How many living relatives do you really have? The answer will surprise you

Every generation back, the number of your ancestors doubles. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. Within just ten generations - about 250 to 300 years ago - you theoretically have over 1,000 direct ancestors.

Go back 20 generations and the number climbs into the millions, though many overlap because of pedigree collapse - where cousins marry and the same ancestors appear more than once in your tree.

How many cousins do you really have?

Now flip the tree around. Those same ancestors each had descendants - many of whom are alive today. Even if you only trace back as far as your great-grandparents, you already have a sizeable extended family.

To put it into perspective, here’s a thought experiment: if each of your great-grandparents had an average of five children (not uncommon a century ago), and each of their children also had children, you could easily have 50–100 second and third cousins alive today. Multiply that across your extended tree and it’s easy to see how your “family” could easily number in the hundreds or even thousands of living relatives - most of whom you’ve never met, and many you wouldn’t recognise if you passed them in the street.

What can a DNA test reveal about your family?

That’s one of the reasons DNA testing has become so popular in recent years. It’s not just about confirming your ethnic background or verifying old family stories - it’s about connecting the dots.

More than 40 million people worldwide have already taken a consumer DNA test, and that figure is growing fast. Every new person who tests increases the chance of a match for you. Industry data suggests that about one in 25 people discover a close relative they never knew existed, such as a half-sibling, aunt or uncle.

Some of the stories uncovered have been remarkable. A woman in Manchester discovered a half-brother who’d been adopted decades earlier. A man from London confirmed the family legend that his ancestors were passengers on the Mayflower, by matching with distant cousins in the US. A teacher in Birmingham discovered her maternal grandmother’s family was Sephardic Jewish, something nobody in her family had known.

Discover more about the MyHeritage DNA kit today through this exclusive link.

And even if you don’t uncover a big surprise, the detail and clarity can still be fascinating. You might see just how much Viking DNA you inherited - particularly if you have roots in Orkney or Shetland, where up to 25% of people carry Norse ancestry, the highest proportion anywhere in the world. Or perhaps your results will reveal connections to the Irish or Caribbean communities who helped shape Britain’s cities over the last two centuries, or even to ancient migrations from North Africa or Central Asia.

Your DNA is a storybook of all the journeys your ancestors took - and it connects you to people and places you might never have imagined.