Thursday, October 20, 2022

Some Observations on the New SideView Technology DNA Match Feature

In August AncestryDNA introduced SideView which split our ethnicity results by parent. Now AncestryDNA is using the same technology to sort our matches by parent. 

The new landing page for the split matches is very nice and provides a visualization of  information by parent which links to more in-depth information.

My mother tested with AncestryDNA so I was able to separate my own matches that way. Of course her parents, who died in the 1970s, couldn't  take a DNA test. This feature is helpful in her case, and helps me with kits I manage because none of those kits have tested parents. Below you can see matches are now marked maternal and paternal. 


As far as the names frequently shared with matches they tend to be just common surnames in the population ancestors lived in. In my case they do seem to have some significance. Looking at other kits they don't seem to relate to our direct shared lines. Wray, Browning, and Holloway are names on my maternal tree. The others are likely just very common names. Adams should be on my paternal side. 


When I saw that my mother had matches who were related to both of her parents I was at first confused? Her father had colonial American roots and her mother was Nicaraguan? Looking at who the matches they are one niece and two grandnieces, so of course they are related to both of her parents, and of course I'm also related on both sides. 


Actually the information I found the most interesting is the number of matches by parent. My mother has 4,492 matches on her Nicaraguan mother's side. It's interesting that many people with Nicaraguan and Central American ancestors have tested. 


On her father's side, he had colonial American ancestry, she has 26,142 ancestors. I still think 4,000 Nicaraguan matches is really good considering when I tested nearly a decade ago didn't find many at all. 
All new features like these are helpful, but we still could use a chromosome browser which would definitely make AncestryDNA the best place to test. 

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