More evidence that Ancestry.com’s formula for Italian ethnicity is skewed

Author's note: This post is now out of date! Ancestry has updated it's database and formula. I will leave this post online for posterity, but Ancestry has made huge strides with it's April 2022 update. Read about it here: 

Ancestry makes big advance with its April 2022 update

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It’s official. Ancestry.com’s formula for determining Tuscan ethnicity is seriously fouled up—and I now have DNA ethnicity tests and genealogical data I needed to prove it.

I’ve written about this before in Are new Ancestry algorithms ignoring northern and central Italians? But even as I criticized the company, I wondered what would happen if one of my Italian cousins from Tuscany took the test. I and all of my first cousins in America can be considered tainted because each of us has one parent who came from somewhere other than Tuscany. All of our parents who were born to Tuscans Michele Spadoni and Anita Seghieri have passed away, so we can’t test them.

Most of my Italian American cousins come out more French than Italian, which is confusing, since I’ve researched most of Michele’s and Anita’s family lines back to Tuscany from at least the 17th century, and many lines much further—some even to the 1200s. I have found birth records for every Italian ancestor on the Italian side of the family going back to all 16 of my third great grandparents. Each one was born in the same valley in Italy, the Valdinievole (roughly between Lucca and Montecatini), or just a few miles away. All of the surnames are common to our little region of Tuscany. All of my first cousins should be approximately half Italian, but none test more than 11%. One tested 0 percent Italian and 45% French.

Anna Giuntoli Hughes

However, I recently made contact with Annamaria Giuntoli, a second cousin of my dad. She was born in Italy, and her parents were also from families rooted in Tuscany. Names in her family history fill up the Valdinievole regional archives: Giuntoli, Magrini, Grassi, Capocchi, Montanelli, Pinelli, Pieretti, Bellandi, Pucci. Six of those names are also in our direct line of ancestry.

So what does Ancestry.com say about Anna’s ethnicity, which should be close to 100% Tuscan Italian. It says she is 49% Italian and 51% French. The ethnicity estimate becomes even more inaccurate with her son Marco’s test. Anna married a British man, so one would think that Marco would test around 25% Italian and 25% French, right? Nope, his Ancestry.com test says he is 54% British, only 2% Italian and 35% French—indicating that the genes he inherited from Anna were actually much more French than Italian.

Another cousin who should be close to pure Tuscan is Joan (Seghieri) Reiling, born to Dante Marcucci Seghieri and Maria Luisa Togneri. Both surnames have long roots in Tuscany. Joan tests 50% Italian, 44% French and 6% from Greece and Balkans. Her grandson Michael tests as 0% Italian and 10% French.

Still another cousin Vilma Ferranti Mott, now deceased, was born to Gabriella Montanelli of Montecarlo and Giuseppe Ferranti of Villa Basilica, both small towns in the province of Lucca. Her results: 44% French, 54% Italian.

This explains a lot about why the ethnicity results for me and my cousins are so skewed toward French. Somehow, Ancestry.com’s algorithms find Tuscans to be roughly a half-and-half mixture of French and Italian. History does not support this odd admixture. Except for the invasion of the Gauls in the years 200 to 400 BC, inland Tuscany has never received an influx of French immigrants. If anything, the opposite is true, as social scientist Robin Cohen reports: “About 5 million French nationals are of Italian origin, if their parentage is retraced over three generations.” And according to official Eurostat data for 2012, the number of Italian citizens residing in France was 174,000. Wikipedia says of Marseille, France, that “in the first half of the 20^th century, up to 40% of the city’s population was of Italian origin.”

Why is this discrepancy important? I find it disturbing that so many Italian Americans with Tuscan roots, most of whom speak proudly of their heritage, are disappointed and shocked to be told they are more French than Italian. No offense meant to our French neighbors, who also have good reason to be proud, but isn’t it better to know the truth of our origins and have our pride placed in the right country?

Another sad result of the problem is that some people now wrongfully suspect their grandparents of infidelity. One of my cousins commented, “My mom and several of her siblings have had their results come back as French, with no trace of Italian. It has us all flummoxed. We we were thinking my grandfather must have had a different father (out of wedlock).”

I’ve experienced a lot of pleasure from my hobby of genealogy, and I give credit and high ratings to Ancestry.com for its researching tools. It has been a kick connecting with new relatives that I’ve found through DNA matching. But I sincerely hope the company irons out the problems in its methods of determining Italian heritage.

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Update (Sept. 17, 2020): In the summer of 2020, Ancestry revised its formula again. Big improvements! They now recognize the ethnic group of Northern Italy. They still have too much France in there, but Anna Giuntoli is now listed as 69% Northern Italy and 5% Southern Italy, a total of 74% Italian. The French is still in there at 21%, but this is a major step in the right direction! In addition, her son Marco is now listed as 18% Northern Italy and 10% France.

Even more encouraging is that Vilma Ferranti was changed from 44% French and 54% Italian to 84% Northern Italian and 14% Southern Italian. Keep it the good work, Ancestry.