so far I only have one match - a US cousin who has uploaded her results.   The company has struggled to gain traction and get people to opt-in to matching.  Hopefully, I will eventually have matches from the UK and Europe that might lead to additional genealogical discoveries.  LivingDNA does accept uploads from other DNA testing sites, so I would recommend uploading just to make sure you are "fishing in all ponds" in looking for DNA matches.