My maternal great grandparents came to the US in 1906 amid scandal from St. Tsoph Wales. Great grandfather was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. My grandmother was 9.
My mother was the product of incest.
I have no information about my father. My mother didn’t know who he was.
So, as far as I know, I’m Welsh.
An aside. I’m not sure of the spelling of the village name, or if it even exists any more. I got that spelling from a bible belonging to my great grandfather’s grandfather. He was David Wynne born June 4th 1791. The bible is inscribed as a gift from David to son Michael , born in 1835. It has birthdates of several Wynne’s (my great grandfather’s last name) and several Gurrin’s. I wish it was more readable, but even so, its very confusing. Michael married Margaret Williamas, so I have no idea where the Gurrin name comes in.
It’s funny how here in America, we go about defining ourselves by our ancestors national heritage and our religion, when, fi you go abroad, they say, “No you’re American.”
I wonder if the French have this problem too.
“No, I’m Gallic Hugenot”
“I’m Saxon-Catholic”.
“I think we invaded once, and decided to stay.”
I don’t think that it’s all that strange in a country where:
a) virtually everyone’s ancestors had emigrated from overseas, most likely within the last two hundred years,
and
b) they settled in places where odds were good there were other immigrants from numerous other countries in, say, a twenty mile radius.
Whereas if you’re from China, odds are pretty good that most if not all of your ancestors, going back a thousand years, were Chinese as well. And the same goes for all of your neighbors.
(Disclaimer: This, of course, is a gross generalization of world migratory patterns.)
Sorry, Risha, I didn’t mean funny as in strange, I actually meant funny as in a joke. We all sort of forget sometimes we are Americans–dividing ourselves into little groups as we do. Its refreshing to know I have more in common with the guy down the street than someone from my ancestor’s homeland.
I wonder, though. I mean, recently the whole African immigration into France from old French colonies has launched some very public debates about who is and isn’t French.
Its sort of satisfying to note we defined being American as just being born here (or naturalized, thanks Dad); of course some people hold out for their own narrow definitions, but then again, some people ride in horse carts.
As my great-grandfather used to say, “Look, I love where I was born. but every day I’m glad we got on the boat. If home had been so perfect, we would’ve never left and gone thousands of miles away to a place we didn’t know.”
Or, as my English teacher put it more humorlessly: " We’re Americans. We’re all losers. "
We're the descendants of losers, of people who couldn't hack it in their own land and had to run away. We got run off our lands, spit on, imprisoned, thrown into slavery,frozen out, and starved. The first people in the Americas came over an ice bridge to get away from whatever was behind them--they thought running into a frozen tundra was the better alternative. One of the first groups in America were slaves. They were joined by the rudely poor, people so hungry and disgusting they ate fleas for meals, or religious zealots who thought stoning people to death was not a half-bad idea, who people couldn't stand, and murderers, thieves,a nd vagabonds escaping prison sentences, and, of course, tax collectors.
Everytime I think of America, I realize why the rest of the world hates us— we used to be their shoe shiners, their field workers, their servants, their slaves. And now we take guff from nobody. We stand up and say we want it super-sized, thank you very much, Frenchie. And with freedom fries on the side.
USA! USA! USA!
think I’ve safely taken us off topic.
I’m a mutt.
25% Sweedish
15% German
60% Irish, English, Danish
100% American!
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Pretty muttish. My mom’s French-Canadian with a bit of Spanish and Cree thrown in. My dad’s half-Greek. The other half is made up with bits of some of Eastern Europe’s finest (eastern German, Hungarian, Romanian, Romany, Austrian). Okay, some of those are technically Western Europe, but you know what I mean. Grandma once said that Grandpa also had Scots-Irish in him, but we’ve been able to trace his ancestry back to Europe, now, so if he does have Celtic blood, it’s Celtic by way of Eastern Europe.
Religion: 3/4 Roman Catholic. 1/4 Greek Orthodox. And I’m Wiccan. Protestantism not the big thing in my family, apparently.
OK, jackman1776, I think we’re in perfect agreement. Well, I might think that the the world hates us more because of our foreign policy, but otherwise we’re in agreement. 
Nationality: American
Background: Black, Mexican, Irish, Scottish, English, Aztec and Cherokee.
Bavarian, Bavarian, Bavarian, and Irish/Bavarian.
My maiden name needs to buy a vowel.
Julie
New Jersey (United States), born and bred.
I am (from greatest to least): Irish, Albanian, Scottish, Lebanese, German, Swedish.
The Albanian, Scottish, and German is from my mother; the Irish, Lebanese, and Swedish from my father.
U.S. citizen
Maternal= 3/4 Spanish + 1/4 Filipina
Paternal= 3/4 Irish + 1/4 English
Damn straight. I’m 100% Icelandic and can definately trace my family back that far, for all the good it does me…
I disagree with the view that we stupid foreigners just see Americans as Americans, I work in the travel industry and I often find myself asking American people where they “originated” from - especially if people have, say, Polish or French surnames. Seeing that I have only my dull, single nationality, I’m curious - when you are, for example, part Mexican and part Polish but born in America do you generally identify with the Contreras’ and Warzychas of the world?
Born in England: US Citizen
Father: Flemish(immigrated to the USA after WW2)
Mother: Danish, German, Scot…material grandparents go way back in the US on the east coast.
There was a similar thread back in October, I guess most people will not post in this thread so here is a link.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=217647
British. (Not English, British).
Ancestors from pretty much all over the British Isles, but not from anywhere else, much (unless we’re going back to the time of the Saxon invasions, but, frankly, that’s a bit more history than I’m comfortable dealing with.)
My paternal grandmother is/was 100% Scot. The other three grandparents were 100% Irish, although there is a German lady somewhere way back there somewhere. My parents are both American, born in NY and NJ. I am American, born in Hawaii.
You americans claiming to be X percent Irish and Y percent Scottish etc are aware that the whole rest of the world just thinks you’re yanks and is totally baffled by the hyphenated american idea?
Just asking like.
Owl
Well if you father was full blooded Pakistani and your mother was full blooded Irish and you’re asked what your ethnicity was there aren’t too many answers that you could make. You could say human. You could refuse to answer. You could purposely misunderstand the question and answer with your nationality. You could say African since at some point all our ancestors lived there. You could say Oceanic since at some point all our ancestors lived there. You could say earthling. Or you could say 50% Pakistani/50% Irish since that’s what the questioner wanted to know. It doesn’t really mean anything any way it’s just an interesting historical tidbit which is all any genealogy is anyway. At least it is once you begin to reach your 2nd great grandparents.
I am 0.171% Irish. Hmm, if that was 1 guy (it’s actually several in my case) then I guess that means that I’d probably still have about 50 of his genes floating around my body. Mostly I’m interested because it’s a puzzle, it’s hard and it does relate to me. I really don’t care what other people think about it. We Americans do a lot of things that baffle people. Hasn’t seemed to slow us don’t one bit.
Bangladesh = ~ East Bengal, hence the name and hence the province in India being referred to as West Bengal. The vast majority of Bangladesh’s citizens are Bengali and speak Bengali.
- Tamerlane
Long as I’m here nitpicking:
Paternal side is Serbian from west Pennsylvania ( in and around the old coal mining town of Export ), maternal is a mix including English, Welsh, and “Black Dutch” ( which could mean just about anything ) from the Maryland/Virginia area.
- Tamerlane