Sometimes while I am giving you a bath, you randomly tell me some of the most insightful discoveries going on in your head, as a 5 year-old girl; like recently:
“Daddy, am I the brightest one?… And Nonna is the darkest?”
You are self-aware of the fact that you are curiously the fairest complected member of our entire living family tree; as it is simply a natural response when people see you with any family members; to point it out.
And true, it’s most obvious when you are next to Nonna.
You managed to get all the German and Norwegian genes, and apparently none of the Mexican or Mediterranean.
Do you want to give something original? Do you need to surprise some one and you do not know how? We want to help you by giving you an idea that you might not have thought about: giving a DNA test.
That said, it may not seem interesting, but the truth is that one of the tests below will allow you to know the person to whom you give it – or yourself – a lot of information about your family that you may not have known such as DNA testing for ethnicity.
Indeed, these DNA tests determine your ethnic origins, so you can know where your ancestors come from. There are other tests that, on the other hand, offer genetic information about health, while others are focused on the study of nutrigenetics, your sports ability or your skin.
There are, therefore, many reasons why a DNA test can be a brilliant idea, either to do it yourself or give it to a friend.
Before deciding which one to bet on, take a look at the informative sections that we include to discover what a test of this type consists of and what methodologies are used.
DNA test and how does it work?
Currently, there are only about twenty companies around the world that are dedicated to tracing your DNA to discover the origin of your ancestors, although we may not see much more in the future due to the growing popularity of this business.
A DNA test will allow you to discover the origin of your ancestors and your kinship with other users who have also decided to perform the same DNA test. In fact, the more people who have made the test, the more accurate the results will be.
Now, if you are wondering how you can get a DNA test to know your origins, the answer is very simple: once you choose the company with which you want to carry out the process, you will only have to request the delivery of the DNA extraction kit to the address of your choice.
Normally DNA kits come with one or several tubes that you will have to either fill with saliva, spit after spit, or pass a cotton ball through your mouth to impregnate it with saliva and then insert it into the tube.
The following will be sent by mail to the address indicated. You should know that some companies do not include shipping costs in their purchase price, so you will have to take this detail into account if your priority at the time of choosing is the price of the service.
The process usually takes weeks or even months in some cases, so be patient and do not expect to receive your results too soon. The results are always received by email.
Types of DNA testing methodology
When we did the different DNA tests and had the results on our hands we were quite surprised because, although some companies did offer similar results (which are not identical), others gave us quite different results.
Each DNA company uses its own methods. These methods vary based on three main points: the geographical regions, the way to identify the variation and the size of the database available to the company.
The researcher says that the differences in these three key points can lead to very different results in DNA tests.
Another aspect to be taken into account is the fact that some companies use country names in the results they give to the client to illustrate the different origins of the DNA test.
However, it must be understood that these country names should be understood as regions of origin and not as the country itself.
In the case of DNA tests that also report on possible diseases and health conditions, it should be known that these tests are also affected by the different identification methods used by each company. That is, they could also reflect different results depending on the three key points we mentioned earlier.
I am a person who is amazed by genetics. This is obvious by the fact I have a 2nd YouTube channel dedicated exclusively to this topic.
Therefore, I couldn’t help but notice a while back, that you happen to look a whole lot like my 2nd cousin, Miranda, who was born in December 1990.
She also was born with the last name, Shell; which is fading out in our family tree. Other than your brother, and other than Miranda’s brother, there are no other Shell boys to potentially carry on the family name.
That is, unless Mommy and I have another child and it’s a boy, but we have no plans of that at this time.
So while it has always seemed unlikely that Mommy and I would have 2 children with blonde hair and blue eyes, based on our own darker features, I can begin to understand the true Shell gene has revealed itself in you, and it has my 2nd cousin.
It just so happens that over Christmas, I did a video revealing Papa’s DNA test results from 23andMe, and we learned he is 99% Northwest European.
Though he shows about 25% German, which explains our last name, the rest of his DNA is British.
I think it is remarkable to notice the similarity, when comparing pictures of you and Miranda at similar ages.
We’ll see if over time you keep the Shell look. After all, I have seen how your brother’s hair and skin tone has become darker over the features; though his eyes have remained blue the entire time.
You are proof of the lighter featured genes in our family tree. Even though you’ll eventually get married and change your last name from Shell, you will apparently keep and pass on the otherwise somewhat hidden Shell features.
By taking a closer look at this man standing behind my great-grandmother, in the wedding photo of my mother’s grandparents’ wedding photo from 1919, it appears we truly are seeing my Middle Eastern, or Jewish, ancestors; which up until this year, we assumed were Italian.
My mom’s MyHeritage DNA test, as well as mine, indicate that my mom’s grandparents on her father’s side consisted of a Middle Eastern man and a Sephardic Jewish woman, from southern Italy.
Overnight, I began receiving several comments from different subscribers across the world, on the YouTube version of yesterday’s blog post. Here are the 3 that stood out the most to me:
“[The groom] does look Middle Eastern. But also Egyptian.”
“[The groom] looks Half Lebanese, Half Egyptian.”
“That man at 3:12 with something in his left shirt pocket, looks 100% middle eastern to me.”
So now I’m really curious… With the help of the Internet, I wonder if anyone would be able to help me pinpoint what native county my Middle Eastern grandfather’s side came from?
I zoomed in on the man who is seen at the 3:12 mark of the video I made. He is the one standing directly behind my Sephardic Jewish great-grandmother. I had never noticed before how his suit and jacket and noticeably different that the other men. And yes, what exactly is that decoration on his left shirt pocket?
Whose side of the family is he from, anyway? Is he from the Jewish side or the Middle Eastern side? If all the men in the photo are with the groom’s side, then he is Middle Eastern. But if this photo shows the family member’s of each side of the wedding party, then maybe he’s on the Jewish side, which explains why he’s standing behind my great-grandmother?
What exactly can we learn about my ancestors from this man’s suit? Does anyone out there know? Can anyone help me? Please leave a comment below if you have any intuition on the subject.
I am grateful!
Also, if you’re interested in taking a DNA test like my mom and I did, here’s the link toMyHeritage.
Last week at work, my wife was explaining to a coworker how our family is vegetarian and that it all started a few months after we were married in 2008, when I went kosher; meaning I stopped eating pork and shellfish.
The natural follow-up question from her coworker was logical: “Is your husband Jewish or something?”
My wife replied, “Actually, he is. He just took a DNA test and found that out!”
(This is funny because my going kosher had nothing to do with my ethnic background; I simply had to in order to cure my eczema dyshidrosis, severe sinus infections, and allergies. In the end, it worked, by the time I eventually became a vegan in 2013.)
True, her mother truly was Mexican; but on her father’s side, her Italian grandfather was mostly Middle Eastern and her Italian grandmother was Sephardic Jewish.
My mom’s mother’s side:
32.9% Central American (Mayan/Aztec)
22% Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese)
My mom’s father’s side:
15.2% Sephardic Jewish
14% Middle East/West Asia (Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Palestine and Georgia)
7.8% Greek
4.5% Italian
2.6% Baltic (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia)
2.0% West African (Benin, Burkina Faso, the island nation of Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, the island of Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, São Tomé and Príncipe and Togo)
These wedding photos are from my mom’s paternal grandparents’ wedding in 1919. This is Giuseppe Metallo (age 28 and a half) with his bride Maria “Mary” Vite (age 19). I speculate this was an arranged marriage, but I have no proof; only speculation, based on their age difference and the fact they were recent immigrants to America from Italy.
They both moved here from Italy, spoke only Italian, and had Italian names… yet ethnically, they were barely Italian at all. My theory is that their own ancestors had settled in Italy a few generations prior but had culturally become Italian by the time they got to America.
I’m guessing their families had both converted to Catholicism by the time they had left Italy.
This stuff is purely fascinating to me!
But what do you think? Are we truly looking at a mainly Middle Eastern groom and a Sephardic Jewish bride, who were known to me up until this year as my Italian great-grandparents?
I would love for you to leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
And if you’re interested in taking a DNA test like I did, here’s the link toMyHeritage.