(For a limited time, MyHeritage offers special holiday gift wrapping for just $3 more. Find out more HERE.)
Do you have a person on your gift-giving list that’s tough to purchase for? My suggestion is a DNA kit? I’ll want to tell you why you want to consider MyHeritage DNA?
Let’s talk about what you and they will learn from a MyHeritage DNA kit? Because you just might gift it to yourself.
Ethnicity
One of the first things people think about when they think about their DNA is their ethnicity. Will it confirm what you believe to be your family background? Perhaps you heard that your great-grandfather came from Sweden or Italy. Your DNA results might provide the answers to whether this is true or not. MyHeritage has 42 ethnicities and 2,114 Genetic Groups.
You can explore and get more information about your ethnicity or genetic groups by clicking on each of the groups, opening up a new window and explaining the region’s history, and even taking you to the matches you have with the same ethnicity.
DNA Matches
This is where it gets interesting. But hey, I’m a DNA Nerd, and I’m always looking for new cousins. On the MyHeritage match page, you get a list of all your DNA matches, and you can filter, sort, and label.
Let’s talk about labeling first. It’s the newest tool at MyHeritage, and anything that helps you organize your matches is top on my list.
There are thirty colors and a star that you can assign. That gives you a lot of latitude to sort your matches in many ways.
I’ve chosen to use eight of the colors for each of the surnames of my eight great-grandparents. But I could have just as easily used sixteen colors and used them for my sixteen great-great-grandparents. In my case, I’ve used some colors to identify unknown maternal and unknown paternal matches, as well as a couple of colors for the Beaton/Batten mystery. I’m going to save the star for matches that I look at that I’d like to return to.
As I mentioned, you are in the driver’s seat as to how you can use the colors for family surnames, locations.. and even mysteries.
Next, let’s talk about sorting. When you sort, you can sort by shared DNA, shared segments, the largest segment, full name, and most recent.
Filters
It’s fine to look at your MyHeritage matches as a list, but there are times that filters come in super handy. Let review each group of filters: tree details, relationships, locations, ethnicities, and genetic groups.
You’ll find many ways to filter within the tree detail filter, as seen below.
In my case, I don’t have any matches that have a Theory of Family Relativity, but my mom and uncle do. A Theory of Family Relativity is a theory as to how you and your match are connected. With the help of trees, records, and computer algorithms, the Theory of Family Relativity shows you several paths as to how you and your match could connect. This can give you a path to research and prove or disprove.
Or choose smart matches as your filter. Smart filters check for matches with the same or similar people in your tree and theirs. You can then review the smart match and then confirm or reject the match.
The other filters under tree detail are name, place, and trees, which help you look at matches differently that might help you determine how you connect. So, for instance, I’m pretty sure that my Beaton/Batten mystery goes back to Oxfordshire, England. So I can filter by England. Then I will only get the matches that are located there. This helps to narrow down the number of matches I look at at one time.
DNA Tools
When you click on DNA tools at MyHeritage, you’ll be able to access three tools, ethnicity map, which we’ve seen earlier, and two new tools that can help you understand even more about your DNA.
Chromosome Browser
As you can see above, this browser allows you to look at the DNA segments that you share with a DNA match. It will tell you how many segments you share and the amount you share in each segment. The more you share, the closer the relationship can be.
This information is also helpful if you want to use other tools such as DNA Painter to paint your chromosomes.
AutoClusters
I’ve written about autoclusters before, and you can read that HERE. An autocluster actually groups your DNA matches into blocks of DNA matches that are DNA connections to each other. This can be extremely helpful in identifying where they fit in your tree. Especially if you are looking at a match, you don’t know and see that they are in a group that you know how the other connect.
So now you know all the features you will be purchasing for your gift receiver, whether it’s someone else or you (wink). If you’ve taken a DNA test, then you want to test at more than one company because by doing so, you will get unique matches to users who have only tested with MyHeritage.
To make your gift festive, for a limited time, you can pay an additional $3, and your DNA gift will be gift-wrapped. Making gift giving easy peasy.
If you live in the US then purchase your kit for $47 US plus $3 for gift wrap
If you live in Canada then purchase your kit for $65 Canadian plus $4 for gift wrap
If you live in the UK then purchase your kit for £47 plus £3 for gift wrap