Is it possible to determine your ethnicity through your blood?

What's the name of that blood test that can determine your ethnicity?

• I saw that the one basketball player had his done on the George Lopez show, but i can't remember the name.

• Answer:

  It's actually a VERY complex subject, ethnicity and DNA testing. There's a company called 23andme.com who I had a test done by for my father (he wanted to know if it was true that his grandfather had been from a Romany family, as his cousin was saying). It can give you a very rough idea, but because of the way that DNA works, it's very difficult to get accurate results, particularly as so much 'ethnicity' is actually more cultural in basis. We are all muuuuuch more similar than we are different. A lot of the 'ethnicity' testing out there actually just tests a single line, also- so you get your grandfather's father's father's etc etc likely origin. A lot of the typing is also based on averages- particular genes 'tend' to crop up in higher concentrations in particular areas, for example- but that doesn't mean that because it is found in your DNA that you definitely had an ancestor from that particular area! I had a friend who is a geneticist try to explain all this to me, and unfortunately it was so complex I can't be specific in an accurate way, but basically... as above.