Don't Kiss Me, I'm Only 29 Percent Irish.

Now that Valentine's Day is over, I've been trying to get into the St. Patrick's Day mood--eating Lucky Charms, listening to Irish music, reading Irish fairy tales, wearing shamrock socks and pajamas, and making brain-shaped Irish soda bread:

Last year I said the following:

I keep flip-flopping between whether St. Patrick's Day or Valentine's Day is my least favorite holiday (at least of the holidays I formally celebrate). Currently Valentine's Day is my least favorite. St. Patrick's Day is funner, and green is better than pink, but it is a rather pointless holiday, especially since I'm not Irish. I have a few Irish drops in the genealogical bucket, but I'm overwhelmingly of English and Scottish descent.

I still agree with that assessment of the holiday. Additionally, mint and pistachio are better flavors than red velvet and strawberry, and leprechauns are more whimsical than cupids.

However, it turns out that my genealogical assessment might not be quite right.

I had come to believe that most of my ancestors were British in part because of Roots Mapper, an awesome website where, if you have a FamilySearch account, you can see where your ancestors lived. I have tons in the UK, but very few in Ireland. There are a few in France and Germany.

Well, in January I decided to have my DNA tested through Ancestry.com. I ordered a little kit (normally $100, but it was on sale for $80), spit in a little tube, and sent it back to be analyzed. I expected to be something like 80 percent British.

I got my results back this week, and it wasn't what I expected. I'm 99 percent European--no shocker there. However, the breakdown was a little more surprising:

• I'm 52 percent Western Europe--France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc. I knew I'd have some, but I didn't expect that much.
• I'm 29 percent Irish. I definitely wasn't expecting that. Maybe it explains the red that shows up when I grow out my sideburns. Makes me feel a little less silly celebrating March 17.
• I'm only 11 percent British. That really surprised me. I mean, my last name comes from a Scottish ancestor, and most of the others I knew about were from England or Scotland. I really thought there would be more than this.
• Then there are some trace regions. I'm 3 percent Iberian. And speaking of Iberian, here's a linguistic question that's puzzled me. Portuguese seems to be an intermediate form between Spanish and French, yet geographically, Spain is between Portugal and France. Shouldn't Spanish be the intermediate form? Maybe it has something to do with the Arabic influence. I don't know.
• I'm 3 percent Scandinavian. I find this one interesting. I have lots of Mormon pioneer ancestors, and there were lots of Scandinavian pioneers. Central Utah had lots of Danes, and there are an abundance of Christensens, Hansens, Andersens, etc. But not in my family. I don't even think any of my pioneer ancestors were Scandinavian. The only Scandinavians I know of, Matteson, are from my non-pioneer line.
• It tells me I'm less than 1 percent Italian/Greek and less than 1 percent Melanesian. I can buy the Italian, but the Melanesian is probably just a genetic coincidence.

There are some considerations to take into account:

• I know that their methodology isn't perfect. But I'm neither a geneticist nor a biologist. I studied words and rocks, not DNA. Therefore, I don't understand all of their methodology and can't know how accurate it is.
• While I have 52 percent Western Europe, a typical native of Western Europe only has 48 percent. So I'm more Western European than the Western Europeans--even though I've never even been to Europe.
• I don't really know anything about my biological maternal grandfather, because he was a terrible person. (I'll take my adoptive grandpa, thank you.) However, I have been able to trace one line through him back to Austria and Germany.
• Ireland, Britain, and France (and other Western European countries) are really largely connected--so the representative DNA from one place might more accurately be from another.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

But regardless of my DNA, culturally I'm 100 percent American. MURICA!