I'm British.
British with hints of Irish, Welsh, German and Lithuanian.
One of my ancestors was Prince Sapieha (Ostafi Eustace Sapieha Rozanski), of Dereczym in the Duchy of Lithuania. So I guess that also gives me flavours of Polish and Belarussian!
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Interesting how this thread which pertains to nationality is turning out into a thread about origins... more people than not have given information about their roots and not just their nationality (ie, the passport that tells where you are attached to, be it by circumstance or by birth).
It's also telling how many people are of mixed origins. In the United States and the Americas it's to be expected, but even in Europe we see that there have been many migration movements (or waves) for a long time.
Part of my ancestry can be traced back to Cornwall in the 1300s, which is interesting.
I often say that I'm a mongrel: a mixture of Scottish, Irish, English, French, Swiss German, Italian probably, and goodness knows what else. Part of my Irish ancestry came from France orginally too, a few centuries back. Part of my family has exported itself to Canada, South Africa and New Zealand, I think the South African branch died out leaving no descendants. My Canadian niece and nephew are pure redheads attesting to their Scottish/Irish ancestry, no doubt. No one in my direct family had red hair.
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I'm part English, part Swedish and part Illegitamate (on my mothers side). Oh, and one of my great grandmothers was from Australia. Does that make me part Aussie mate? I hope so
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Quite a lot of interesting responses here. Thank you all for contributing!
Hi Partisan. I can see where you're coming from but I can't really have phrased the question much differently. It would be difficult for me to make it more interesting as you part it though I could've perhaps phrased it to enquire about national identity as opposed to nationality seeing as the subject has now gone from just nationality to origins as well which is quite interesting. So asking something like 'do you feel proud to be a member of your country?' or 'where is everyone descended from'? may've worked better but even then you can see there are lots of problems with those kind of questions as well.
I probably shouldn't have asked but I had too much time on my hands which is what happens when you're in an ambiguous position jobwise and you can't prepare to relocate when you don't know what's going on... But that's another story altogether.
Another point to note is that in this day and age especially you get people migrating en masse to other parts of the globe and acquiring citizenship for other countries which are not necessarily their countries of birth. It makes the question of identity a little more confusing.
As for my origins I know I am 99% English although I do know I may have Norman ancestry but this is around 1000 years ago! I did have an Irish great-aunt and I do have an Irish uncle who lives partly in France and partly in India. I don't know how he manages to do that given the culture shock involved but hey ho!
Curiously there has been some interesting genetic differentiation over the past generation of my family. My Dad used to have red hair like his brother who was very ginger making them look pretty celtic, my brother has brown hair, and I have bright blond hair. Its strange how these things pan out.
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hmm if it's lineage, I think I'm a Hoklo on my father's side and Zhejiang heritage on my mother's side.
I wish it were easier to research chinese lineage, (of course it'd be much easier if I could actually read chinese properly...)
I like to think that my family were Qing dynasty nobles and then stupid democracy and communism came and ruined everything.
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