I saw this question posted “elsewhere,” but have often wondered myself.
His “parents” were John Cleveland Hoffa and Viola Riddle Hoffa, and I “believe” he was of “English” descent, but I’m “not” sure.
Why the “quotation marks”?
I believe his “mother” was of “Irish” descent, “btw”.
I believe Hoffa is a Hungarian surname. His background (born to an Indiana coal miner) would make me guess Slovak, hungarian, or something similar.
Just took a look at the Budapest phone directory sitting on my desk, and there’s a grand total of 0 Hoffas listed. Unless the spelling has been anglicized beyond recognition, I don’t think Hoffa was Hungarian.
Yeah, that’s closer to the question I’m axing: "From what country would you expect the name “Hoffa?”
Jimmy Hoffa’s father, John C. Hoffman, was of German descent, but his family had been in the United States for several generations.
“Hoff” is the German word for “hope,” and there are dozens of common German names that either contain that word, or are variations on that word (from “Hoffman” to “Hassellhoff”).
Hoffa’s mother, Violet, was of Irish descent.
sorry, that should be “John C. Hoffa.”
Well, Riddle is a German surname, so he was at least “half-German”. (Some of my ancestors were Riddle as well.)
Throwing “hoffa ancestry” into Google comes back with several Germanic references (although even those are sparse). On one message thread at Ancestry.com, one post indicated that the name Hoffa (or Haffa) originated in Tuttlingen, Germany. I haven’t seen any indications of Slavic, French, or British associations, (and I really doubt that it is Romance).
My gggrandfather (melvin Scott Riddle)was Jimmy’s uncle. Jimmy’s mother, viola Riddle and melvin riddle are of Cherokee indian decent.
This quotation from a book was linked to by the Wikipedia article on Hoffa:
He was born in Brazil, so I guess that makes him a Brazilian. 
(How many is a Brazilian?)
Hoffa may have learned something about axing in his later years.
Wikipedia says: “Hoffa’s father, John Hoffa, was a coal miner and of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) lineage”
Possibly worth noting that when I first asked this question 10 years ago, Wikipedia was still in its infancy, and the first cite on this board dates back only to June of 2002.
Then I suppose the real question is: What is a zombie’s ethnicity?
I’m not sure how accurate this site is, but it claims the name Hoffa is prevalent in poland.
Hoff is most certainly NOT the German word for hope - that would be ‘Hoffnung’. While the verb hoffen (ich hoffe, du hoffst, etc) is closer, the ‘Hoff’ in all the names that you mention (and possibly in Hoffa’s name) means court and has nothing to do with hope.
Best answer for the “where are you from?”/“what’s your ethnicity?” question was (with obvious german accent) “Brooklyn, 224th street. (short pause) Before that, Germany.”