I came across this map on Reddit today. There are many examples like this that show all the different types of ethnicity groups in an area.
As a standard American mutt, I am always a little baffled by these. Unless I go do a DNA tests, I have no idea what ethnicity I am besides “white.” How do these people, who are all packed together in a relatively small country know if they are ethnically Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Albanian, Slovak, etc? You just take your mothers and grandmothers word for it?
Who defines these ethnicity groups? Who gets to decide that these are all separate and not really just one blob?
How do people know other people’s ethnicity? Is this all just self reported?
There are many ways to determine this … and yes, a lot of this relies on “self reporting”. But while ethnic identification is not always 100%, there are some pretty good clues.
A big one is languages spoken in the home, especially by older generations. Sure, I may be a teenager in Slovakia and have grown up speaking Slovak. But maybe my surname is “Nagy” – and while my dad also grew up speaking Slovak, he also has command of Hungarian. My paternal grandparents both speak Slovak fluently, but with Hungarian accents – and I notice that they usually speak Hungarian between themselves (more so when agitated!). And then my old Nana (Dad’s grandmother) who passes away when I was 7 … she only haltingly spoke Slovak, but sang me lots of songs in Hungarian.
And then there’s a similar story on my mother’s side, except her maiden name is “Gruber” and her immediate ancestors had varying levels of competence with Bavarian German – akin to the Hungarian speakers mentioned above.
So, with that linguisitic information, you start working in further information about where your ancestors once lived, where they were raised, etc. This information does get passed down generation to generation, even if imperfectly. And yeah, information about your 18th-century ancestors is probably off in some significant ways … things within your grandparents’ living memory (things THEIR grandparents passed on to them) are not as likely to be significantly incorrect.
In the end … it’s not “23 and Me” accuracy, but it’s typically more than enough to establish a credible ethnic identity within oneself. Besides, in the end … does it really matter if you are really 3/4 Alpine French genetically when everyone on both sides of your family has lived in NW Italy for the past several generations? Should you feel any less Italian?
Upon reading the OP … I was thinking maybe he/she was wondering how someone could know with forensic precision, as opposed to having a general impressionistic idea of one’s own ethnicity. When I think more about that … I realize that one’s pinpoint-precise genetic profile is probably a very different thing than one’s self-identified ethnicity (essentially, a social construct).
Their names, the language they speak, and what their parents and grandparents told them is going to be pretty accurate in former Yugoslavia. You can also look at the historic kingdoms that made up the country and you’ll see them correspond to the major areas in your ethnicity map, and you can see most of it didn’t change much between 1953 and 1991.
ETA: And religion, as MrDibble pointed out already.
As recently as my parents’ generation, churches in the US were almost exclusively ethnic: Irish-American Catholics would go to one church, Italian-American Catholics would go to another, Polish-American Catholics to yet another, and so on. And the churches would usually be named after patron saints of those ethnicities, to clearly label them. People could intermarry, but there’d still be clues: For instance, if your last name is O’Brien and you go to St. Pat’s, but when you go to visit Grandma, she attends St. Stanislaus, you know that you’re part Polish.
All my grandparents emigrated between 1885 (my maternal grandfather was only 1) and 1904 (the other three between 1898 and 1904) claimed to come from Lithuanian or Russia and all spoke Yiddish as their native tongue. How can I doubt my ethnicity?
I imagine most people learn it from the parents and grandparents.
In this particular case, your ethnicity, and knowing that of your neighbors, was often a matter of life and death. And even in more peaceful times it was easy to tell by the language you spoke, the alphabet you used, what religion you were, and many other factors. Even people of mixed heritage would most likely identify (or be identified by others) as one particular group.
Since the peak of European migration to the US was a century ago or more, and many groups acculturated in terms of adopting English and other cultural features very rapidly, such distinctions have become obscured in the US. But still, I think the vast majority of people of European ancestry still have a good idea of where their families came from.
Ethnicity is determined by yourself and whatever nationality, background, social group, community, and/or religion, that you decide to identify with. I mean, you have a name right? Most people identify with the origin of their family name as (barring any hanky-panky) it is passed down through the generations. Yes, it is usually passed down by word of mouth from your parents, grandparents, etc… and their family names.
Although there is more cultural diversity now than ever before, this is relatively modern. Traditionally, most ethnicities tended to stay within their community when settling in new regions, socializing, marrying, having children, etc…
Myself for instance, I identify with Scotland, my name is Scottish, (Gaelic actually) My wife has a Scottish name and background. My wife, 2 of my children, my aunts/uncles, nieces/nephews/cousins have red hair, etc… My father’s name and bloodline traces back to Scotland but my paternal grandmother is French-Canadian and her maiden name and family trace back to France. My mom, and maternal grandparents are both Scottish and have Scottish family names, as did all four of my great-grandparents, and so on.
If you identify as American that’s fine, in fact, you can identify with multiple ethnicities if you choose… Hey, why not… AND… St. Paddy’s Day is in 2 days!
But, obviously for someplace like former Yugoslavia, people are greatly more aware of their specific heritage and group affiliation than ‘standard American mutts’. Which also many Americans are, though generally not to the degree in former Yugoslavia. In my family there isn’t any doubt. Every known surname back to at least great greats is Irish. The various branches of the family mostly lived in Brooklyn for several generations (nobody in my extended family personally knows any relative in Ireland AFAIK), apparently making it a point to marry other Irish. They were (NY) Irish, quite obviously and self consciously. It wasn’t a matter of taking any one person’s word for it, but a significant aspect of their identity, of mine when I was a kid.
Thanks for the responses so far. I guess this is a part of life that is known or discussed in other areas of the world. It is just so foreign to me.
How would I know? My great grandparents were born in the US. By that time they were probably already a mixture of Irish, German, English, Swiss, Italian, and who-knows what.
But those aren’t even ethnic groups are they? Does a nationality make an ethnic group? You can have many ethnic groups in one country.
My European ancestors moved to Baltimore between 1845 and 1860, and their offspring pretty much stayed in Baltimore. That meant that when I was growing up, there were lots of great-aunts and uncles around with stories and family lore, as well as family bibles with birth and death data. For my Irish and German ancestors, I know where my great-great grand-parents were born. For the Polish side, my grandmother told me that her family came from Poland. Good enough for me.
I confess that I personally wouldn’t have a clue. One side of grandparents had some quite dark skin in there but not the others but whether that is mediterranean, middle-eastern, asian? I don’t know. I know where my parents were born but I have no idea about my grandparents and have never been interested enough to ask.
So I don’t actually care. They were them and I am me. If I found out my mother’s dad was Scottish and My dad’s mum was half Tunisian it’d be a big fat meh and it wouldn’t change a single thing about me. My father in law loves his genealogy stuff but I glaze over after ten seconds.
Yes, for what ancestries / ethnicities Americans claim, it’s very often a matter of taking what your grandparents or parents told you about family history at face value. For those of us whose ancestors emigrated to the U.S. within the past 2 or 3 generations, it’s obviously a lot clearer than for those whose ancestors have been in the U.S. for a couple of hundred years.
And, yes, sometimes, those family stories probably aren’t accurate (see: Elizabeth Warren). If I get into a conversation about ancestry with a friend, very often the friend says something along the lines of “and there’s supposed to be a little Cherokee in there somewhere,” which suggests to me that there’s a lot of tall tales on the subject in people’s family trees.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no (or not meaningfully). As others have noted, your example of the former Yugoslavia is a particularly thorny one, and as national boundaries have moved and changed over time, they haven’t always matched up to dividing different ethnic groups from one another.
In some cases, nationality and ethnicity line up more closely, but even then, there might be distinctions. You can say, “I’m of English heritage,” and your ancestors came from England, but they might have been Cornish, or from Yorkshire, etc.
Sure they are. “Ethnic group” is a pretty fuzzy concept, though. “Nationality of ancestors” is one of many potential hooks upon which one may hang one’s ethnic self-identification. But of course, there are other hooks – language spoken by ancestors, religion of self/ancestors, minority status of ancestors (e.g. Roma in Europe).
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Hermitian, now I’m curious – going into this thread, what have been your ideas about ethnic groups? What do you consider “for sure” ethnic groups? Do you think of it more in terms of skin color, or religion, or language, or other ways?
Also, have you ever spoken to your oldest relatives with questions about their backgrounds? How they identified themselves ethnically? Even if your grandparents themselves defined themselves as “mutts”, they may have some clues you can trace backwards.
If there had really been enough Cherokee in the Carolinas to provide for all the descendants out there, the white man wouldn’t have stood a chance, and I’d be living in Bavaria today. Well, Louisville, at any rate.
My own mother was raised to believe that her grandmother had Native American blood. My brother recently did one of the DNA tests. Nope.
That is sort of why I made this thread. Plenty of sources talk about ethnic groups or map them out like it is this very clear line of what an ethnic group is. Like this is all well defined.
But it seems to be a complete mishmash of religion, language, lore, nationality, or whatever seems cool to claim to be.
Sometimes I hear a co-worker say something like “My great great grandfather came here from Ireland, so I’m Irish.” I’m thinking, that’s great that you identified 1/16 of your heritage, what about the other 15/16ths?
My grandparents did a bit of research decades ago, but I have no idea where that info is now. But even then, it seems like people research the areas of the tree that they like or find interesting.