I got one of these cool kits from 23andme for the wife and myself for X-mas this year. For a little over $200 each, we both spit into a vile and dropped it into the mail, waited about a month, and last night we got our results.
No big surprises for me on the ancestry side (I'm as white as a ghost), but I thought I would show you an overview of what it showed and why it's still pretty cool.
First of all, I don't really know much about my ancestry. I got my last name(Renaud) from my father whom I've never met. He was French of some sort (I assumed French-Canadian). I've seen some pictures from the late 70's of him when I was a child. All I remember was that he had dark hair, glasses, and looked like a guy in the 70's. I did some digging on the name, and it seems it was a French pronunciation of the name Reinwald, meaning "ruler's advisor".
That's all I know from that side.
My Mother's side is more interesting I think. Her maiden name is Tollefson, and Americanized version of the Norwegian Tollefsen; from a patronymic from Tollef, a variant of Torleiv, from Old Norse þorleifr, formed with þórr, name of the Scandinavian god of thunder (see Thor) + leifr ‘heir’, ‘descendant’.
Descendant of Thor. Pretty dope.
Though, I don't think in today's climate, I'm allowed to be outwardly proud of it . :P
That said... here's a picture of me dressed as Viking from last Halloween.
Not sure what I'm looking at. And yes, that's a binder clip.. don't judge.
My Grandmother on my Mother's side was a McEwen. Pretty standard Gaelic name.
"Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Eoghain ‘son of Eoghan’, a widespread and ancient personal name, possibly derived from eo ‘yew’, meaning ‘born of yew’. It was Latinized as Eugenius (see Eugene), and was also regarded as a Gaelic form of John. This was the name of one of the two sons of Niall of the Nine Hostages; the other was Conall. Anglicized form of Mac Eathain ‘son of Eathan’, a Scottish Gaelic form of Latin Johannes (see John). John was taken into Irish as Eoin at first; Seán is a later form. In later Irish, as in the surnames, the personal names Eoghan and Eoin were often confused."
With all that in mind, my timeline of "pure" ancestors from given populations makes a lot of sense.
There's a more detailed breakdown when you dig into the reports. Though it's a lot of guess work on specific gene variants and locations. When I crank the sites built in confidence level (how confident they are that genetic markers are from any given area) up to 90%, I end up as just "Broadly northern/north western European".
Things get a lot more interesting when you dig down into information from maternal and paternal haplogroups and tracing ancient paths from Africa. Maybe that's a story for another post though (if the interest is there).
The genetic traits and health sections are also fun, but didn't really tell me anything I didn't know.
I've shared my profile publicly and am excited to learn more as 23andme completes more research and study, as well as myself entering new information as it becomes available.
Follow me @anticleric to find out more of the wacky stuff I'm up to including science, VR development, rants and brain-farts. You know.. the good stuff.
Name meanings Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press.
Painting of Thor Leading the Wild Hunt for Asgard, “Åsgårdsreien” by Peter Nicolai Arbo, painting in oil on canvas, 1872.