I’ve been in that situation too. I’m Caucasian but my surname is extremely common among African-Americans. I used to work at an organization that was largely African-American and did a lot of advocacy work related to racial bias in society. Whenever I had a meeting with someone external to the place that employed me, I could always see the amazement on their faces when they first saw me and realized I was white.
Yeah, I had a Mrs. Ortiz for Cost Accounting at college. She was six feet tall, blond and blue-eyed. Now, her husband was Hispanic, and that’s where she got the name.
This is where I fall in my feelings on the subject. I think mostly people are just trying to be conversational, and they think this makes for a good ice breaker. They don’t always realize it might be a touchy subject for some. And yes, there are those with less innocent motives.
I was married for 30 years and got divorced and decided to keep my married surname mostly because I have built my career with this name and it was too much of a hassle to change it, even though I don’t really like the sound of it and it is not indicative of my ancestry, either. I am always getting asked if I know so-and-so and have to explain this is not my maiden name. And speaking of that, my maiden name is actually my stepfather’s last name as he adopted me when I was 5, and it is the “wrong” ancestry also. At this point I just let my personality and my character do the talking and I don’t care so much about the surname.
As to the OP, I would just say it is what it is, and I am who I am.
With me, it’s all of the above. Family lore has it that my grandfather left the old country “in a hurry” and changed his name on the way over, and then immigration misspelled that name.
I don’t know if any of that is actually true, but it’s easier to say “that’s what we wound up with after we went through Ellis Island,” and the kind of people who ask in the first place always seem satisfied with that for an answer.
My mother’s last name can serve as German or Irish. I don’t think she’s even sure of all that ancestry through her father.
Eh, Hispanic people can be brown, white, black, whatever. Argentina is probably whiter than Canada.
Mostly a WAG, but it’s probably okay. The US doesn’t care so much what your name is as long as it’s not chosen to commit a crime or avoid prosecution.
I think “considered” is not a useful term. But it can be taken that way, yes. Some do, some don’t.
Thinking of the point you just made and the question I asked about Icelanders… I think the idea that there’s no “Ellis Island effect” is almost certainly erroneous. I don’t think it would be easy for a new immigrant with poor English skills to insist “Where I come from, there’s no such thing as a family name”, or to necessarily even know that it would matter for them to be insisting about this right now.
It’s not just an American Immigrant thing, my surname is a messed up version of the original Irish (or Scottish, we’re not sure) name, it’s 4 letters long and spelt about 10 different ways. I think my grandparents were the first people in the family who could read & write so they just told the local priest/government official what their name was in a heavy accent and accepted whatever they wrote down.
Somebody somewhere along the way decided to change my mother’s family name. I don’t know who or where or when exactly, except that they left Sicily with one name and ended up with a different one. The only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t my great-grandparents who changed it - they were illiterate even in Italian and the “new” name is suspiciously close to how the sounds of the name would be spelled in English.
No prohibition in the US in giving children last names different from the parents. My husband and I each have our birth last names and our kids have last names different from either of ours.
My last name sounds squarely like a differently ethnicity than my own (like if my last name was “French” and I’m actually Polish). It’s also a translation of the word, so somewhat anglicized (think if my last name was Francaise changing it to French). So when people ask if I’m that nationality I just chuckle a bit and say “No, but I can see why you’d think that”.
Saying “it’s American” can come off inadvertently dismissive, since people will presume you’re saying that to make some larger point. You could say it’s “uniquely” American, which puts a positive spin on it, eliminating any possible dismissiveness.
Can’t you just say something like “Actually, the name is from Barbados. But my heritage is mostly German. How about that?!”
I mean, you know where the name comes from. Its origin is even more interesting than “just Scottish”. Why not share that?
Well sure. Us 'Muricans can handle a simple, obvious name like “Brzezinski” or “Grbac” or “O’Shaughnessy”. It’s those exotics like “Garcia” and “Hernandez” that throw us. 
So are you related to the Downtownskis?
Personally, I have no problem with someone asking that question. But I want them to either accept my answer at face value or ask the question they really want to ask.
If someone wants to know where my ancestral lineage is from, they need to ask directly and not assume they are going to get that information by asking “Where are you from?”
“Where are you from?”
“Cleveland.”
“What about before that?”
“Well, I was born in Pittsburgh, but moved at 1”
“Where are your parents from?”
“Pittsburgh also.”
“NO REALLY, where are you from?”
vs.
“Where is your family originally from?”
Both are asking about ethnic background, but the former is much more impolite about it.
O Shag Hennessy!?
I recall the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis tells a very Hispanic-looking lady that his name is Butch. (She had already given her long and mellifluous name and explained its meaning.) She says, “Butch? What does this mean, Butch?”
His reply is: “I’m an American, lady. Our names don’t mean shit.”
People usually assume my surname is English, but it’s actually an Anglicized version of a Greek name, so I get where the OP is coming from.
Depends. In St. Louis, “Where did you go to high school?” is either a friendly attempt to establish common ground with someone you just met, or a sneaky manipulation to determine the exact neighborhood you grew up, and your economic, social and probably religious status all at once.
Of course, it falls apart if you didn’t grow up in St. Louis, but that means you’re an outsider and we have nothing to say to you.
Well, I think the main issue is that it represents such a tiny percentage of my heritage.
Were I able to complete a 10-generation pedigree chart, I’d probably be something like 330/1024ths Scottish, and 64/1024ths German, with a bunch of Welsh and English and other things thrown in there as well. I have no forebears at all who came to this country in the last 150 years.
And I think the most interesting thing about the name is that it’s now mostly held by African-Americans. But how that happened is not really where I want the discussion to go.
Depends on the location, on how it’s asked and on how often the person gets asked it. In the bilingual areas of Spain it’s a discrete way to ask which languages do you speak and which way you swing with regards to some word usages and spellings, which in turn is linked to that dreaded monster, Politics. The question is normally framed along the lines of “I don’t recall seeing you around before, are you originally from this town?” rather than “that’s a funny [accent/name] you have! Where are you from?”