# Americans: do you feel any loyalty or other emotional connection to your ancestral homeland? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 17, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198 "2013-03-17T21:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/21 "2013-03-17T23:20:56Z")
> [@InternetLegend](#): > > I, like some 50% of US residents, believe I’m Irish (and not just today). This impression persists despite the fact that I have just as many, if not more, Dutch, English, and Scots ancestors and the most recent immigrant in my ancestry hit the States in the mid-1800’s. > > For some reason, I do feel some kind of emotional connection to Ireland, probably because my dad was a romantic and he felt the Irish stories were better than any of the others. Although he also told me stories about being of Hungarian Gypsy extraction, and I wasn’t gullible enough to really believe those ones. I think some of it has to do with the perception of the Irish as the perennially downtrod underdogs - it’s a sort of safe association to make, it offends no one so it’s easy to claim. ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/22 "2013-03-17T23:23:33Z")
I wouldn’t say loyalty, but yes, there’s a pinch of emotional connection for me to Germany. Now, given that I also am descended from an assortment of other places, I don’t claim any connection to most of them. But I have a soft spot for things that are German–except things like Nazism. ---
**Author:** ![Scathach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Scathach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scathach)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/23 "2013-03-17T23:28:28Z")
Incidentally, as an Irish person, the céad mille fáilte, “we’re super welcoming” stuff is actuallly mostly crap. Ironically, the country that I would have said was the most welcoming is America - I’ve been over a few times and I’ve really never met nicer or more welcoming people anywhere else (with the possible exception of Tanzania). I still remember going over when I was twelve as part of an orchestra swap. A friend bought a big bottle of perfume in a department store where if you spent over a certain amount of dollars you got a free gift bag with some make up in it. The lady working at the counter gave me a free gift bag too, even though I didn’t buy anything, just to be nice since I was a visitor. Sounds silly, but a good thirteen years later and I haven’t forgotten it. \ ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/24 "2013-03-17T23:29:09Z")
Not really, with a caveat. My mother’s side is fairly typical WASP mutt and has no traditional connection to the “old country.” However my father is second generation and was raised at least partially bilingual by fully bilingual parents ( both sides ). So I know a bit more about my old world connections and origins through that line. But while that has engendered an interest in the region, it has inspired neither loyalty nor any significant emotional nationalism. So my first generation Serb grandmother carried some traditional cultural baggage, for example despising kissing-cousin Croats with an fairly unfettered bigotry ( a lot of family went under to the Ustaše in WW II ). My thoroughly Americanized father has no such silly hangups, but during the Bosnian war I was surprised when he almost unconsciously seemed to slightly defend Serb aggression by pointing out that while the Serbs were a minority, as rural folk they actually owned much of the land as opposed to the far more urban Bosniaks ( a rather shitty argument IMO ). One generation further down the line, I harbor even less attachement and investment. ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/25 "2013-03-17T23:36:34Z")
Nope, except for the occasional Oktoberfest and a liking for sauerkraut. On my mom’s side, it’s the classic English/Irish mix that’s been here forever, and although I’d love to go either place, not really invested in them. Except for wanting to drink all the time, not too much 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/26 "2013-03-17T23:56:04Z")
I am a Southern white American and my last names is from the first colony at Jamestown about 400 years ago from an unbroken paternal line. I don’t have any recent (by that I mean in the last 250 or more years) ancestors. It is all American all the way down. We are of English and Scots-Irish descent mostly. There is no real homeland to refer back to because it doesn’t exist now and hasn’t for hundreds of years. My ancestral homeland is just the Americas from Virginia to Texas. The last family relic that I can see in the Old World is the church where great x grandparents got married in the late 1500’s. It is still standing in East London and they still have the marriage records. Oddly enough, I also view Southern blacks as true Americans now because they have been here for hundreds of years as well. My family was slave owners for about 150 years and we had a symbiotic and close relationship. It is the more recent immigrants that can’t seem to intuitively grasp the American ideal that throw me off these days. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/27 "2013-03-17T23:56:22Z")
My ancestry is almost 100% German/Dutch and Anglo/Celtic. I’ve traveled to a lot of places in Europe, but those areas make me feel different. Germany and Holland both made me feel that I was in a place I belonged, even if I didn’t particularly like it. England was like a fairyland where everything was too wonderful to believe. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/28 "2013-03-18T00:11:01Z")
I understand that I’ve a fair amount of German ancestry along with some others, but was never curious enough to ask for details. So no, no emotional connection there. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/29 "2013-03-18T00:18:17Z")
My distant ancestors are from all over Western Europe- English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, German (couple of different ways- Texas German & Pennsylvania Dutch) and French for sure, and probably some other immigrant groups as well. It makes it hard to choose just one group, and my surname is one that nobody really knows where it came from- it’s from Britain, but it’s unknown whether it’s Saxon, Norman French or even Welsh. So no, I don’t feel any real identification with any of their homelands. I do however, feel a pretty strong identification with the closest thing I have to an “ancestral homeland”, and that’s Texas. One of great-whatever grandfathers was a dispatch rider (messenger) for the Texas Army in 1836, and many other ancestors had immigrated before statehood, and even more long before the civil war. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/30 "2013-03-18T00:19:41Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#): > > I have some interest in my Scottish and Irish background, but no special loyalty. I’m pretty much an Anglophile, so I image that many of my ancestors are turning wildly in their graves. That’s pretty much how I am; I’ve found out more about the Scottish sides lately, so I’m involved in Highland Games and all that. But I have a wee soft spot for England. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/31 "2013-03-18T00:22:03Z")
Second-generation Korean-American here. I feel very strong loyalty to my homeland although my fullest devotion of patriotism is nonetheless to the United States of America. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/32 "2013-03-18T00:38:49Z")
I want to play too, I don’t care that I’m not American. I’m Dutch and English with ancestry mainly Dutch/German and English/Scandinavian. I feel no connection to any places other than places that I like because they’re nice. I really liked living in Brazil and feel just as connected and at home there. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/33 "2013-03-18T00:40:06Z")
It depends on whether or not the mothership ever comes back for me. If not, they can go fuck themselves. ---
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/34 "2013-03-18T00:45:10Z")
None. My mother’s father’s parents were from Ukraine. He and my mother are from New York. I do adore borscht though. I have no idea where my maternal grandmother’s family was from before they hit Ohio. I have no idea where my father’s family (either side) was from before they hit Massachusetts. The only loyalty I feel other than to the US is to Massachusetts. I am NOT Irish, even if someone in my distant past was and even though I am a redhead. I’m not even Irish today. I feel no connection to the country or to Catholicism (or to beer or corned beef for that matter). I did wear green today though but it was only because the only sweatshirt I own happens to be green. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/35 "2013-03-18T00:46:49Z")
I have too many ancestral homelands to care. I think the most recent immigrant in my (known) ancestry was 4 or 5 generations ago, so it’s not really something that anybody I grew up around remembered, even second-hand. I know 4 countries that I definitely have ancestry in, although one of them is Germany so maybe that homeland was turned into Poland or Russia. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/36 "2013-03-18T00:52:42Z")
No feelings at all. The closest ancestor I have not born in the United States was one of my great-grandfathers. And he had good reason to leave Germany at sixteen. He was about to be drafted and didn’t feel like being cannon fodder for Bismarck’s unification of the German states. ---
**Author:** ![Foggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foggy/32/1082_2.png) [@Foggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foggy)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/37 "2013-03-18T00:56:42Z")
No, but then it’s hard to feel any loyalty to a cloud of interstellar dust. After Homeworld was destroyed I was abandoned here by my Clade for reasons I don’t understand. So I hope the colony world fails. I owe those bastards nothing! NOTHING!!! YOU HEAR ME! Yeah, I don’t have any positive emotional connection either. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/38 "2013-03-18T01:00:14Z")
My aunt was a geneaology buff and traced that side of the family up through Canada and over to Scotland. I’ve always had a fondness for bagpipe music and pretty lasses with a Scottish (or Irish, or English) accent but other than that I don’t think about it much. ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/39 "2013-03-18T01:00:57Z")
I am 100% American (and I have a Canadian passport) but leave myself open to immigrating back to India. Largely because I married a first generation Indian. That said, while I wish India well, I feel as though I am a product of the United States immigrant experience, not an Indian citizen. The thought of immigrating away from the US pains me, much the way it must have pained my parents to leave India. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198/40 "2013-03-18T01:10:08Z")
I might if I knew where it was. Some Welsh and the rest mixed European white trash. About the extent of my Welsh connection was to introduce myself to a few members of the Welsh Men’s Chorus in Hong Kong about 15 years ago and mentioning that while there’s a Welchman in the woodpile, I had never actually met one. 😉 We had a few drinks. I feel much more to China, which is my wife’s country and where I spent 20+ years, than any “ancestral lands” in Europe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/americans-do-you-feel-any-loyalty-or-other-emotional-connection-to-your-ancestral-homeland/653198.md?page=3)