Celebrate all the sides of your ethnicity

Ali Clemesha

I am your typical looking Aussie girl, a blonde, blue eyed, surfer who grew up in the Eastern Suburbs. Once I decided to do the AncestryDNA test, I waited eagerly for the results, discussing it with my family, my co-workers and even my clients. When I received them, I was very surprised.

“My initial thought after getting my results was, "Wow my ethnicity is a serious mix!"”

My dad’s side of the family is English, tracing back to the Norman Conquest. And my Mum’s side is Italian and Maltese. I grew up very proud of my heritage, attending gatherings with my huge Italian family and hearing stories from my Nonna. And I would bring my Mum’s creative antipasto choices and foods like the Arabic dish Molokhia to school.

Before taking the AncestryDNA test, I truly believed I was made up of only Italian, Maltese and British blood. I was surprised to find the strongest part of my ethnicity is actually from Western Europe – and that my ethnic mix included traces from 10 different world regions.

The biggest shock for me was that I was a small percentage North African. West Asian was also something I certainly did not expect, honestly they were all a big surprise. It seems there is a lot more to my heritage than I expected, which has really raised a number of questions for me.

Mark Carter

Identity is an interesting concept. Many people like to believe that they define their own identity. But in reality there’s much more to it than the decisions we make in our own lives. For example, how much is nature and how much is nurture? How much are we defined by the people around us? Or society, even?

“I started considering how much of my identity was defined by my family history.”

Having given these questions much thought, I thought a good starting point would be to look back and start researching my own family history. When I was young I always thought I was 100% British. My Dad was born in Edgware and my mum in Hampshire. Of course, none of us are truly 100% British and as I got older I learnt that my Dad had Russian great-grandparents on one side and German on the other, and that my great grand-parents on my mother’s side were Greek. So I suppose this is when I started considering how much of my identity was defined by my family history.

When I found out about AncestryDNA, I thought this could be the perfect tool to pinpoint where my family emigrated over the past few hundred years (AncestryDNA can actually go back 1000 years) and give me a focus where to take my search next. When I got the email that my results were ready I felt like a kid on Christmas day. They revealed that I was only 40% British, 25% German and 35% Greek. I’ve now focused my search on these three countries and already discovered ancestors I never knew existed.

Isabel Rojas

People often look at me and wonder what I am. I’ve always known I was a mix, like a minestrone soup, and the more I’ve found out about my family’s past and heritage, the more my own identity has changed and evolved.

“People often look at me and wonder what I am.”

I was born in NYC, the youngest of five kids. My parents and three older siblings were born in Bogota, Colombia. My name implies Hispanico/Latino roots but when I’m with my Polynesian friends people always think I’m Hawaiian or a mix of Polynesian and something else. I recently attended a Nepali church service and people asked me what part of Nepal I was from.

As my dad and I have begun to explore our genealogy over the past seven years or so, we’ve found that our family is largely from Spain, which is no big surprise. Colombians have a wide range of ethnicities, which explains why many Colombians, including my mother, have white or fair skin with blue eyes. My dad also suspects we have German ancestry somewhere back there.

A friend of mine knew I had been working on my family history and bought me an AncestryDNA kit for my birthday. My results were surprising to say the least. I discovered I’m 35% Native American, 5% African and 29% from the Iberian Peninsula. This has drastically broadened the way I think about my identity and heritage. I feel connected to those parts of the world now and I’m excited to see how far back our records can go.