Significance of "orcadian" on PF

[bkilpatrick]

Hello,

I'm new to Family Finder and this is my first post on the forum. Apologies in advance if my questions are naive.

I'd never heard the term "orcadian" until two days ago, when I finally got my PF results:

Europe Orcadian 100.00%

(Map of Great Britain shown in a solid color.)

From reading the forums, I've learned more about this, and I know many people with European ancestry have been getting similar results.

In my case, though, there's actually a reasonable fit, at least for half my ancestry, which is definitely Scottish. (My father's family all emigrated from Glasgow in the 1920s.)

But the other half of my ancestry is Slovenian. (Mother's ancestors emigrated from Slovenia ca. 1900-10.)

So I'm wondering how I should understand this 100% orcadian population match. Does it just mean generic western/central European, or is it actually picking up on my half-Scottish genes? Does it suggest I might actually have ancestry in the Orkney Islands?

And what about those Slovenians?

Thanks!

Blair

[mkdexter]

There is no way to distinguish Scottish and Orcadian in the 62 samples PF uses to present your results. To do so would require Scottish samples and those are not used in PF.

Do you have Orcadian above the map? Or just below the map? It makes a difference.

Orcadian above the map does mean a lot of Orkney Island SNPs matched, enough to be assigned an actual population group.

Orcadian below the map and listed after Western European means you matched a sub-continental Western Euro group. If this is the case then no you are probably not from the Orkney Islands but instead from something like English, Irish, Scottish or maybe a tiny bit from the Orkney Islands but nothing strictly Orkney Island.

MD

[bkilpatrick]

It's orcadian below the map. (And it's just plain Europe, not even specified as western.)

Makes sense, in light of your "above vs. below" explanation

I'd suspect something was off if the test suggested a 100% match to Scotland, much less the Orkney Islands, since I know half my ancestry is Slovenian (which might not even show up as western European.)

Thanks very much for the helpful reply.

[mkdexter]

In that case it picked up your Scottish and Slavonic and probably other mixes in there but nothing specific, more of a dilution in the mix. Europe by itself is a broad assignment, saying your SNPs were non-specific, yet with Orcadian as the closest sample it could match to, but not too close.

It picked up multiple sub-continental groups (Western, Eastern, etc., ) and that is why just the European and not Western Euro. Looks like it got all of you.

[mkdexter]

This might be a good time to expand on this question of why are so many showing Orcadian in the PF results. This is my non-scientific way of describing this so I hope it is helpful.

--------

The PF assignment you are given is ABOVE the map and a % is shown.

That population group shown BELOW the map is only the closest sample(s) group matched to and not the assignment. The % below the map is the PF assignment.

--------

So what does that word Orcadian actually translate to then if its not the PF % assignment? Here's a few examples that you might see if looking below the map printout.

European xx%, Orcadian
A diluted European PF assignment with multiple sub-continental groups such as Western and Eastern, or Western and Southern. Orcadian is the sample that told PF you had a European continental match.

European (Western) xx%, Orcadian
More of a English, Irish, Scottish, and a few other non-sampled groups that are similar. Orcadian is the sample reference but not necessarily meaning ancestry from the Orkney Islands. In this case it placed the person in the Western Euro group and none of the other western Euro samples were significant to show up. Remember there are some Western Euro populations with no samples in PF such as those I mentioned here plus more, German for example.

European (Western) xx%, Orcadian, French, Spanish, Tuscan
Same as above but showing that other population sample groups were found too, but all of them are within the Western Euro continental grouping. If just in the Western Euro grouping then a person will avoid the generic European Continental assignment and have this more specific Western assignment. There are varations to which other samples besides Orcadian show up of course, sometimes even not listing Orcadian even though it was used to initially assign stage 1 of the PF calculation to European.

Here's what a real Orcadian by itself match would look like:

Orcadian xx%, Orcadian
This is going to be the only case where an Orkney Islands match is found - this would be extremely rare as the Orcadian SNP matches are from a broad range in the Western European areas as are many European SNPs. I doubt we will ever see this in PF anyway.

Hope this helps understand more about what we are seeing when people see that word Orcadian. In every case I've seen its been the reference group and listed below the map, meaning the people are not really Orcadian by itself but that they are Western Euro and things like that. Its just a reference being used to assign European initially and to assign Western European in a lot of cases.


MD.

[rainbow]

I was wondering when someone would bring that up.
I didn't do FTDNA FF/PF, but my 23andme data was re-analyzed by Dr. McDonald this past week and I was told I'm 92% Orkney (Orcadian). I know I am 1/4 Slovakian.
Slovenian and Slovakian aren't the same same thing, but both are Eastern European.


Maybe a lot of those reference-data Orcadians are half Polish?

[ojosAzules]

similar experience

Hello Blair, Matt, All,

I have similar experience.

My Father is solidly Western European, with some British Isles, but also
German(but likely mixed w/Polish), and I suspect some Spanish.

My Mother is solidly 1/2 Polish(from area deep within Poland),
Slovak, Slovenian, and maybe even gypsy/Jewish.

and here are my results:
Europe (Western European) Orcadian 88.62 (margin of error 2.16)
Middle East Adygei, Iranian 11.38 (margin of error 2.16)

Even assuming I inherited more autosomal DNA from my Father, 88.62 percent is just too high.

[bkilpatrick]

Thanks so much, Matt, for that great, detailed reply! I know it's helped me and I'm sure many others.

Nice to hear from some others who share that ever-popular British/Slavic ancestral mix :-)

I guess what threw me with the orcadian label was that I do, in fact, have such clear and recent Scottish ancestry.

I actually signed on to FTDNA mainly because of my interest in exploring my Slovenian roots. Did the mtDNA, got just a couple of matches. But on FF, I have about a dozen "5th and more distant" cousins. In every case but one, it seems that the connection has to be through shared and, in their cases, distant Scottish ancestry, going back to the U.S. colonial era.

[Kasandra]

While what Matt says is clearly correct regarding the Orkney part of things, it is also true that PF is pretty much fubar currently. It's nice that it picked up your Scottish half but how PF can completely ignore your Eastern European half demonstrates that it's clearly not working as intended yet. I just hope people come to the forum before spending too much time trying to figure out how they got that Middle Eastern ancestor that so many are reporting. Just this morning I got an e-mail from a DNA cousin who was all excited trying to figure out who her Middle Eastern ancestor is. oy vey :-)

[mkdexter]

This is something I remembered I read earlier and went back and found it. I sort of goes with this thread. It is a quote from Dr. McDonald from the forum called dna-forums.org:

"I can answer the Orkney/German problem.

The DNA changes VERY slowly as one moves east from Scotland to Lithuania. It is VERY hard to distinguish the east-west position there, especially without a Baltic or eastern Polish sample. Germans are very very close to the middle-north British and Scottish.

Distinguishing accurately within Europe is very very hard if you wish to allow for mixed people. If you assume everyone has all their ancestry from one place, it is much easier, but you need lots and lots of comparison populations ... which are not available in Europe unless they use their own clients as comparions.

Most scientific European populations tests are locked up tight as clams and can't be used.

Doug McDonald"

[Red Rover]

Dienekes has a relevant blog post today on how it is important to pick the right populations in order to get proper admixture estimates.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/03/note-of-caution-on-admixture-estimates.html

[royfarnol]

European populations tests

Most scientific European populations tests are locked up tight as clams and can't be used.

Doug McDonald"[/I][/QUOTE]

Really? Is this so? If so, why?

I know, for example, of a couple of Russian websites whose content seems very open and accessible. Can't speak for Slovakia.

[rainbow]

I was wondering when someone would bring that up.
I didn't do FTDNA FF/PF, but my 23andme data was re-analyzed by Dr. McDonald this past week and I was told I'm 92% Orkney (Orcadian). I know I am 1/4 Slovakian.
Slovenian and Slovakian aren't the same same thing, but both are Eastern European.


Maybe a lot of those reference-data Orcadians are half Polish?

I wasn't really joking. Some Orcadians could be half Polish, but just don't know it.
I've heard there are a lot of Polish workers living in Scotland and have been for some time.

[Red Rover]

Most scientific European populations tests are locked up tight as clams and can't be used.

Doug McDonald"[/I]

Really? Is this so? If so, why?

I know, for example, of a couple of Russian websites whose content seems very open and accessible. Can't speak for Slovakia.[/QUOTE]

It is probably due to all the money it costs to collect the samples and pay for the dna tests so they don't want to release it for free before they complete their research.

[DelawareNative]

Very interesting Dienekes article - as always. This is very relevant to a person such as myself considering I'm NA and my Population Finder results reflect no such origin.