Mostly German on my mother’s side. Father’s side a mix of Scottish and Native American (narrowed down to some Southwestern tribe). I feel a connection to the Native American part of my blood, and ever since I was young have been frustrated with the “white man,” even though I’m like 75% “white.”
Yes, I have German and English, and Native American blood. I think I feel closest to the Germans, we traced our line back to Schwaigern Germany in the 1600s, and I’ve visited Germany and felt a strong connection to the landscape and traditional culture. But the UK has a lot of appeal to me as well.
My mom is actually from Germany, she lived there until she was 18. But I feel no particular affinity for the place(aside from vaguely speaking German or knowing German foods etc).
My dad was from the USA, he never mentioned a family national origin for ancestors.
5/8 of my great-grandparents were descended from Scottish ancestors. The others were Dutch, Polish, and Lithuanian. I am interested in Scottish history and traditions. At times I have I participated in Scottish Country Dance groups. I’m not as steeped in “if it’s not Scottish it’s crap” as some relatives. I’m not involved in a Clan Society beyond getting a newsletter. I do love traditional Scottish music, and bagpipes do seem to stir some emotion in me.
The eastern European relatives contributed more to my family’s food traditions. My great-grandfather was born in a town in Poland that apparently was near a border that was in contention. In one census he gave Poland as his place of birth. In the next one it lists Russia. I’m interested in Poland but don’t celebrate Polaski Day.
For me March 17th is “With a name like MacTavish whaddayoo mean you’re not Irish?!?!?” day.
Pulaski Day. 
As I said above, I’m born of Polish-born parents, and I grew up in a Polish community, and I never knew anyone to actually celebrate Pulaski Day, other than Chicago schools would get the day off. And here’s I’ll give you the non-Sufjan Stevens song called Pulaski Day. Yes, there are at least two songs titled “Pulaski Day.”
ETA: Oh, damn, how can I forget Kasimir S. Pulaski Day from Big Black’s “Songs about Fucking.”
My wife’s grandparents on both sides were Polish immigrants, so her parents continued the traditions while she was growing up. She’s proud of her heritage, and we do the sausage and latke breakfast thing on Easter, etc. We make a point of seeing the Polish films at the local film festival and going to the surprisingly large Polish Festival every year here in Portland. She’s learning Polish via Pimsleur and Rosetta, for which I give her major credit.
I give her credit, too. Polish is a pain in the ass, both in terms of grammar and pronunciation. I never actually learned the grammar formally–it’s just something I grew up with so have a reasonable ear for what sounds right and what doesn’t, although I certainly make errors. But pronunciation? It’s rough even if you grew up with it. I only speak Polish a couple times a week and I can feel my tongue and mouth straining to get into the right positions to make certain sounds.
My dad was an Irish immigrant, so I was exposed to a lot more Irish culture than I ever sought out. No, I find some of it’s history interesting, and I’ve met or spoken to lots of relatives who still live there, but I’ve never been there nor to I feel any real connection to it. I think my mom’s background was also Irish, but she never spoke about it, so that’s about all I know.
I’ve always felt a deep family based identity with the British Isles…but…
As a bit of insight into my search for familial history/nationality, I had my mRna examined, and found that I belong to Haplogroup K, along with Stephan Coulbert and others. Mrna shows maternal ancestry only. (My mother had always claimed French, Dutch, American Indian and English as her ancestry) As a result of the mrna research, I find that I am in Haplogroup K.
Therefore, I feel a connection to Haplogroup K fellow humans to a greater extent than others. Of course this includes a lot of territory. To quote briefly from Haplogroup K (mtDNA) - Wikipedia,
"Haplogroup K appears in West Eurasia, North Africa, and South Asia and in populations with such an ancestry. Haplogroup K is found in approximately 10% of native Europeans.[5][6] Overall mtDNA Haplogroup K is found in about 6% of the population of Europe and the Near East, but it is more common in certain of these populations. Approximately 16% of the Druze of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, belong to haplogroup K. It was also found in a significant group of Palestinian Arabs.[7] K reaches a level of 17% in Kurdistan.[8]
Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are in haplogroup K. This high percentage points to a genetic bottleneck occurring some 100 generations ago.[7] Ashkenazi mtDNA K clusters into three subclades seldom found in non-Jews: K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a. Thus it is possible to detect three individual female ancestors, likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool, whose descendants lived in Europe.[9]
The average of European K frequency is 5.6%. K appears to be highest in the Morbihan (17.5%) and Périgord-Limousin (15.3%) regions of France, and in Norway and Bulgaria (13.3%).[10] The level is 12.5% in Belgium, 11% in Georgia and 10% in Austria and Great Britain.[8]"
So…family tradition says that we are English Protestants who came to the Americas in the 17th/18th century to find religious freedom, but I wonder about the strong hints of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that I might have.
And there is that whole Otzi thing from the Swiss Italian border…
I honestly don’t mean this as a thread-poop. Perhaps you might want to look into your genetic history in addition to your oral Socio-politico-ethnic history. I found that my familial history was greatly enhanced with a bit of genetic history.
Yes, I do. I would love to see where they lived, and wonder about what their life was like.
I feel less emotional connection to the place where I’ve lived the last 20 years, though.
Norwegian with a smidgen of Saami which I only recently learned of. I don’t feel much connection with the countries so much but I strongly identify with the immigrant experience and the amount of culture that’s still been preserved where I grew up.
I consider myself an American. Knowing my family’s heritage and history has been a positive experience for me.
I sure do. Swiss-German from the St. Gallen area. I’ve even been there and met distant relatives from the branch that did not emigrate so many centuries before. They even have the same last name albeit with a more German spelling. (My ancestor changed the spelling slightly once he arrived in the New World so that people would pronounce it correctly.)
Of course, my family background is rather mutt-ish. You name the country in Europe and there’s probably an ancestor there. There’s even one featured on a Hungarian – or Austro-Hungarian or whatever – postage stamp in the 19th century. But Switzerland will always have a special place in my heart.
She came out shaking her head the other day, trying to figure out why some numbers appear to take the singular and some the plural, i.e. (and this is made up, cuz I don’t have a clue), “there is two cars; there are four cars; there is seven cars”. Make no sense to me, either.
Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. It is freaking crazy if you try to think of it logically. You just have to accept it and go with it. "One cat,"used as a subject, is jeden kot in the singular nominative. So far, so good. Pretty straightforward. Two, three, or four cats are plural nominitive, dwa, trzy, cztery koty. So far, so good, and what you’d expect. Then it gets weird. For five through nine, and its compounds, including those ending in one, it gets the genitive plural, so sześć kotów (“six cats”). Additionally, as you note, the verb changes, and it behaves as if it were agreeing with a neuter singular noun.
It makes no sense.
To kind of illustrate it in English, it would be like:
Here is one cat.
Here are two/three/four/five/twenty-three cats.
Here is six/seven/eight/nine/twenty-seven cats’.
No, I don’t know why. Just to make it difficult.
Irish, German, and English for sure. Perhaps a bit of French, but I’m having a hard time tracking that person’s name and the multitude of ways it could have been spelled.
If asked, I present them in that order, and I quite like being able to claim Irish-ness.
I might, if I could ever get a complete understanding of whether my name is Irish or Scottish… So no, not really.
For some reason, I feel the most connection to my Norwegian heritage. My last name is Norwegian, and we have a book of the family history that goes back a few centuries.
Many of my ancestors were Scotch-Irish(*), but any sense of connection is vague and whimsical. I once passed up a chance to spend a few days, on a company dime, in Edinburgh on a return from Europe to California-- I think I’d tired of traveling. I almost bought How the Scots Invented the Modern World in a bookstore, until I noticed the Scottish inventing was all after my ancestors had left.
(* - Before alerting that “Scotch-Irish” is incorrect and even silly, know that I’m a descriptivist and this is the term used in the U.S.A. for the Ulster Scots.)
Do I feel any loyalty to the land of the pogrom and the 25 year military service? Whaddya think?
Loyalty? Little or none…I mean, if they were that great, my ancestors wouldn’t have hauled ass off to the New World on leaky ships in the first place. 
Connection to? Hard to say, if only because I don’t have anything to compare it to. And any (rather mild, honestly) familiarity or comfort with elements of the old country/ies might just be from upbringing. I do like, for instance, Bagpipes more than Mariachi bands—but I think I like Taiko drums more than either, so there’s that.
Although, who knows…the Irish, I’ve heard, aren’t known for punctuality. Something that jibes well with my mom’s side of the family (“Murphy time” is the euphemism we’d always used for describing scheduling for holiday gatherings. “1 pm” translates into a roughly five-hour period.). Personally, though, I seem to have inherited my sense of timing from the great+ grandfather who fled from Prussia. Usually to my consternation.