Ancestry’s regions – a pinch of salt and an insult
Ancestry’s regions don’t claim to be perfect. Here’s why you shouldn’t set too much store by them when it comes to your origins.
If you’ve taken a DNA test and uploaded the results to Ancestry, you’ll have learned of a ‘Major New Update’ this month.
And may well be feeling confused!
If you’ve only just uploaded the results to Ancestry, without knowing the old version, you may think that what you are reading is ‘you’.
Well, here’s the thing. You shouldn’t.
Because Ancestry’s regions are very much not set in stone.
You can be 10% Irish one day, and 2% the next!
Which would undoubtedly be news, if she were alive, to your Irish great-granny.
Ancestry’s regions
The company works out your ancestral origins based on: a) a reference panel ‘made up of people whose families have long-standing, documented roots in a specific area,’ and; b) ‘groups of AncestryDNA members who likely share fairly recent ancestors from the same region or culture’.
The reference panel is made up 185,063 people. Which if it sounds a lot, statistically speaking isn’t. And it is split across 146 regions from around the globe – with some much better represented than others.
The panel for the Azores, for instance, is 1,501 people.
Which is a decent chunk, given the total population of the Azores in 2021 was just 236,440 people.
The panel for the whole of France (total population around 68 million) is just 116 people. Plus 85 for Brittany.
And if you have Belgian ancestors, or Swiss – well tough luck: neither of those is listed in the panel at all.
A broad brush
Belgium, before the October 2025 update to Ancestry’s regions, may have come under ‘Germanic Europe’.
As of October 2025, it comes under ‘Southeastern England and North West Europe’.
As does Normandy, and the Channel Islands.
The region also includes East Anglia, Essex, Hampshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire… as well as Kent, Sussex and London, which are ACTUALLY South East England and were a distinct region before.
So if your results say you are, say, 20% Southeastern England and North West Europe, it means your ancestors could have come equally from Ely or Amiens, Canterbury or Caen.
Not a lot of use, eh?
Cumbria
I can trace all my maternal lines back to the early 1700s. I can trace some of them back to the early 1600s. And one to a man who must have been born in the mid-1500s (he died in 1599). All verified by multiple sources. And all of them born in the North West of England (primarily Cumbria, but one line with roots in Lancashire) or just over the Scottish border.
I wasn’t impressed with Ancestry’s grasp of Cumbria before the latest update. Ok, it’s a small county, population-wise, probably not that many samples to go on.
But it used to be split between: ‘Cumbria, East Dumfries, and Galloway’, and; ‘Lincolnshire to Cumbria’. The latter a swathe of England that also took in Lancashire.
You can see the old Cumbria etc region in this post I did on whether DNA tests are worthwhile.
So imagine my initial surprise after the update to see my results now show me, on Mum’s side, to be: 34% ‘North East England’!
Look at Ancestry’s regions map (see also main image for this post) and ‘North East England’ includes Eastern Cumbria, and the Scottish borders (Lockerbie, Hawick, Jedburgh, Galashiels)
Which may make some sense to the folk in Utah (Ancestry’s base), but is tantamount to an insult to Cumbrians and Scots!
The region doesn’t include the West Cumbrian coast, which doesn’t seem to belong anywhere now.
And west of Annan now comes under County Down.
So if you’ve gone from having Scottish ancestors yesterday to Northern Irish ones today, there’s your reason.
At least they don’t think Lancashire is in the North East: I get 7% now in a region called: ‘North Wales and North West England’.
I’m guessing the sudden appearance of ‘2% East Midlands’ is also from Lancashire. Though ‘East Midlands’ also includes most of Yorkshire! Now there’s an area that you would expect to come under ‘North East’.
And the other 7%on Mum’s side? Well brand new is: ‘5% Munster’. A region that doesn’t feature at all in the 146 on the panel. So it has to be from the Ancestry members ‘who likely share fairly recent ancestors from the same region or culture.’.
My italics. And barring a cuckoo in the nest, more likely to be based on Ancestry members whose Irish ancestors were immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants from Scotland
As for the final 2% ‘North West Germany’…
Which has the helpful info:
‘Your ancestral region estimate is 2%, but it can range from 0 to 8%.’
I’m taking a wild guess it’s 0!
Maybe some part-Irish, part-German man did indulge in a bit of adultery on the shores of the Solway a few generations ago. But on the whole, I’ll file that under ‘meaningless’ rather than cast aspersions on any of my female forebears.
More or less Scottish?
Meanwhile, on my dad’s side, I’ve gone from 9% Scottish to just 3%. However:
‘Your ancestral region estimate is 3%, but it can range from 0 to 12%.’
So while it looks like I’m suddenly 6% less Scottish, I could actually be 3% more!
And of course, my (known and well-recorded) Scottish ancestors remain as Scottish in origin as they did before.
Back to the naming of Ancestry’s regions
As a final note… According to their FAQs:
‘We have a panel of outside subject-matter experts with local and scholarly expertise who can review our names for accuracy and cultural sensitivity.”
Read their description of ‘North East England’ and:
‘It stretches from County Durham in the south to the Scottish border in the north.’
It goes on from there, but with no mention of Cumbria at all.
Given the new regions of ‘North East England’ and ‘East Midlands,’ I’m guessing these ‘culturally sensitive’ experts don’t hail from Jedburgh, Carlisle, or Wakefield!