One is where you have an emotional/political attachment to the former country, and you wish it were still around.
The other is where you didn’t like the former country, and are happy that it no longer exists, since you prefer the current state of affairs.
So a czech probably never thought of themselves as a Czechoslovakian, they thought of themselves as a czech who lived in Czechoslovakia, and now that the Czech Republic is independent has no problem calling the place where they were born the Czech Republic. Or a Ukranian who says they were born in Ukraine rather than the Soviet Union. Or an Eritrean who says they were born in Eritrea instead of Ethiopia.
The other case is where someone identifies as, say, a Rhodesian rather than a Zimbabwean. Or an ethnic German who was born in what was then Germany but is now Poland. Or an Ethiopian who says they were born in Ethiopia, even though that part of Ethiopia is now Eritrea.
In many cases national identity is pretty weak compared to ethnic identity, especially in a world of shifting borders.
To add to/comment on what Jophiel and Lemur866 said: My paternal ancestors emigrated from what are sometimes called the Czech lands. Most were Bohemian, but Moravia is also represented in the family tree. One great-grandfather was born of Česky parents in what is now Romania, but was then included in Austria-Hungary. The family members generally answered “Czech” (as do I), “Bohemian”, or “Moravian” when asked their ancestry. “Czechoslovakian” was frowned upon, as there was no desire to be confused/lumped in with the Slovaks (think of such rivalries as Greek-Turk or English-Scottish, where the rivals concentrate on how different they are even as outsiders say “you’re basically the same as those guys you hate”), nor to suggest support for what was then the present-day Communist regime (even though the nation of Czechoslovakia was born as a Western-leaning state in the aftermath of World War I).
I know someone who was born in the Free City of Danzig, which is now the Polish city of Gdansk. Ask her (as you’ll be inspired to after hearing her accent) her nationality, however, and she’ll proudly say “German!”
My grandparents were born in the Hungarian part of Transylvania. After World War I it became a part of Romania. But they were ethic Magyars, they spoke Magyar, so by golly, Hungary it was and Hungary it stayed.
For my genealogy I maintain people were born in the country and region they were born in. My grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia. Her father was born in the Autro-Hungarian Empire. And his father in the Kingdom of Hungary.
My great great grandmother was born in Sumner Co., MS. Even though within a year it was renamed to Webster Co.
Actually it would be useful to have a tick box to list where the birth place is currently located.
My grandmother never liked how people could just create and destroy countries. Amazingly enough she didn’t even know she was Slovakian till I told her. She just assumed she was Czech.
I got in some trouble in middle school because so many of my ancestors were born in places that no longer existed but I refused to identify them as coming from the country that now owned the dirt where they were born (especially when that dirt wasn’t even converted to someone else’s dirt during their lifetimes).
Similarly, whenever I get a U.S. census form that asks for my ancestry, I’m not quite sure what to write. The fact is that even if my forefather from Bohemia gets called Czech, he was a Jew. Most of my ancestors lived in the Pale of Settlement and were considered to be separate from the population of those countries. They did not have equal rights and lived under many harsh restrictions. They certainly weren’t considered “Russians” or whatever. Therefore, I am not willing to say I’m “1/4 Russian” on a census form, just as I wasn’t willing to put the flag of Czechoslovakia on my family tree when I was 12.
Hell no, in the case of my great grandparents, who were born in Galicia (Austria) and Russia, in modern-day Poland. The family refers to them being born in Poland, as they are ethnically Polish and the territory these days is in Poland.
“Name of locality” can change too. Reminds me of the old joke about a Russian answering a census taker:
Q: Where were you born?
A: St. Petersburg.
Q: Where did you go to school?
A: Petrograd.
Q: Where do you live now?
A: Leningrad.
Q: Where would you like to live?
A: St. Petersburg.
Well, I was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which technically stopped existing after the US Government turned the territory over to Panama for administration. Mostly, I just say I was born in Panama, or say Panama Canal Zone if I’m feeling verbose. It’s hardly ever an issue, really.
Uh, no. Kingston, UK. Jamaica wasn’t independent back then. But his citizenship papers from the US say “Kingston, Jamaica.”
He’s never been Jamaican. He was British, now he’s American. He apparently was born in Kingston, Jamaica, though… (and yes, I know Jamaica refers to the island itself and not only the country, but how often do you see someone who says he’s from “Liverpool, Great Britain”?)
Actually, these days, the official Ho Chi Minh City is losing to the popular Sai Gon such that the authorities have all but given up. The locals call it Saigon, the tourists call it Saigon, and even as far back as 1996 when I first went there, I actually congratulated a leftist colleague of mine - a fellow Australian and tourist - for managing to even find a Ho Chi Minh City T-shirt there.
THe people have spoken - and for all intents and purposes, it still seems to be Saigon in day to day life.
I go with the Saigon, Vietnam as well since I am just too lazy to add in the South part. And I figure that anyone that I would be speaking with would likely know which Vietnam we were talking about.
My son was born on Midway Is. Now there is no Midway Is. The Midway Islands are made up of Sand, Eastern and Spit Islands which beloned to the U.S. Navy Department at the time of his birth. His birth certificate was issued in Honolulu, Hi. The islands are currently under the auspices of the U.S, Fish and Wildlife Service and are technically considered a U.S. Territory, but it’s all rather confusing. While there have probably been hundreds, maybe several thousand children born there in the past it’s unlikely to happen now as there are few permanant residents and there has never been a native population. Certainly a unique circumstance.
I went to high school with a Muslim guy who naturally said that he was from Palestine. One of the less clueful guys in class responded with, “Oh, like Israel?” Things went downhill from there.
Color me confused about this whole debate. I was born in Plattsburgh, New York. If the denizens of neighboring Keeseville decided to rise up and attack Plattsburgh with an atomic weapon, thereby wiping it (and themselves) off the map, that wouldn’t change the fact that I was born there.
If that area then became part of, say, the indian reservation in Altona, which the state in its generosity might very well do in that situation, that wouldn’t mean that I was born in Altona. I wasn’t. I was born in Plattsburgh, which, if asked, I would then say used to be in what is now Altona.
You can’t retroactively have been born somewhere; that doesn’t make any sense. Suppose the Earth gets pulverized by a massive comment while I’m away on a space mission; would I then say that I was from a pile of dust in the Terran asteroid belt?
The Pilgrims didn’t land in the United States, St. Petersburg wasn’t named after Lenin, giant raptors didn’t live in Utah, and RumMunkey’s friend wasn’t born in the Czech Republic.
I know a white woman who stubbornly calls herself “Rhodesian”. She also says “Africa hasn’t been the same since it went black”, so I think there might be an agenda.
That said, she was dissing Mugabe for years before anyone else started, so I’d say she has something of a point, even if it’s unpleasantly motivated.