Every March, as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, I see posts in the Kennedy Facebook group celebrating our “Irish heritage.” After all, there’s a Kennedy in my tree — so surely that makes me Irish, right?
Maybe.
But for years, I’ve suspected that my Kennedy line might actually be Scottish rather than traditionally Irish. Surnames can travel, borders shift, and history is rarely as simple as a holiday slogan.
Recently, Randy Seaver highlighted Heidi Buck’s post in the Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence Facebook group about using Google Notebook LM to transform DNA ethnicity results into infographics. That caught my attention immediately. What better way to test my long-held suspicion than to visually compare the DNA results for myself and my two brothers?
So I took screenshots of our AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates and fed them into Google Notebook LM. The result? Clean, easy-to-read infographics — one for each of us and one comparing all three.
The most interesting takeaway: none of us show “Ireland” as a standalone ethnicity. Our Irish-associated results fall under Northern Ireland and Scotland. That certainly doesn’t eliminate Irish roots — history in Ulster is complex — but it does make the case for strong Scottish connections.
So this St. Patrick’s Day, I may not be claiming straight-from-Dublin ancestry… but I’ll still wear green and celebrate. After all, genealogy is about embracing the full story — even when it’s more nuanced than we expected.
My Ancestral Origins
My Brother’s Ancestral Origins
My Other Brother’s Ancestral Origins
Comparison
