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View Full Version : Ancestry’s gone mad.

HarrysMum
15-10-22, 11:00
Just looked at my DNA and the most common names on my father’s side are Brown, Batman, Grant. I don’t have any Browns.
Phoenix
15-10-22, 11:14
Well, I have at least three Browns in my wider tree. Only one of which is an ancestor.

Dad's side:
Bartlett
Allen
Abbott
Rogers

None of which appear in my tree, but they must be very popular names. Just not among my ancestors.
Phoenix
15-10-22, 11:20
And looking at Bartlett, it's spread pretty evenly between both sides of the family.
kiterunner
15-10-22, 13:25
It's showing the most common surnames in the trees of some of your closest matches, Libby, not in your own tree. Brown is a very common surname so I think it is showing as most common for a lot of people. I know it is showing as a most common surname for my matches, but my actual Brown line isn't my biological line so I know it is just a coincidence.
Margaret in Burton
15-10-22, 13:28
I don’t recognise a lot of the names either and they all begin with A and B. I have a huge Mortlock tree and not mentioned at all.
HarrysMum
15-10-22, 20:12
Thanks. I thought it was in my tree. No idea of the use of it then.
kiterunner
15-10-22, 22:56
It may be more useful to people who are trying to fill in a gap, e.g. unknown father. But I do think it needs some tweaking. The surnames it is showing me on my mother's side are useless but the ones on my father's side do actually include a couple of genuinely connected ones. And looking at my Dad's list of surnames on his father's side, four of them look genuine.
Phoenix
16-10-22, 08:50
For Best Mate, who was told her father wasn't her father, his surname is there. She is Ancestry's dream: I can instantly look at the surnames and know which side is which. But that is because her father's surname populates an entire village, and she has 60 DNA matches with a single pair of common ancestors on her Mum's side. (I am jealous!)
Kit
18-10-22, 20:11
How do you see common surnames?
kiterunner
18-10-22, 21:42
View DNA matches by parent and you should see them.
Kit
18-10-22, 22:36
How do you see common surnames?
kiterunner
18-10-22, 22:56
How do you see common surnames?

View DNA matches by parent and you should see them.
Kit
22-10-22, 00:22
View DNA matches by parent and you should see them.

Thank you and sorry for the double post. I think I double clicked and one didn't show.
Phoenix
22-10-22, 08:44
Because my cousin as so few matches assigned to each parent, I've been examining them individually, and deleting the no hopers. Interestingly, from the soup of irrelevancies, family names are starting to emerge, as Ancestry does update this as changes are made.