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Years ago, I took both the Ancestry test and the 23AndMe test (something I wouldn't do now--I hadn't thought through the consequences of having my DNA out there). I'd grown up thinking I was German/English on Dad's side (mostly German; all four of his grandparents emigrated from Germany) and a mix of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh on Mom's side, with possibly a single Cherokee ancestor who didn't come into the family willingly, or so the story goes. I wasn't considering where my many-times great-grandparents might've lived so I was unprepared for my results. The first time, Ancestry told me yes, I'm German and English and Irish and Scottish and Welsh, but it also told me I was Swedish and Russian. 23AndMe noted I was indeed German and English and Irish but also threw in some French, Scandinavian, Polish (Dad always joked about us being Polish but the German ancestors who dwelled in Prussia when it was a German territory or whatever migrated before the area they were from became Poland) and a smattering of Italian and Balkan.

Over the years, to my surprise, my results changed almost yearly as more folks sent in swabs. 23AndMe just sent me a new and VERY detailed breakdown of my ancestry...still 100% European (was the Cherokee ancestor just a tall tale or did I not inherit any of that?) but now I'm more English than German. I'm more Welsh than Irish or Scottish, despite my maternal grandmother having a relatively Irish name. Austria has now entered the chat, as has Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Switzerland, Iceland, Belarus, Ukraine, Denmark, (Northern) Spain and Portugal. Russia and Sweden have apparently bounced.

(ETA--they shockingly nailed where Mom's family came from in America: the Blue Ridge mountains, western North Carolina and the Coosawattee River Basin which is between Blue Ridge, GA and Atlanta)

Another thing that fascinates me about the ancestry tests: I've known siblings who were absolutely positive they have the same mothers and fathers and yet their results vary slightly. Native American ancestry shows up in about half of my bff's siblings' DNA, as does Ashkenazi Jewish (both in tiny percentages), but not in hers. Which makes me a little suspect of her claim that one of her grandmothers was a Delaware Indian medicine woman...but I've been suspect of that claim for years as she originally vowed she was "100% Sicilian".

Genetics is weird <g>.