The same cousin match for both of my unrelated parents?

[Dora]

Hi all,

I have just discovered that both of my parents got a new match in the 5th - to remote cousin category - and it is the same person! My parents are not related and there is no affiliation between their families. Also, they are not Jewish and they don't belong to any particularly endogamous population. The only thing that comes to my mind is that my mother has some Jewish blood. The new cousin match appears to be Jewish. My father doesn't have Jewish blood, as far as I know. Is that strange double match a mistake?
Is this a common thing to happen? Maybe there was some connection between their families back in the past. Maybe she is somehow related to both of my parents, but of course it doesn't have to make my parents related to each other.
I wonder if anybody had similar situation! Quite funny!

[N21163]

Hi all,

I have just discovered that both of my parents got a new match in the 5th - to remote cousin category - and it is the same person! My parents are not related and there is no affiliation between their families. Also, they are not Jewish and they don't belong to any particularly endogamous population. The only thing that comes to my mind is that my mother has some Jewish blood. The new cousin match appears to be Jewish. My father doesn't have Jewish blood, as far as I know. Is that strange double match a mistake?
Is this a common thing to happen?
I wonder if anybody had similar situation! Quite funny!

Thanks for any ideas

This has happened in my family as well. My parents are not related but have 'mutual cousins'.

I would think that all this means is that this match shares ancestors through one line on your father's side and shares ancestors through another line on your mother's side.

[Dora]

Zitat,

Thank you for your answer! That's what I suspect as well, it sounds like the most probable solution. Did you find out anything more about your 'common cousins' and how your parents families are connected? Very interesting

[ltd-jean-pull]

There are people out there related to both my husband and I. My mother's paternal family held a family reunion a couple of decades ago. I met a young woman who is related to me, but her married surname was the same as my husband's grandmother's maiden name.

I've since worked out that her husband is a descendant of my husband's gtgt aunt who married a man with the same surname as herself! There is a chance that they were cousins of some sort. So her children would come up as a match to my husband and I and vice versa.

[Ann Turner]

Yes, double matches are more common than you might expect, but people are just noticing it now that you can sort on "Both." If you could make a list of all of the descendants of all of your ancestors, and likewise for your spouse, there could easily be some people who show up on both lists.

[georgian1950]

Yes, double matches are more common than you might expect, but people are just noticing it now that you can sort on "Both." If you could make a list of all of the descendants of all of your ancestors, and likewise for your spouse, there could easily be some people who show up on both lists.

I would go far as to say that most of us have parents who are related within the last 10 generations or 300 years. Is that enough to cause some unexpected results? Yes.

[stennor]

we're all cousins (eventually)

I suggest that the Family Finder match lists are neither as precise nor as reliable as they might appear to be, at least within the realistic framework of constructing one’s genealogy.

I have a reasonably thorough family tree in that I have the names of nearly half of my ancestors in the eighth generation, going back another several generations in some places. However, out of nearly 1100 Family Finder matches, there are, at most, only fifteen people with whom I’ve been able to verify a connection. Out of nearly fifty people designated 2nd-4th cousins, I've found the link with only nine.

My ancestry, as far as I know, is entirely Western European, so if I go back 25 generations (maybe to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, or thereabouts), the total of my ancestors, if there were no duplicates, would be approximately equivalent to the entire population of Western Europe.

Moreover, one source tells me that the most recent common ancestor of all Europeans (and therefore of migrants of European ancestry) lived about 600 years ago.

So I probably am related to all 1100 of my matches, but most of the connections probably lie so far back that we’ll never find them.

With all this in mind, your parents are quite likely “remote” cousins, but that’s cause for neither concern nor satisfaction.

[georgian1950]

With all this in mind, your parents are quite likely “remote” cousins, but that’s cause for neither concern nor satisfaction.

From a methodology viewpoint, it is very important. Some experts have used the growing segment size with child, or segment appearing which parents don't have as proof that small segments are false. What actually is happening is that DNA from both parents is reconstructing a valid segment for the common ancestor.

Jack

[Biblioteque]

Dora, how many cMs is the longest segment your parents share? If you drop the threshold do you pick up other segments?

[travers]

Dora, how many cMs is the longest segment your parents share? If you drop the threshold do you pick up other segments?

She never said her parents match each other, just that they share a match in common. As Ann Turner states this isn't anything unusual, the odds are that they are related to the person in different ways. If you think about it your paternal 1st cousins and your maternal 1st cousins will all share you as a match but obviously in most cases they aren't related to each other and are related to you through totally different lines.