As per the subject message, what is your nationality, reader?

Maybe we can make some sort of connection as to why we are the way we are.

From my father side:

A bunch of south eastern asia (Korea, Thai, Filipino, a bunch of others), Portuguese (Predominant).

My mother (Get ready for a lot. =P): English, German, Irish, Dutch, Polish, Italian.


And I have dual citizenship for two countries.


Also, don't turn this into a "My nationality is better than yours". That's straight up racism, Yo!

English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish.

On my mother's side: English and Slovak (Her dad was descended from an old English family traced back to the 17th century, and her maternal grandmother was born in the now- Czech Republic)

My dad's side is all German.

French/German.

Oh, I love these threads! Always so interesting!

I live in the US, was born here, but my heritage goes back quite far and wide. I'm not sure how far, or how widespread the bloodlines are, but I know for certainty that I have strong Irish, French and Native American heritage. It seems like someone in my family has traced it back to around 1500, but I haven't been able to do so. This does make me curious to find out though.

just british as far as i know >_>

I never quite get why Americans say they are 1/8 this 1/4 that etc, do you actually feel connected in any way to the countries your ancestors came from? I think the rest of the world probably just views you as American, unless your family hasn't mixed much outside of their ethnicity, stayed mostly bilingual and kept traditions alive.

Tracking back family history as far as some of you also seems rather useless to me, since if you go back 300 years that's at the very least 30 generations, or like 1000 ancestors who probably came from all sorts of places. You'd basically just be tracing the origin of your last name at best.

I'm Danish and German.. but mostly Danish. :b

Ancestry is important for some people. Just because we're Americans doesn't make our ancestry any less meaningful than anyone else's.

Also, 300 years would only be about 15 generations, as a generation is 18 years (or so), not 10. For example, my maternal grandfather's family came to America from England, in 1637, and settled in Providence, RI. I am directly descended from those people, and I'm the 14th generation.

If you think it's silly, that's fine. But many of us don't.

Hmm, the tone of my post was perhaps a bit harsher then I intended and I wanted to say that if you go back 10 (rather then 30) generations you have 1000 ancestors, going back 15 generations it would be even more: 32 thousand ancestors.

Now, if that one family from 1637 had kids every 20 years (that's about 18 generations), and each family had 3 kids on average, that family would have 390 million descendants. Or in other words, the entire population of the USA could possibly be their descendants. There is of course inbreeding and the numbers might not be fully correct, but I hope you understand what I mean when I say I don't really see the point in going that far back unless you are tracing the origin of your last name.

Where I live, I don't ever hear anyone talk about being 1/8 this or 1/4 that, even though many people obviously do have foreign roots if you back 2 or 3 generations. Perhaps I should clarify what I was also trying to ask: do you feel connected to the country/culture your ancestors came from? Does it ever make a difference in your every day life because you do things differently then your neighbors because your ancestry is different? Like, do you have different holiday traditions? Because I honestly don't know if that is the case (I've never heard of it but I'm not American so I might just not be aware of it).

Swedish.

Native American (Cherokee), sicillian, and irish.

My relatives and ancestors are all 100% boring italians.. My grandfather's name is even Mario, like the one from nintendo

Full blooded Asian here. I think both my parents are from Laos or Thailand, or somewhere around that general area. I was born in America though; I don't look very "Asian" is what I've been told whatever that means. I get confused for being Latino all the time. Where are my other Asians at? Come out and play

Mostly English with some Irish, Welsh and French. I don t think my ancestors liked to travel very far.

Wow, so much exoticism here!
Just boring Norwegian here with a Danish great grandfather. My father's aunt lives in Greece but unfortunately there's not a drop of Greek blood in my veins. Sigh.
Some 6000 years ago, though, my forefathers were all foreigners!

Mother side: Italian
Father side: Portuguese

Indian/Chinese born and bred in Malaysia.

English with a tiny bit of dutch thrown in, from my nan's nan or something like that. Been asked since i was about 5 if i'm 'chinese' (catch-all for South-east Asian on the playground) though...

everything. irish, english, german, native american, african, you name 'em, i've got 'em for ancestors. but i look white as white bread. i can't say i feel connected to any nationality, though.

It bothers me when people confuse nationality and ethnicity.

Nationality means the nation you belong to. I am an American citizen living in America, so my nationality is 100% American.

Ethnicity is your ethnic background and ancestry. I am Irish and Filipino.

I think it might be an American thing to try and find a connection to their ethnicity, to where their ancestors are from historically. Everyone's family is from somewhere, even if you are Native American and are really truly from here ancestrally. The population growth in the United States has always been largely due to immigration, so at any given time I don't think most people's families go far enough back that their ethnic culture doesn't have at least a little influence. Nearly half the people I know very well have at least one parent who wasn't born here.

As for my family, it goes back four generations on both my parents sides. On my mom's side I have three great great grandparents who sailed over from Norway and one from Sweden. We still keep linens and such in the trunk that my great great grandmother used to carry her belongings across the Atlantic. For holidays there are definitely some Norwegian traditions. Around Christmas time we eat lutefisk and lefsa, and Swedish meatballs. My grandpa went to meetings at the Sons of Norway hall and sang in a Norwegian men's chorus that sang traditional songs. A lot of my great uncles had a penchant for pickled herring, too. I liked it when I tried it, but it is not too common in grocery stores unless you go down to Ballard (Seattle's more Scandinavian section of town).

My dad's side of the family is Finnish and Swedish. The Finnish side came from the Karelian region, escaping Tsar Nicolas's draft. There is not so much cultural connection on that side of the family though, except for Catholic religion from the Irish side, which I don't think has much effect on my generation.

I don't know really how much I feel connected to my hereditary cultures. I mean I like sports like skiing and soccer which are also popular in Scandinavian countries, but that could just be incidental and due to the fact that they are also popular things in the Pacific Northwest.

I do have the idea in the back of my mind that Scandinavia is in some way "home", though it is not necessarily a culture or place I know very well. I know that many of the reasons people have for coming to America were reasons of necessity, and those people felt regret or guilt for leaving their homes. I think maybe that feeling of wanting to go back has been passed down vicariously from parents to children.

As for myself, I think my generation (as far as my family goes) is really the first that hasn't even spoken to their ancestors who weren't from America, and that makes me kind of sad. Like I'm losing something, like something important is slipping away. When I took a trip to Europe, it was unusual to see how much history was there that you were just walking around in. It was part of everyday life. Here, if something's been around 100 years it is ancient--especially if you aren't from the East Coast. Unless one is only concerned about the present, that lack of history leaves a feeling that something is missing, and learning about/connecting with one's own family history is a way to get that back.

100% welsh. where my sheeps at? ;o

Born in New Zealand of Manx (Isle of Man) and Northern Irish heritage...

are the maoris as bad as i hear they are?