I remember my grandmother had that too, though she did have it fixed and was around 70-ish when they did so. Curious, as it's her husband who had the apparently Scandinavian-derived name (Youll, impossible to search for thanks to every other article having "you'll" in it. Awesome. )

Dunno what my DNA would say: very pale and burnable skin and dark-coloured eyes seems to just be unnecessarily bloody-minded. As far as I can tell, it's mostly Scottish, and most of the rest northern English (including S*nderland D: ) with a branch of Irish and a couple from the USA thrown in, but who knows what means...

I wonder at my own. My Mother was a Southern California girl. Yet her skin was white as snow. Never did tan at all. From her side is my Cherokee Indian blood (Great-Great Grandmother, I think), which I wonder at. She also has a generous helping of English blood, too. My Father, on the other hand, was always tanned and he has more Scottish blood, his line of the family spending some time Nova Scotia Myself, I have always tanned easily. My 2 summers as a lifeguard saw me almost black

Like others, I have a good mix in my own blood, making me a mutt, too

Cool! Any relation to the artist, Paul Youll? He has done some book covers that I enjoy

Yea, sometimes the least desirable traits get dumped on us, yes?

My Dad is 96, far too old to cope with another op - he had it fixed once but either it's another finger that's doing it or something went wrong. There are no Scandinavian names in the family tree and it's only this condition that points to that ancestry.

I've always had very pale skin too, from my mother's Scottish side, only teamed with blue-gray eyes. My father is half Romany and tans easily. There's apparently some Irish in there too.

Interestingly, I only found out about the Romany background ten years ago - it was something of a shameful family secret (though weirdly a fortune teller told me I had Romany ancestry when I was only 17). Partly because my grandmother was supposed to have second sight which my father claims was passed on to him. This is in a Christian fundamentalist family, so it's easy to see why this was hushed up. Apparently they could both see ghosts and were clairvoyant, though they tried to suppress their 'gifts', according to their religious beliefs. I've long considered my father borderline psychotic and from descriptions of his 'clairvoyant' experiences that turned out to be true it sounds no more than cold reading and confirmation bias.

Apparently there was a Spey-wife (fortune teller) in the Scots side of the family at some point too.

I'm really envious of all these people with Native American heritage - that always seemed a really cool thing to have.

I've read once that Europeans are a relatively homogeneous group, having derived from different founding populations that migrated into the continent during different periods of prehistory. Researchers did identify fine regional differences in the genetic history of Britain that also suggest migration and isolation. For example, south-east and central England is a relatively homogeneous population, but Saxon ancestry accounts for only 10-40%, indicating intermingling between Anglo-Saxon migrants and established indigenous Romano-British population.

Here is the article on British population genetics.

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14230.epdf?referrer_access_token=OBEnhCHnYDRFLP6djl8aetRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MiE0_B2kFTYAb64eH_EPxJeiJzg7Mfl6MEBC6p_EUzUl2TurV2pYso8RmPYSTSQGwVtnFDRIQV0ef7PxcIDxD_S_37penFNxeYZKVgOKTcEnGZ1MbA1AM81cWbyDY3u09MMj33lty7cUjLv0aej_Ptauf_UKIj7Fl0d6l2bTwKuQ%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com

Thanks for that I'll give it a read.

￡22 to read the full article - ouch!

Edit: a nice precis of the study http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/science/study-reveals-genetic-path-of-modern-britons.html?_r=0.

It's essentially a con. Yes they can give very vague assessments, but they cannot do as they claim. You aren't going to get 20% English 10% german or whatever, just very broad ideas of where you are from. It all becomes very complicated as no populations have exact genetic markers that distinguish them. A lot of guesswork is involved. You are better off tracing your named lineage.

My wife has her own opinion of my background and no DNA test will ever change it.

but, has anybody gone so far as to find the cost of this?

Rapp is my last name. We're Swede soldiers who settled in Germany after one of those continental wars. My great great came to America to beat the draft in one of Germany's first wars with France. All of this has a paper trail. Records are more reliable than DNA metrics, I think.

Looking at your avatar, I'd say... Nordic? Blonde hair and all that?

I have not looked into the cost. DNA tests used to be expensive, but they may have come down in price. Really, I have no interest in pursuing this because:

I'd believe a paper trail over a DNA "guesstimate" any day

Neanderthal more like it.