A sibling DNA match

My sister recently agreed to a genealogy DNA test. I had her autosomal DNA tested at FTDNA. That makes three members of my immediate family who have tested – me, my father and my sister.

Siblings have some identical DNA, some half identical DNA and some completely different DNA. The chromosome browser at FTDNA doesn’t distinguish between those identical and half identical regions. The orange parts in the chart below are where we are at least half identical.

That’s a lot of orange!

New cousins to connect with

I expected my sister’s account would have new match names, but wasn’t expecting as many as there were. My sister must have inherited some popular DNA! I went through her, my and my father’s matches and tallied up how many people matched just one of us, each combination of two of us, and all three of us. The results are in the Venn diagram below.

That’s 277 more connections on my mother’s side of the family potentially to explore.

“MyOrigins”

I take origins mapping – from FTDNA or anywhere else - with a grain of salt.

As expected the British Isles featured heavily for all three of us. I seem to be more British that my father or my sister. I’ve also picked up bit of Scandinavia, presumably from my father who shows 12% Scandinavian. Neither my sister nor I show his trace of Central/South Asia in our DNA.

Unlike my Dad, my sister and I both have a hint of Southern Europe, presumably from my mother’s side. This seems odd to me as the only part of our tree with a known Southern European ancestor is on my father’s side. Of most interest to me in my sister’s results was the 11% Eastern Europe. She must have got that from my mother’s side. I wonder how much Eastern European DNA my mother had?

“Ethnic Makeup”	Father	Self	Sister
British Isles	86	93	86
Scandinavia	12	5	-
Central/South Asian	2	-	-
Southern Europe	-	2	4
Eastern Europe	-	-	11