Ancestry & Ethnicity Calculator
Estimate your DNA breakdown based on parental percentages.
*Total percentages for each parent should ideally sum to 100%.
Your Estimated Breakdown:
How Does the Ethnicity Calculator Work?
This calculator uses the basic principles of Mendelian inheritance to estimate a child's likely DNA breakdown. Scientifically, every child inherits exactly 50% of their DNA from their father and 50% from their mother. Therefore, if your mother is 100% Japanese and your father is 100% Norwegian, you will be approximately 50% Japanese and 50% Norwegian.
The Math of Genetic Inheritance
The calculation follows a simple weighted average formula for each specific region:
Understanding DNA Recombination
While you always get 50% of your total DNA from each parent, the specific *segments* of DNA you get are randomized through a process called recombination. This is why siblings (who are not identical twins) have different ethnicity estimates. For example, if a parent is 50% French and 50% German, they might pass 30% French to one child and 20% to another, though the total from that parent remains 50%.
Realistic Example
Consider the following scenario:
- Parent 1: 60% British, 40% Italian
- Parent 2: 100% Han Chinese
The resulting child's estimate would be:
- British: (60 + 0) / 2 = 30%
- Italian: (40 + 0) / 2 = 20%
- Han Chinese: (0 + 100) / 2 = 50%
Why use an Ethnicity Calculator?
Many people use this tool when they have the DNA results of their parents (from services like AncestryDNA, 23andMe, or MyHeritage) but have not yet taken a test themselves. It provides a biological "best guess" of what your autosomal DNA profile looks like before a lab analysis.