MyHeritage DNA Balkans category refers to the dinaric / epirotic race?

You have given the best explanation, they have no clue what they are talking about. Balkan genetic is not like English, Swedish or Irish genetics. The peoples faces show the genetic mix of Caucasian populations , it has been the melting pot for reasons of civilizations developed in the area. I was watching with my wife the Swedish soccer team. When they were substituting their players we thought that the new player was already playing because they looked the same on tv . Also we had the same problem with Korean team. That because of not diverse genetics.

Greek should not be as reference genetically because is very mixed. Then the stupidities comes from taking Greek as reference. Albanians score 90% Greek in average, Greeks score around 55% in average. That mean Albanians are more Greeks in their DNA than Greeks, How stupid can that be for a company calling themselves scientific. If Albanians score more Greek than Greeks why are they called Albanians.
I suspect Greeks work in this company since they have very large immigrant population and from they desire to keep Greek as special the idiocy comes out

You are completely ignorant of population genetics.

@everyone else, I recommend placing this t-roll on your ignore list.
 
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Hello Tutkun Arnaut,
Yes, Greeks are considerably mixed like most other Balkan peoples. But I don't think many Greeks work in the company, since MyHeritage is an Israeli company with its headquarters being in Or Yehuda in Israel. Maybe their categorisation of the Balkan region as well as their reference populations are not ideal but I really find it quite improbable that this is because of Greeks working in it, LOL :-D



It could be headquartered in Israel, but its designed for USA and other ethnically mixed countries like Canada, Australia. Does not have an European audience. And in this countries its employees are among others Greeks. Its a moneymaking machine. You mean its not stupid to tell an Albanian you are 93% Greek? If they don't have the accuracy why dont they use the general term Southern European?
 
It could be headquartered in Israel, but its designed for USA and other ethnically mixed countries like Canada, Australia. Does not have an European audience. And in this countries its employees are among others Greeks. Its a moneymaking machine. You mean its not stupid to tell an Albanian you are 93% Greek? If they don't have the accuracy why dont they use the general term Southern European?
Look, I have really no intention of attacking you on a personal level (on the contrary!), I just find your idea irrational...These kind of results can be inaccurate, but the reason behind this inaccuracy can certainly not be the company's Greek employees, even if there would be many in it (which I still doubt). It can be due to indeed as someone said, using Greek AND Albanian samples as reference WITHIN the "Greek" category. If I remember right Geneplaza's K29 calculator also has a category called "Greek/Albanian" for which I score the same percentage more or less as for the "Greek" of myHeritage. Greeks and Albanians are even closer to each other genetically than to other Balkan peoples, anyway (and imagine that the Balkans are already very homogeneous genetically). The company has a growing database (many Europeans test there too, also because of its much lower price), so maybe results will improve over time. Maybe they will also adapt their classification of ethnicities (like both 23andme and Ancestry recently did).
To add to the above, there is also some considerable Arvanite admixture in many Greeks, like myself (maybe also some Greek admixture in some Southern Albanians). So for all of the above reasons, I believe that there is at the moment this issue of inaccuracy.
You don't have to take the inaccuracy personally, or feel offended by it or think that this inaccuracy is caused "on purpose" against the Albanians or in favor of the Greeks. This stops being rational. I can imagine you are not happy with your results, they do look inaccurate indeed, there are many possible reasons to account for this inaccuracy but that's it, according to me. If one feels the need to do so, they can even transfer their results for free to many other vendors and have a second opinion. It's all a game of "guesstimates" anyway.
 
Look, I have really no intention of attacking you on a personal level (on the contrary!), I just find your idea irrational...These kind of results can be inaccurate, but the reason behind this inaccuracy can certainly not be the company's Greek employees, even if there would be many in it (which I still doubt). It can be due to indeed as someone said, using Greek AND Albanian samples as reference WITHIN the "Greek" category. If I remember right Geneplaza's K29 calculator also has a category called "Greek/Albanian" for which I score the same percentage more or less as for the "Greek" of myHeritage. Greeks and Albanians are even closer to each other genetically than to other Balkan peoples, anyway (and imagine that the Balkans are already very homogeneous genetically). The company has a growing database (many Europeans test there too, also because of its much lower price), so maybe results will improve over time. Maybe they will also adapt their classification of ethnicities (like both 23andme and Ancestry recently did).
To add to the above, there is also some considerable Arvanite admixture in many Greeks, like myself (maybe also some Greek admixture in some Southern Albanians). So for all of the above reasons, I believe that there is at the moment this issue of inaccuracy.
You don't have to take the inaccuracy personally, or feel offended by it or think that this inaccuracy is caused "on purpose" against the Albanians or in favor of the Greeks. This stops being rational. I can imagine you are not happy with your results, they do look inaccurate indeed, there are many possible reasons to account for this inaccuracy but that's it, according to me. If one feels the need to do so, they can even transfer their results for free to many other vendors and have a second opinion. It's all a game of "guesstimates" anyway.

Look! They should know better as scientific company they are. Greek reference makes no sense at all. See the samples posted of Turks, they have posted a lot on you tube, they on average score around 40% Greek. But they are not Greeks, their DNA supposedly Greek is local. Not All Turks came from central Asia, majority of them, I would say 80% have been there since the down of humanity, and have no Greek connection at all.. The term Southern European or some other general term is appropriate. They, the company should be sued for lying to people, telling them untruths and charging them for that. Why dont they use the same term for Northern Europe? To tell French that they are 50% German? because they will get sued, and screwd
 
I don't share your passionate feelings, sorry...I was personally found to be more Balkan than Greek by them and I just tried to reason logically about it and to understand it better from different viewpoints, not necessarily taking it for granted but questioning it to some degree.
As far as the Turks are concerned, to my knowledge they have considerable Greek admixture which is due to many factors. I am not an expert but I have a general idea. Firstly, ancient Greek tribes (Iones, Lydians, Aeolians etc.) have inhabitted the coast of Asia Minor since antiquity together with other Pre-hellenic and Anatolian peoples. All of them together form a significant Greco-Anatolian basis which characterizes the area and plays a role in the genetic makeup of modern-day Turks. Also a great number of Romioi (Greeks) were turkified during the era of the Ottoman occupation. Similarly and on top of this modern Turks have also considerable Balkan admixture due to similar reasons. Besides, they are also mixed with Kurds, Armenians etc. and others but I will try not expanding here. Of course they have also retained a good amount of Mongolic admixture ranging from 1-20% if I remember right.
I agree that myHeritage exaggerate their percentages but some Greek admixture certainly exists in many Turks. Maybe having Greek as a separate category could be revised, but remember that even other bigger companies are still "experimenting" a bit with their categories (eg. Ancestry's Italy and Greece recently became Greece and the Balkans: that is a huge leap, isn't it?). Anyway, according to me this is all very interesting and one can learn a lot through it, but per definition only by having an open, rational, questioning and comparative spirit and attitude. Otherwise, I am afraid that one crosses the limit and goes from science or at least, statistics :) to ideology or even propaganda.
 
I am 4,9% South Asian and 2,7% Japanese. Non of my parents have them.

Did I mentioned that my mom 5,9% Chinese Result? But we two brothers none have.

so don't take serious the results.

Also Siberian admixture named as Eskimo/Inuit. We are not Turkificate Eskimo. Eskimo and Turks share common Siberian ancestry. This is different.
 
and that is strange
for example κουκουλιτσα is a word that can be found even in Turkish,
my grand father called my aunt koykoylitsa, means the silk worm when is in it cell.

while κοσυβιτσα surely has a Slavic endind.


Hello Yetos,

Possible explanations for Kosovista, Koukoulitsa, Gretsista (the following is a dialogue between me and two Serbians, the last comment contains the best explanation for Koukoulitsa as Slavic toponym):

-Kosovista is probably from the term for a blackbird, "кос". It has the same root as Kosovo. Koukoulitsa is maybe from the Greek term for doll, "koukla"? That term is present in the Bulgarian language also, as a loanword from Greek with the same meaning, and it's often used when naming certain mountain peaks or hilltops. I don't know why it is used in that way.
smiley.gif
Although, maybe it doesn't come from that word at all, but it sure has a recognizable Slavic ending (-itsa). Gretsista also has a Slavic ending, but I have no idea what the first part would mean (Gretsi), maybe Greeks?

- For Kosovitsa I found indeed the same explanation as you did. BTW I think that the same black bird in Greek is called kotsifi (its etymology seems to be ancient Greek). This village name must really be Slavic.

For Koukoulitsa I have my doubts too. It has the typical slavic ending -itsa. Koukouli in Greek means cocoon (eg. of silk worms). Koukla is indeed doll and the two words (cocoon+doll) seem to be related. Also I think that in Albanian kukulla is doll. I did not know that places like mountain peaks and hilltops are named like this in Bulgarian. This could also be connected to the name of the village.

According to an explanation I found, Gretsista indeed means place of the Greeks (probably Slavic).

- Kukuljica in Serbo-Croatian means the pupal stage of insect growth, after the larval stage. I believe it it etymologically similar to the Greek koukouli. Kukuljica is in fact a toponym in Bosnia and Herzegovina - see http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=kukuljica Similar toponyms include Kukulje in Montenegro and Kukulja in Bulgaria.
Grecište or Grečište could indeed indicate place of the Greeks, but the construction seems off. In Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, the construction would be Grcište, or even Grčište. The Bulgarian variation for Grčište is Гърчище, or roughly Garčište. The variation seen in Greece must come from some dialectal construction denoting the Greeks as Greci, not Grci or Garci as seen in the standardized South Slavic languages. It's certainly not unknown that Greece has been called Grecija by the Slavs, so the term Greci shouldn't be totally foreign to us.

An interesting result showed up when searching "гречиште" (grečište), which side by side translations of phrases in Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish. The term гречиште corresponds to Albanian "greqishte", which is a reflex of the word "greqisht" signifying the adjective "Greek", in this case specifically Greek language. (source)

There is another toponym, in Russia and Ukraine, гречище (grečišče), but I'm not sure the meaning of the toponym.

- In the Greek language there is no way someone could pronounce Grcište without any vowel in between, :) so it's very probable that the initial word just took an extra vowel in between. Otherwise, it could be indeed connected to these other options you mention. Interesting that a similar version exists as toponym in Russia and the Ukraine.

Kukuljica is another interesting case. The etymology of koukouli is Latin so it could be that both Greeks and Slavs borrowed it from the Latin language. The construction of the toponym with the ending -itsa is typical of Slavic toponyms I would think. The same toponym exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina etc. as you say (!)That is also why the village has been renamed to Koukoulia (plural of koukouli) which sounds and is more Greek.
 
People get all upset about these admixtures thinking that you actually came from these populations. It means nothing of the sort. This is all statistics (least squares) with respect to reference populations. In AncestryDNA I am only 47% Italian/Greek which has since been revised to Europe South. I bet you I have absolutely no Italian blood. I have no idea if I have any Greek blood in me either. My folks were farmers that lived in Eastern Thrace until 1922.They probably had been there since antiquity, an autochthonous population that shares a lot of of genetic markers with Greeks. I also share a lot of genetic markers with "Eastern Europeans" (31%). Does that mean that I have Bulgarian or Romanian or Ukranian blood? Probably not, but the autochthonous populations in the Balkans shared a lot of common characteristics. I also have 19% Caucasus. Does that mean I have Armenian blood? Probably not. Out of all that Ancestry says that I am very likely to come from Greece, Albania or Turkey, particularly West Turkey which makes perfect sense. Let's say that during the Ottoman occupation my family was turkified. Ethnically I would be a Turk but genetically I would cluster closer with Greeks and Albanians. Or let's say that during the Bulgarian occupation of Eastern Thrace my ancestors learned to speak Bulgarian and so were exchanged to Bulgaria after 1922. Ethnically I would be a Bulgarian which I am very close to genetically but I would also be clustering with Greeks. Please do not take these tests so seriously.
 
Bigsnake49, we seem to be looking at stuff in the same way. ;)
 
Aleksandra, please can you verify if the ending in both toponymus is -itsa, or - ista. Because i see that you are using both forms. Thanks in advance.
 
Bigsnake49, we seem to be looking at stuff in the same way. ;)

Yeah, once I understood the way these genetic tests work it was kind of, ehhhh...it was fun but don't bet any money on it. The other thing is that you get different results from different testing services. On myheritage I am 59% Greek, 33% Balkan, 5.9% Scandinavian and 2.9% Ashkenazi. What? No Caucasus? What happened to it? It is exactly the same test (Ancestry) that I uploaded to myheritage.com. How can they be so different? It is a matter of different reference populations and maybe even different algorithms. LivingDNA was even worse. I uploaded both the ancestryDNA and living DNA to GEDMatch and did some admixture test with Oracle. Depending on the GEDMatch test, I mostly cluster with Greeks and then sometimes with Bulgarians and Romanians. But what was remarkable was how close the GEDMatch admixture results were when using the two different raw inputs.
 
People get all upset about these admixtures thinking that you actually came from these populations. It means nothing of the sort. This is all statistics (least squares) with respect to reference populations. In AncestryDNA I am only 47% Italian/Greek which has since been revised to Europe South. I bet you I have absolutely no Italian blood. I have no idea if I have any Greek blood in me either. My folks were farmers that lived in Eastern Thrace until 1922.They probably had been there since antiquity, an autochthonous population that shares a lot of of genetic markers with Greeks. I also share a lot of genetic markers with "Eastern Europeans" (31%). Does that mean that I have Bulgarian or Romanian or Ukranian blood? Probably not, but the autochthonous populations in the Balkans shared a lot of common characteristics. I also have 19% Caucasus. Does that mean I have Armenian blood? Probably not. Out of all that Ancestry says that I am very likely to come from Greece, Albania or Turkey, particularly West Turkey which makes perfect sense. Let's say that during the Ottoman occupation my family was turkified. Ethnically I would be a Turk but genetically I would cluster closer with Greeks and Albanians. Or let's say that during the Bulgarian occupation of Eastern Thrace my ancestors learned to speak Bulgarian and so were exchanged to Bulgaria after 1922. Ethnically I would be a Bulgarian which I am very close to genetically but I would also be clustering with Greeks. Please do not take these tests so seriously.


You may have Armenian or Bulgarian blood too, it is not impossible. But it is also possible that you have common ancestry with them, which is totally different thing then being Armenian or Bulgarian.

By the way I am half North Thracian(Bulgaria) till the end of 2WW
 
Aleksandra, please can you verify if the ending in both toponymus is -itsa, or - ista. Because i see that you are using both forms. Thanks in advance.
Hello, Laberia!
Yes, sure. I don't know if I made any typos (I make quite a lot of them, sorry, it is half the fault of my disturbing automatic correction). But the actual names are Kosovista, Gretsista and Koukoulitsa. So the first two are -ista and the third -itsa.
 
Yeah, once I understood the way these genetic tests work it was kind of, ehhhh...it was fun but don't bet any money on it. The other thing is that you get different results from different testing services. On myheritage I am 59% Greek, 33% Balkan, 5.9% Scandinavian and 2.9% Ashkenazi. What? No Caucasus? What happened to it? It is exactly the same test (Ancestry) that I uploaded to myheritage.com. How can they be so different? It is a matter of different reference populations and maybe even different algorithms. LivingDNA was even worse. I uploaded both the ancestryDNA and living DNA to GEDMatch and did some admixture test with Oracle. Depending on the GEDMatch test, I mostly cluster with Greeks and then sometimes with Bulgarians and Romanians. But what was remarkable was how close the GEDMatch admixture results were when using the two different raw inputs.

Yes, I have noticed all of the above too! I just try to see which elements are (more or less) more constant and to understand which seemingly different categories can refer to more or less the same part of my ancestry etc. in order to draw some conclusions. But in the end it is more like a game of guesstimates. Which is very interesting and it can be indicative of some truth, but not like something you have to take too literally. Emerging patterns concerning one's DNA relatives can also be interesting and quite indicative up to a certain degree - but again just to have a broader idea of your ancestry.
 
Laberia, both -itsa and -ista(-iste) are valid. The latter usually denotes a place (comp. russ."kladbiste" ,bulg. "grobiste"; Сечище/Сечища Seqishtë или Seqishta etc.)

-itsa is the diminutive form of feminine gender words. There are many toponyms with this ending like Elshitsa, Voditsa ,Boimitsa , Banitsa etc. . Some words with this suffix usually mean a building(or confined space) related to certain activity...like in rabotilnitsa(συνεργείο); melnitsa (gristmill); pivnitsa (pub) etc.

bigsnake49, the reference populations might be the same,but can be (and are) grouped in different geogr. regions by the various testing companies. You can check their white papers .You've already noticed that one tester's raw data from different companies produces similar results on Gedmatch...On a sidenote,our Ancestry results are very similar(mine have not been updated yet...43%Italy/Greece;36%Europe East;16%Caucasus..."Greece,Turkey and Albania with 95% confidence level").
 
Hello, Laberia!
Yes, sure. I don't know if I made any typos (I make quite a lot of them, sorry, it is half the fault of my disturbing automatic correction). But the actual names are Kosovista, Gretsista and Koukoulitsa. So the first two are -ista and the third -itsa.
Thank you. Probably the prediction on of the phone if you are typing from a cell phone.
The ending -ista(isht-a in Alb) is Albanian, meanwhile -itsa(ic-a in Alb) is slavic.
Probably Kosovista is a slavic toponym with an Albanian suffix. Meanwhile Gretsista in my opinion is Albanian. And here i want to quote you from one of your previous posts whe you have noticed this:
An interesting result showed up when searching "гречиште" (grečište), which side by side translations of phrases in Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish. The term гречиште corresponds to Albanian "greqishte", which is a reflex of the word "greqisht" signifying the adjective "Greek", in this case specifically Greek language. (source)
You are very correct. In albanian we use to say greqisht for the greek language. But in some part of Albania there are some subdialects where they use to say ç and not q and viceversa but not in this case, i.e. greqisht. For example the English word red in Albanian is kuqe but some people use to say kuçe and probably this the explanation of one of the most used Albanian surnames and toponims, Kuqi, Kuçi, that can be found among Albanians, Arvanites and Arberesh( they use to say Cuccia).
q = [c] voiceless palatal stop Albanian
ç = It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ in the following languages: the 4th letter of the Albanian alphabet.

Albanian alphabet
Meanwhile the word kukulla in Albanian is doll.
This is my opinion but i am not a linguist and the ethymology of the names and toponymus it`s not a game but a serious thing. For example our best linguist Eqerem Çabej first of all was an expert in etymology.

I hope i have been helpful, but knowing my flaws in English, i have some doubts. lol
 
Concerning Koukoulitsa


кѹкѹл҄ь
кѹкѹл҄ь - м
Черна гугла, качулка, която се носи от монах с висок чин (black hood,worn by a high-ranking monk)
Gr. κουκούλλιον От лат cuculla кокѹль Нвб(NewBulg.) кукул диал(dialect) Кукуля МИ Кукулът МИКукалйето МИ Кукала МИ Кукулят МИ (toponyms)


...comp.to bulg.dial. "гугла". Nowadays it would have sounded like "Guglitsa"...
 
the difference

in modern Greek Koukouli and koykoyla

that is koukouli , from worm to an insect.

%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%8D%CE%BB%CE%B9-1076711.jpg



that is a koukoula, the head cover part

invisible-man-hood-28929241.jpg
 
Thank you. Probably the prediction on of the phone if you are typing from a cell phone.
The ending -ista(isht-a in Alb) is Albanian, meanwhile -itsa(ic-a in Alb) is slavic.
Probably Kosovista is a slavic toponym with an Albanian suffix. Meanwhile Gretsista in my opinion is Albanian. And here i want to quote you from one of your previous posts whe you have noticed this:

You are very correct. In albanian we use to say greqisht for the greek language. But in some part of Albania there are some subdialects where they use to say ç and not q and viceversa but not in this case, i.e. greqisht. For example the English word red in Albanian is kuqe but some people use to say kuçe and probably this the explanation of one of the most used Albanian surnames and toponims, Kuqi, Kuçi, that can be found among Albanians, Arvanites and Arberesh( they use to say Cuccia).
q = [c] voiceless palatal stop Albanian
ç = It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ in the following languages: the 4th letter of the Albanian alphabet.

Albanian alphabet
Meanwhile the word kukulla in Albanian is doll.
This is my opinion but i am not a linguist and the ethymology of the names and toponymus it`s not a game but a serious thing. For example our best linguist Eqerem Çabej first of all was an expert in etymology.

I hope i have been helpful, but knowing my flaws in English, i have some doubts. lol

Hello Laberia,

Thank you! Well I just wrote you an answer that got lost in cyberspace, I will try writing this again...:-(
So it seems that these toponyms could be a combination of Slavic and Arvanite words. This sounds logic. The Arvanite presence is very considerable in the broader area of Epirus. The comment about the word "greqisht" was not mine but a Serbian guy's who knows a lot on such matters. I will give him your feedback! Judging from all this info, I too tend to think that the toponym Gretsista could be of Arvanite origin.
Are you sure though that the ending -ista is only Albanian and not also Slavic in some cases as td120 says in his previous comment? The village where we come from in Epirus was called Tserkovista and this was a Slavic toponym (the village was a Vajunite settlement in the beginning and later it was conquered by Bulgarians and then Serbs). I have even read somewhere that the Slavic ending -ica is sometimes changed to -ista in Greek. I don't know what is more correct though and you are 100% right in saying that analyzing toponyms is a serious task entailing deep etymological and linguistic knowledge.
Concerning the words, koukoula, koukouli and koukla which are all interrelated (and to which also the Albanian word "kukulla" is connected, I will write again in my next post answering to td120 and Yetos.
The Albanian word "kuqi" is contained in Greek Arvanite toponyms and surnames, eg. Kriekouki/Kriekoukis (the first one being the toponym and the second one the surname).
Out of curiosity, my maternal family has known Arvanite roots (Markou family, coming initially from a village of Souli, part of the larger Botsaris family). But during my genealogical research I found out that 2 other surnames of main branches of my maternal family could also be of Arvanite origin. The first one is Kemos for which I found one source mentioning it among Arvanite surnames in Greece. The second one is Zotos, for which I found numerous sources mentioning it as a rather typical Arvanite surname. Do you know something about them? So probably we have more Arvanite ancestry than what we initially knew of.
Thanks again!
 

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