Just spit to f ind out who you really are for Christmas

ARE you truly Irish or did your relatives arrive in Ireland via the Spanish Armada? Perhaps your descendants even hail from a Maori tribe.

The growing interest in ancestry websites, online records and the hit TV series Who Do You Think You Are? has fuelled demand for the most inspired Christmas gift of all – a means of unlocking one’s roots.

Ancestry, the global leader in family history, has answered the call with a DNA test kit. Costing €76 (plus shipping) it’s a simple saliva test that can be done at home, to ‘unlock the user’s unique ethnic mix and geographical history going back 1000 years’. The results are available after eight weeks.