Whats your ethnic background?

[Turk February]

From both your mom and dad.

Mine...
Dad-German
Mom-French

[Foldered]

Dad- British
Mom- First Nations (Cree)/Métis and French as far as I know.

Don't really know it in detail; I'm a whole lot of stuff.

Interesting first/close to first post...

[son of man]

Dad: English, Danish
Mum: Irish, English

[Die Rote Fahne]

Mother - English, German, Swedish, Jewish
Father - Irish, Welsh, English

[Tablo]

Mother - British, Scottish.
Father - Irish, Scandinavian, and some British as my family name is British.

[Invincible Summer]

Chinese

[Nolan]

Dad: Hispanic, some German in there somewhere

Mom: 3rd generation Irish, and German.

By some fuckup of nature I came out with blue-green eyes while being half-hispanic. Nobody in my family in Venezuela has blue eyes...

[cb9's_unity]

Dad: Irish, German (i'm only a little German, but I got tagged with the last the german last name), other stuff
Mom: English, Irish, other stuff.

When you add everything I'm mostly Irish.

[Raúl Duke]

Hispanic

Mom-Puerto Rican, Spaniard, French
Dad-French Canadian (Quebecois), German

[Barry Lyndon]

Dad-English, German
Mom-English, Iraqi Arab

[Ligeia]

Father - silesian(polish,german,slovak...or something like that)
Mother - mexican (indigenous and spaniard....or so)

[Crusade]

Er, black. That's all I know, sadly. :(

[RedAnarchist]

Maternal - Mostly English, some Irish and Welsh with some of my ancestry unknown
Paternal - Mostly English, some Irish and distant Scottish, Dutch and German

[Chambered Word]

Dad: Irish, German.
Mother: Australian only, I think.

[NecroCommie]

Quite the rich genetic heritage we have! :thumbup1:

But as to mine:
Dad: Finn, yet I hear he has a german ancestor somewhere in the middle ages.
Mom: Half finn half Sami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people)

(It's because of my mother that I have thos "siberian eyes".)

[jake williams]

Mom: Finn and Irish, about half each.

Dad: Scottish and then a bunch of other stuff, I forget what all - Belgian maybe?

[LeninBalls]

Ma: Spanish
Da: Irish

[Dimentio]

Swedish/Finnish/Russian on one side, Panamanian/Spanish/French/Native American on the other

[Il Medico]

Dad- 50% Italian (half Calabrian and half Sicilian) and 50% German

Mom- 50% Italian (all Sicilian I believe), 25% Irish , 25% Scottish.

So that makes me:
50% Italian, 25% German, 12.5% Irish, and 12.5% Scottish.

[No pasarán]

irish? but I was raised in england mostly

[Pirate Utopian]

Dutch I guess. There is some Jewishness from my father's side. I'm like 1/8th Jewish.

[DecDoom]

Mother: Lithuanian, some Irish
Father: Unknown, possibly Italian

[Jazzratt]

English on both sides as far back as it matters. The only vaguely interesting thing really is where I was born (Botswana).

[Guerrilla]

Dad: 100% dutch
Mom: 50% dutch, 25% chinese, 25% suriname

[Stand Your Ground]

Not sure on all this but I think: Italian, French & Native American.

[Scary Monster]

Swedish/Finnish/Russian on one side, Panamanian/Spanish/French/Native American on the other

Wow quite a nice mix there :thumbup1: Your folks must have a rich family history i bet?

My dad is negro

Momma is full-blooded native american; her last name is Big Soldier

[Os Cangaceiros]

Mostly Welsh, English and Irish, with some German and French Canadian/Metis thrown in as well.

Pretty boring, really.

[Arlekino]

Dad Lithuanian
Mother Polish/Lithuanian

[The Ben G]

Mom: British, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and Cuban
Dad: Polish and Belorussian/Russian

[Manifesto]

As far as I know
Mom: Italian, English
Dad: Croatian, English, German

[Obrero Rebelde]

Dad: chamorro, xicano, aztlandes, mejicano, espanol, ingles
Mom: filipina, espanola, sefardita (sephardic) portuguesa

Basically, Ragu con Salsa Picantisima

[Invincible Summer]

Momma is full-blooded native american; her last name is Big Soldier

That's pretty cool :thumbup1:


Dad: chamorro, xicano, aztlandes, mejicano, espanol, ingles
Mom: filipina, espanola, sefardita (sephardic) portuguesa

Basically, Ragu con Salsa Picantisima

Wut?

[Linkse Rakker]

Dad - Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian
Mom - Albanian and Turkish

Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian, pretty messed up combi :lol:

[RHIZOMES]

Dad - American, American father and Brazillian (white bourgeoisie) mother
Mum - New Zealander, Danish father and British mother (straight outta the working-class slums of Manchester repruhsent)

[The Red Next Door]

African, Cherokee, and a tiny irish.

[No pasarán]

irish? but I was raised in england mostly Actually thinking bout it, I'm also part irish travler/gypsy and I'm sure my family in ulster have some scottish heritage (though this would of been long before the plantation farmers or loyalists were created... we're talkin way back 1000 years ago probably, but mayber sooner or earlier)

ANYWAYS basicly celtic... ?

[Chimurenga.]

Mother: Irish, Native American
Father: English, Scottish, Dutch, German

[Tavarisch_Mike]

My ethnicity is Korean but my parents, who i love of all my heart, are full blooded Aryans (im adopted) :)

[Raúl Duke]

Oh I forgot to mention that it's rumored that in my French Canadian side of the family (like my great-grandmother) there's also some native american heritage but I'm not sure about that...

[Panda Tse Tung]

Dutch and a tiny it of hugeonot (no use telling which is 100% Dutch and which is not, there's no real use to telling this either but i do it anyway :)).

[StoneFrog]

Father: English...as far as my family can see my father side of the family has always been English goes back a few hundred years.
Mother: English, very small amounts of French and Dutch.

So i got my self a very pasty white complexion.

[Pavlov's House Party]

Mother: Serb, Hungarian, Scottish
Father: Irish, Quebecois, Mohawk

[Robocommie]

Man, lots of Irish on this board, I notice.

Mom: German and Norwegian
Dad: Irish, Thakiwaki (Sauk and Fox), maybe German

However, I was adopted, and my adoptive family is half German, with Sicilian/Italian, Dutch and English.

[Qayin]

Irish and Yugoslavian mostly

[Agnapostate]

Mother: Guatemalan, likely Mayan, Spanish, Basque
Father: American, undetermined Southwestern Indian (probably from the Chihuahuan Desert), Spanish

[LOLseph Stalin]

I'm not completely sure everything I am, but I tend to be a mix, Russian, Austrian, Swiss. People also often think I'm Turkish or Albanian, or sometimes even Iranian. Go figure. :/

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

All I know is that I have Scottish ancestry on my father's side, which seems to explain my predeliction for wearing skirts. :lol:

[Kowalski]

My father's father was Pole from Ukraine, others are Russians, so I'm Russian-Pole :cool:

[Sam_b]

The majority of these pretty much aren't real "ethnicities".

[Sentinel]

Both of my parents come from the region known as Karelia in eastern Finland. They've done an investigation and tracked my father's family all the way back to the 1600s, and they were all boring finnish peasants.

I'm quite certain that is the case with my mother's family as well.

[Os Cangaceiros]

The majority of these pretty much aren't real "ethnicities".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ethnic_groups

[More Fire for the People]

My ethnic lines are so blurry it's hard to really state one thing to absolutely true or false. I know enough to know I am multiracial and mostly Irish (which includes 'Black Irish' and Scots-Irish) and English.

My dad was mostly Irish, English, and Native American but also French and Dutch.
My mom is English, Scots-Irish, and Native American but also Dutch including some people of the Dutch Indo background.

[DaComm]

Mother: Dutch
Father: English, Irish

And yes, I am white.

[9]

Antarctican.

[Sam_b]

Ooh a Wikipedia link! Sca-ree!

[Os Cangaceiros]

Oh, I'm sorry...are we using the Sam b definition of "ethnicity"?

Maybe you should consult a dictionary on the subject. Any national group with a common culture/identity can be considered an "ethnicity".

[Sam_b]

Maybe you should consult a dictionary on the subject

What good would that do, praytell? A good example would be the dictionary definition of 'race', which could arguably be a social construct. Do you take everything in the dictionary and on Wikipedia as verbatim?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

What good would that do, praytell? A good example would be the dictionary definition of 'race', which could arguably be a social construct. Do you take everything in the dictionary and on Wikipedia as verbatim?

Alright smartass, what's your definition of an ethnicity?

[9]

Personally, I think we should be using the scientific definition of ethnicity, which is something along the lines of:

http://unitedisrael.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/crossing-the-red-sea.png

[Jimmie Higgins]

My grandparents are from Ireland and Mexico. So this obviously means I have inherited the genes for Catholicism and liking Soccer and supporting revolutions in the early 20th century:lol:. No, obviously it means little other than I was fortunate enough to have close contact with different cultural traditions when I was growing up.

[farleft]

Family descends from Ireland (mothers and fathers side), 3rd generation I think.

Never been to Ireland though.

[4 Leaf Clover]

Both my mother and father are of southern-slavic origin , without any mixed marriages for in their families for centuries i think

i will probably spoil that tradition due the fact that im so keen on eastern women esspecially japanese :D

[RedStarOverChina]

Father's side: Chinese (even though my mother often accuse them of being Koreans)
Mother: Chinese

My father's family tree can be traced back hundreds of years. Most prominent of my ancestors were state officials in Ming Dynasty, there may or may not be a general from my family who fought in the Imjin War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imjin_War).

After the Manchus tookover in the 1600s, a lot of people in my family clan got killed or committed suicide. The rest decided to lay low in the countryside. The clan elder at the time instructed the coming generations in a poem, to either earn a honest living on the farms or indulge in scholarly pursuits---in other words, don't go into politics.

So for the next 2-300 years or so most people in my family clan were land-owning peasants, a few of them were village scholars.



Edit: also, I find it strange that my maternal grandpa never told me anything about his ancestors...I only know that his family was pretty rich and influential, but nothing else. Probably because he was a lefty and wasn't all that interested in it.

[Sentinel]

The clan elder at the time instructed the coming generations in a poem, to either earn a honest living in the farms or indulge in scholarly pursuits---in other words, don't go into politics.


He would probably spin in his grave if he saw you then? :lol:

[RedStarOverChina]

He would probably spin in his grave if he saw you then? :lol:
In my defense, I haven't gotten any of my family members killed due to my politics yet. :)

[More Fire for the People]

After the Manchus tookover in the 1600s, a lot of people in my family clan got killed or committed suicide.
Out of curiosity, where they members of the early 20th century anti-Qing movement?

[RedStarOverChina]

Out of curiosity, where they members of the early 20th century anti-Qing movement?
Not really, even though my ancestors did harbor a grudge against the Manchus, the republican revolutionary movements/anti Qing movements were mostly concentrated in southern China, whereas my family moved north like a thousand years ago. :D

My family clan did organize a guerilla resistance movement during the Japanese occupation though...They had about 50 rifles. They were mostly fighting against the Chinese Collaborationist Army though. At one point there were only 2 Japanese soldiers stationed in the county my family came from, the rest were all collaborators.

[Revy]

I am of mostly Irish descent. that is the only thing I am sure of. If I bothered to sign up for one of those ancestry sites I'd probably know more, but through my free research I was able to trace one ancestor (an indentured servant in the late 1600's) from Youghal in County Cork.

[AK]

Mother: Hungarian (Székely), Ukrainian, Slovakian
Father: Hungarian (Székely), Serbian

Dad: Irish, German.
Mother: Australian only, I think.
This made me facepalm so hard. Unless you're aboriginal, you're not Australian.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This made me facepalm so hard. Unless you're aboriginal, you're not Australian.

Bollocks. If you're born in Australia, you're Australian. Unless you think black people born in the UK aren't British?

[More Fire for the People]

Black British
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_British)

[which doctor]

This made me facepalm so hard. Unless you're aboriginal, you're not Australian.
Aboriginal Australians migrated to Australia from elsewhere as well.

[gorillafuck]

German, Czechoslovakian, Italian, British

[Invincible Summer]

Father's side: Chinese (even though my mother often accuse them of being Koreans)
Mother: Chinese

My father's family tree can be traced back hundreds of years. Most prominent of my ancestors were state officials in Ming Dynasty, there may or may not be a general from my family who fought in the Imjin War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imjin_War).

After the Manchus tookover in the 1600s, a lot of people in my family clan got killed or committed suicide. The rest decided to lay low in the countryside. The clan elder at the time instructed the coming generations in a poem, to either earn a honest living on the farms or indulge in scholarly pursuits---in other words, don't go into politics.

So for the next 2-300 years or so most people in my family clan were land-owning peasants, a few of them were village scholars.



Edit: also, I find it strange that my maternal grandpa never told me anything about his ancestors...I only know that his family was pretty rich and influential, but nothing else. Probably because he was a lefty and wasn't all that interested in it.

Do your parents just know all this stuff and told you, or did you have to do some digging? I would like to find out more about my family background but all I can get are bits and pieces from everyone, some of whom are not exactly the most reliable due to senility.

[Sir Comradical]

Indian.

[RedStarOverChina]

Do your parents just know all this stuff and told you, or did you have to do some digging? I would like to find out more about my family background but all I can get are bits and pieces from everyone, some of whom are not exactly the most reliable due to senility.Not my parents, they were not that into it. My paternal grandfather was pretty confucianist, he told me everything he knew.

Ever since the 1500s or so it became fashionable in China to record one's linege, especially among the wealthy familys. It seemed that my ancestors were pretty obessed about it, too. Our original family records from the Ming dynasty were lost, but it was re-organized in the Qing dynasty in the early 1800s, and again in 2001, which was a collaborated effort between my grandpa and relatives from as far away as Taiwain. I read from it when I went to our ancestorial home county.

The family tree began with a minor official who was passed the government examination in the early years of Ming Dynasty... And it snow-balled, by the end of Ming Dynasty there were quite a few people there with official titles. The highest ranking person was the "Minister of Bureaucracy" or something like that. After that, well, things turned downhill and a few names were marked: "passed away on his post" meaning they were killed.


How many generations has it been since your family went to the US?

[AK]

Aboriginal Australians migrated to Australia from elsewhere as well.
They were the original natives, though, were they not?

[Invincible Summer]

Not my parents, they were not that into it. My paternal grandfather was pretty confucianist, he told me everything he knew.

Ever since the 1500s or so it became fashionable in China to record one's linege, especially among the wealthy familys. It seemed that my ancestors were pretty obessed about it, too. Our original family records from the Ming dynasty were lost, but it was re-organized in the Qing dynasty in the early 1800s, and again in 2001, which was a collaborated effort between my grandpa and relatives from as far away as Taiwain. I read from it when I went to our ancestorial home county.

The family tree began with a minor official who was passed the government examination in the early years of Ming Dynasty... And it snow-balled, by the end of Ming Dynasty there were quite a few people there with official titles. The highest ranking person was the "Minister of Bureaucracy" or something like that. After that, well, things turned downhill and a few names were marked: "passed away on his post" meaning they were killed.


How many generations has it been since your family went to the US?

I'm actually in Canada, and I'm technically 2nd generation Chinese-Canadian although my grandfather on my dad's side came here when he was like 6 years old so I'm more or less 3rd generation.

[eyedrop]

100% Norwegian on both sides as far back as I know.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

They were the original natives, though, were they not?

So?

[Honggweilo]

Dad: Portuguese (northen celtic / southern arab heritage)
Mom: Dutch ( long multi ethnic meltingpot line from a fishingcity / some jewish heritage along the line too )

[Zapatas Guns]

My dad: 50% Puerto Rican 25% Spanish 25% Mestizo/Mexican
My Mom: 75% Mestizo/Mexican 25% Spanish

I guess that makes me part Mestizo Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Spanish.

[002]

I don't know my biological dad.

[anticap]

The question, as it's being treated here, is meaningless.

The problem is that "ethnicity" is being treated here essentially as "race," as opposed to simply shared cultural traits. In the latter sense, your ethnicity is yours; there's no need to mention your ancestors. But in the sense being used here, it requires that respondents make an arbitrary judgment as to how far back to go. If we all went back to the beginning, we'd all end up in the same place, before the advent of "ethnicity" in the sense being used here. It also raises the question of how long it takes before a relatively isolated or insular group can reasonably be said to be "ethnically" divergent in that sense. There may be an answer to that question, but it wasn't given here, so, again, it requires that respondents make an arbitrary judgment.

Of course, the natural limit to how far back we may go is the point at which our genealogies run dry. But those empty branches in your family tree don't indicate corresponding holes in your "ethnicity." To say that you're Irish, simply because you're aware of only your Irish ancestry, is to drop the sense being used here and to fall back on the other sense, but to apply it to your ancestors rather than to yourself. Moreover, family trees are notoriously full of shit (for instance, nearly every US-American is supposedly descended from an "Indian princess" or some such nonsense; I myself have heard family rumors of relatively recent Native ancestry).

I'd prefer to refer to ethnicity in the non-racial sense, and in that case I'd have to call myself "US-American," since that's the culture in which I spent my formative years, and is therefore the one that I most strongly identify with -- though, ideologically I couldn't give a fuck about such things; and, moreover, I hate this culture with a burning passion.

I did get into genealogy for a while, but I found only one thing that interested me, for which the evidence is pretty strong: starting with my mother's father, I was able to trace the male line back to a Scotsman who fought against Cromwell in the Third English Civil War. He was captured and, as was apparently not uncommon then, sent to New England as an indentured servant for seven years. He of course never made his way back home. One tidbit I found was an account of his arrest for drunkenness and abuse of his wife in some manner that was unspecified but not hard to guess. So I suppose I could add that I'm part "Drunken-Scottish-Royalist-Wife-beating-Former-slave."

[ContrarianLemming]

I'm 100% ethnic Celtic as far as I know

[empiredestoryer]

im born and bred in ireland like my mother and father before me

[brigadista]

londoner:)

[Soviet Reunion]

Father's side: Polish Jew
Mother's side: Comanche Native American

Quite the odd mix :S although I guess that makes fascists and the American government my traditional enemies, eh?

[9]

Father's side: Polish Jew
Mother's side: Comanche Native American

:lol: That's nuts.

[RedRise]

Father: German, Lithuanian, Polish (Jewish)
Mother: Australian, originally English or Scottish. One unknown, possibly Southern French or Northern Spanish.

[black magick hustla]

mexican and berber

i am a fucking mongrel

[Leo]

Mostly Kurdish, mixed with Armenian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic etc.

Ethnic groups mix more than anyone can imagine.