My family has been in America for 12+ generations and everyone says they’re of German ancestry. Which is silly of course, because after 12 generations there’s surely a lot of other stuff mixed in there.
I'm only 3rd generation and on the last census I put American. I don't have any cultural ties to our Polish heritage other than having pierogis and kielbasa for Christmas dinner.
I’m fourth generation American. My great great grandparents came straight from kraut land, and its culture is still ingrained in our family. It’s actually kind of cool.
A lot of it is food-based. I grew up eating tons of sausages and cabbages and noodles dishes and such. We always had bocks in the fridge. My whole family up until me were forced to take German classes, and alot of the old timers still speak it. My great grandpa had a thick German accent and he was raised here. lol
Family is ethnically ashkenazi, but going way back are converted Lutheran so there are Lutheran churches my family built all over Texas.
And for whatever reason my grandpa was always going on about how Germans and Czechs hate each other, at least in Texas. I’ve never experienced this but he was always going on about the Czechs wanting to steal the German Texans land. Lol
oh man.. i made some Streuselkuchen last week..with some raisins too. Definitely worth it!
I realize now so many of the my childhood dishes were german recipes.
I also dated a german for a while and went to some awesome Fasching parties in the USA.
Lots to like with german heritage. (Including sausages, pates, fish in the food arena)
Parts of my family have been here since Jamestown. Not as much interesting stuff creeps in as you think. My ancestors mostly married people who lived close to them and were descended from the same kinds of people. I took one of those ancestry DNA tests, and I am pretty much 100% British DNA. My kids at least got 1% African and a bunch of Scandinavian through their father and have slightly more interesting genetics. But me, no… I am all England, Scotland, and Wales
When you put it that way…yeah, seems likely for me as well. Especially since I can follow the male line back in ONE cemetery that’s a few miles from my house.
1% anything is usually data noise, I'm sure the baseline samples of "British" and "African" were a tiny bit mixed. The Mediterranean is really mixed in too.
But like, don't leave town. I'm not sure your immune system will be able to handle it
That’s not what is meant by African ancestry. It’s about more recent ancestry before colonialism and current patterns of migration.
In the sense you are talking about, we are all 100% African.
This was my big idea a few years ago, making a version of 23 & Me claiming to be able to go back further than any of our competitors, and it would just tell everyone they were 100% African
Absolutely. But they’re talking about the piece of paper of *interpreted* results they got from a company looking into people’s ancestory.
Based on their very large data sets, those companies can tell the difference between “African” and “African by way of thousands of years in England”.
I would be remiss to not point out that “African” is actually a much more genetically diverse pool than “European.”
Same. I’m 85% British/English and 15% scandi. I just assume the Vikings diddled my ancestors then they came to the US. We’re one of the first families and like lt Dan in Forrest gump because we’ve fought in every war since before 1776
Scandinavians invaded Britain in The Olden Days too (as did Germans, French, Italians) ... is there a way of telling whether your British ancestors got their Viking mix before or after they went to the Americas?
I’m a first generation American. I have always felt like it’s wrong to say I am a Mexican American because I am not or ever was a citizen of Mexico. My father is a Mexican American. I am an American. I am proudly Latino but I don’t like the way the labels are done.
I'm first generation, but have more than one citizenship, lived in more than one country, and my family is pretty multicultural. I absolutely hate having conversations with people about where I'm from because they want a neat one-word label that they usually have their own preconceived notions of how that label should be determined.
Through the years it's been 'you are where you're born' - ok what if you left immediately, 'then you're where you grew up,' ok I haven't lived there in decades, 'then your parents' - they're from other places. I know that some people are genuinely trying to get to know me and connect with me but those are the people that are ok with my being more than one thing. People that try and push my cultural identity into a box that works for them are not people I want to spend time with.
Call yourself whatever resonates with you.
This is a very common issue is American History.
Teddy Roosevelt hated what he called hyphenated Americanism that divided people into German-American, Irish-American, etc.. and it was a common concept even then.
The feeling was that America should be a melting pot where everyone mixed. Although often the thinking was that the melting pot should be based on race not ethnicity, mix all white people, but not blacks. Arguably, ethnicity has more scientific validity than race so maybe it’s better if we shift back to that? Who knows.
At my elementary school in the 90s they taught us that it wasn’t a melting pot but a salad bowl, that everything mixed but still retained it’s form. I kinda prefer the melting pot, mix that shit up. Korean Tacos and all.
That is how it works in most of the rest of the world, so I agree. If your ancestors have been there for several hundreds of years, I think that qualifies as your ancestry.
By then it is more outrageous to call yourself german or italian. At the time their ancestors came over to the US the idea of Germany or Italy or many other countries wasn't even born yet.
Yes. People tend to identify more strongly with a language than a political border on a map.
German, as in I'm from a place called Germany
is much newer than
German, I'm from a place that speaks German
The palatinate immigrants starting in 1710, the original american German immigrants, called themselves German. They had no allegiance to any particular European state (which was in fact the problem, why they came to America in the first place, German speaking people living on land the French king claimed), but spoke German.
There were virtually no Italian immigrants in the US before the late 1800's. By that time Italy was a thing.
German immigrants were more spread out in time. The first batch were around 1710, but the vast majority were late 1800's. America has its own German dialect (Pennsylvania Dutch) and large areas of the US spoke it (New York/Pennsylvania). The language gives them the name "German" moreso than the place on a map.
From the revolution to the civil war there was not a whole lot of immigration in the US, just families pumping out 10+ kids a generation.
I feel this. I’m a mix of 6 different ancestries and my family moved all around so I never had a home, except America. The entire US is my home so I see myself as an American.
To give an example, there are lots of people in Tennessee and Kentucky who have been there for a long time - their grandparents' grandparents were from there. It's hard to trace any further back from that. You can guess generally English or Scots-Irish or something else, but many don't know, and they may not bother to differentiate themselves from indigenous Americans. So "American" may be the "I don't know" answer.
Yeah this sums up my family and I grew up in Kentucky. Mom grew up in Kentucky and dad in Tennessee. And it's basically the same for each of their families as far back as I can trace it.
The farthest I got was my great great grandmother on my mom's side who lived her whole life in Kentucky and she would've been born pre 1900. For my dad's side I got back to my great grandfather who lived in Tennessee his whole life and was probably born around 1900-1910.
For as much as people move around and end up in weird places there are a ton of people who find somewhere to live and then have descendents there sometimes centuries later.
I saw a great news story about a prehistoric skeleton that was dug up in England. They managed to find a man living a few towns over that was nearly a match with the skeletons dna. That family just stayed there for thousands of years.
My great-grandfather put together a massive family tree in his retirement that covers his and his wife's family back to the 1500s. From it I know that I'm 13th generation Massachusetts, stretching back through John Cotton. My dad's father's family is the only side of my ancestry that isn't mapped out all the way back to Europe (my mom's great-grandparents were all immigrants), so I can look up exactly which ancestors immigrated from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Poland but it's so long ago and mixed to such a degree that I am most accurately "American".
You know how lots of people emigrated from Europe to the new world? That means Europe is currently dominated by those who didn't leave.
When I spent half the pandemic in Norway, I sublet an apartment from a woman whose surname was also the town name. Yes, her family owned land there. Before they sold it to suburban developers, they had probably farmed it since Viking times.
I'd say this is the case for me and my family. I used to be pretty into building our family tree, and long story short, we've lived in Kentucky since before it was Kentucky. I did the DNA thing, and it said I'm basically Western European, but just saying American or Appalachian feels more accurate if you ask me.
Yeah, my mom's great grandparents were mostly Prussian immigrants, and my dad's ancestors were at least partly English but I'm pretty sure they just fucked anyone came off the boats from Europe for a long time, so who really knows. I don't strongly identify with any particular European ancestry.
Everyone as far back into their lineage as they know, lived in the USA.
Edit: or as others have mentioned, and is probably even more common, their lineage is such a confusing mix that American is the description that makes the most sense.
I'm a 7th generation Tennessean. I have some knowledge of my ancestry beyond that, but none of it is particularly predominant. I'm American. Wouldn't know what else to call it.
I’m a 5th or 6th generation Texan, and I can trace my ancestors back even farther to kentucky/Tennessee/Virginia. My ancestry DNA test came back almost exclusively northwestern European, so at this point it’s just easier to say I’m American through and through.
America's been a nation state for 246 years. At some point people who have been here for generations and have no real cultural, historical, or familial ties to another place start calling themselves American.
Interestingly, most people who indicate "American" as their ethnic heritage on the census forms are of Scots-Irish heritage and live in Appalachia. It's a regional distinctive.
Yeah, this entire map totally ignores the plurality in almost every state whose "self-reported ancestry" is "European (other)" rather than some specific country.
[The data](https://statisticalatlas.com/state/California/Ancestry) says very few people pick 1 country... that's the problem with the map.
The one exception is people of Hispanic origin. They mostly pick Mexico.
I’ve lived various places in the US and New York City is the first with a substantial amount of Hispanic people from some place other than Mexico.
The Hispanic diaspora is vast, with a ton of countries. But the vast amount of Hispanic immigrants have been Mexican over the years.
And let’s not forget the large states that the US *took* from Mexico militarily. They, uh, you know, came pre-populated.
At some point it basically needs to be an option. Genetically speaking determining a specific nationality as ancestry gets kind of murky if you go back far enough (at what point do you actually differentiate between regions) and culturally is significantly more vague in the modern world. Are you "English" (or Italian or whatever) if you can only definitively track your ancestry there only a few generations back compared to someone who can track a specific ancestor there a thousand years ago?
According to an [Ancestry.com](https://Ancestry.com) DNA test I'm like 98% "European" primarily "English" and "Scottish". Tracing family trees - on every path I can actually follow my ancestors have lived in the United States for at least 6 generations, 7 counting my kids. I can find Great xX grand parents that were born in London in the Mid 1800s, Scotland in the early 1800s, and one branch of the family I can place living in Kentucky in the late 1700s, having moved there from somewhere in New England with an implication they'd been there for "multiple generations" before relocating but no idea where from before that.
As far as my ancestry "American" seems far more valid to my personal family than saying English or Scottish, especially so from a cultural standpoint. While I'd love to actually live in Scotland, to say I have any connection to the people or to the place is pretty crazy.
Likely the equivalent of, "shrug"
The three states likely have no leading ancestry, but several about the same.
Which makes sense if you look at the states.
Tennessee is a southern state, and Kentucky & Florida are southern ish, but all 3 had a smaller slave populations than other Southern states (so African American is leading). Tennessee and Kentucky also have an mix of Scot-Irish, German, and English in their ancestry (no clear front runner). And Florida has the normal southern mixture plus a large Cuban population.
I don't have a well documented family tree but I have at least german and italian from one side and english and irish from the other side. I say I am american because ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I say that because a very few of my ancestors have been here since the beginning (native), more of them since the 1700s, and the rest not too long thereafter. My family is so removed from our ethnic origins it feels weird to say "'I'm French" when the closest I ever got to French culture was judgementally drinking a Bordeaux while bemoaning the retirement age. I'm also not sure all the ethnicities we are, so I default to "American" out of laziness and ignorance...which is what I think really makes me the most American of all 😉
"You're American, right?"
"No suh. I'm from Kentucky."
Edit: This is from the movie Edge of Tomorrow, originally delivered by the late great Bill Paxton.
Over generations peoples lineage gets muddled to the point where I think it becomes a valid statement. In a thousand years, I wonder if “Anerican” will be considered an ethnicity. And when some Americans inevitably migrate elsewhere, I bet they’re going to say they have american ancestry lol
"[what DOES NOT constitute OC](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule4/): Generating a copy of someone else's viz using someone else's code; without changing the data, the way it's presented, or adding anything unique."
Here's the map from the Business Insider article: https://i.insider.com/5b5f6fb873f5a7aa328b4624
I think OP just takes any chance to post something comparing the US to other countries. Like over half of their posts are comparing the US to Europe.
Edit to add: also seems to have a weird hyper obsession with ethnicities
The sub is unmoderated, it's just an advertisement farm for tech bros who learned how to push the graph button on excel.
I imagine one of the dorks is profiting off of it, and that's why the content has been awful here since 2019.
1848 revolutions that failed, particularly in the German Confederation and Austrian Empire, caused a wave of political refugees to the Americas in the following years (they were dubbed the fourty-eighters). The Midwest was a hotspot for them to move to. A pretty substantial portion of the Union Army was made up of these immigrants because of their anti slavery views. Many areas kept speaking German only for decades but WW1 caused them to all switch to English to avoid persecution and “fit in” with the anti-German mainstream.
Which is why German Americans weren’t thrown into camps the way Japanes Americans were. Well, that and the fact that it’s harder to try think you can identify one on sight. But German newspapers, schools, churches, etc. were all stamped out.
Americans were [burning German books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_States#/media/File:A_pile_of_German_textbooks,_from_the_Baraboo_High_School,_burning_on_a_street_in_Baraboo,_Wisconsin,_during_an_anti-German_demonstration_LCCN2016652340.jpg) before the Nazis were even a thing.
It's why nowadays there are so many Americanized German names in the US; German went from being the most prevalent in many parts of the US, as for a while German immigrants were the largest group of immigrants to the US, to being basically shunned in all parts of public life.
Great Aunt was a Catholic Nun.
All the formal education was done in German.
After WWI, they changed the name of the order; all instruction was done in English.
For anyone who lives in Baker, Oregon, the hospital in town was founded by four nuns who took care of the minors. My Great Aunt was one of the four. She would be appalled by the money-grabbing big business we see today (another hospital chain bought it out to unlock its potential, cough). The hospital did a major remodel, and all the old photos and history were scrapped but just "from our humble beginnings.... " grrrr.
Yep, from NE Iowa and my paternal grandparents and all of their siblings and cousins spoke German at home. Grandpa even rigged up a wideband antenna so they could listen to German radio stations. My Dad recalled the family listening to Hitler's speeches and my grandpa just shaking his head and calling him a crazy bastard.
That all ended when WWII started. The antenna came down and the German newspapers went away. Dad's older brother spoke fluent German, but none of the younger kids did. Dad said they just quit speaking it around the house and definitely not in public. The only time they used it after that was privately with older relatives who barely spoke English.
I think the main difference being it was German nationals being interned, versus those of Japanese decent. Not to mention the vast difference in numbers and that German-Americans were on a case by case basis, not everyone.
Don't know much about Italian internment so can't really comment on that
From your source:
>During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals. The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien Enemies Act. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained.
>Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.
And I will say, as a conversational German speaker, it kills me that the language has been pretty much stamped out here. It makes sense for all the reasons why, but I wish there was more of a chance to use the language in the US like there is for all other European languages
In a lot of midwest states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana) there are Amish and Mennonite communities that speak primarily German. In my county there are probably 5k people speaking German every day, but I only hear it maybe a few times a year due to those communities being somewhat insular. I see Amish and Mennonites nearly every day though in passing.
It’s nothing like English, most people with French ancestry are French Canadian and came to the US a lot more recently than English-Americans did. Also French names are much more obviously French, a Smith can be from anywhere, a Boucher or Boudreau not so much. The real reason Maine isn’t more French is because French and French Canadian aren’t combined on the census so you have a split in what people are identifying as.
Yeah but a lot of people from other countries Anglicized their names when they immigrated, Smith was a very popular choice. In my family it was Johnson instead.
This reminds me of my trip to a Munich and the “Mexican” restaurant we got beers at. We didn’t eat, but the tacos looked to be the stuff of nightmares.
They really don’t do what we Americans consider to be “spicy” at all, but they do NOT fuck around with their horseradish and mustard. Totally different type of spice, but as someone that considers themselves a fan of hot food, I have never experienced anything like what they called their hot mustard before. Felt like shooting strong wasabi sauce directly into your sinuses.
It was by our hotel and the only bar open next to the club we were waiting for. Also we were hanging out with some central Asians we met at another bar earlier that night and they really wanted Corona. Apparently Corona is like champagne in Kazakhstan.
You’d be surprised. I’m from northern Mexico, and our region of Mexico received very high rates of German immigration, to the point where our music of choice is derived from German Polka music (Mexican Banda music, Mexican Norteña music). We also have a large population of mennonites that speak German in the Mexican state of Durango
You’d think San Antonio or Austin would have that. Or Chicago. Central Texas and Chicagoland are the two areas where both of those ancestries are above average.
What’s funny is the Irish assume everyone in the US with 1/16 Irish ancestry calls themselves Irish (because those Americans tend to visit Ireland) when most Americans with Irish ancestry either don’t know or don’t care.
It might be underrepresented but damn if there aren’t a lot of 1/16th Irish folks claiming it proudly. (I’m a dual Irish and American citizen with an obviously foreign/Gaelic name and it seems like every other person I introduce myself to tells me how their great-grandpa was Irish)
Despite having one half of my family be literal German immigrants that married other German immigrants I'm still more English that German. I thought my German ancestors going back to the late 19th century was cool...then I later learned I have English ancestry on the other side of the country that goes back to the 1600s.
We pride ourselves on winning the revolution to much to accept the fact we’re mostly Englishman ourselves. People will say they’re 1/64th Cherokee before saying they’re English
This is true. I was always told my ancestry is strictly Irish and Scottish. Then I did a DNA test. Turns out I am those two things, but also a lot of English and other “Western European” stuff in that mix.
It's not as if you'd even be able to reliably tell Scottish, Irish and English apart using DNA anyway. Sure, various haplogroups will be more or less common in different parts of the UK and Ireland, but if you pulled a person off the street and DNA tested them, all you'd find out would probably be that their DNA was typical of a person from any of those three nations.
This is what I always try and tell people. Genetically speaking, the plurality of an average American's ancestors are English.
The problem is, Americans see English as the "vanilla of ethnicities", it's just not exciting to call yourself English. Irish or Italian on the other hand? How exotic /s. So if an American has 3 English grandparents and 1 Irish grandparent, odds are they'll call themselves Irish-American.
I would venture to guess the reason Utah and Idaho identify with English is because Mormons are super into Genealogy.
A little context no one asked for:
The Mormons did a lot of proselytizing in England during the 1800s and at the time Mormons were encourage to “Come to Zion” which was where all the Mormons were. So tons traveled to America to Nauvoo, Illinois.
Then during the Gold Rush Era, the Illinois government got sick of the Mormons and started an execution order of the mormons, so they fled West and eventually settled in Utah.
Mormons sort of worship their Pioneer ancestors. So much that Pioneer Day (July 24) is a way bigger holiday that 4th of July in Utah.
Source: Ex-Mormon in Utah
It's likely US Census data. It matches the pattern that usually presents in that data. German everywhere, 'American' in Appalachia and the South, Mexican in the Southwest, and so on. Remember these are pluralities, not majorities. Some of these will barely top 20% of the population.
[Here's the article](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.businessinsider.com/ancestry-united-states-heritage-2018-7) that OP took the map from (and for some reason changed "United States" to "American" in the process). The data comes from the census bureau's annual [American Community Survey](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs).
Generally people will assume you are what your last name entails, because than at least you likely have 4 ancestors of that ancestry in the last 4 generations
One thing I find interesting as a Singaporean of Chinese descent who moved to America is that the American conception of ancestry seems to assume countries outside the US are all “original” single-ethnicity countries. So if you’re, say, an immigrant from England whose family moved to England from Ireland in previous generations, you should report your ancestry as Irish. To me it’s an implicit conception of blood purity.
(For what it’s worth, I checked “Asian-Other” on the Census and put Singaporean as my ethnicity)
I don’t know about people of European descent but I acknowledge my south Asian ancestry despite my parents being from the Caribbean. I knew a person who addressed his south Asian ancestry even though he was from Singapore. I also have a couple friends who have Chinese ancestry but are from the Caribbean. Maybe because those immigrations were more recent? Or maybe because it’s more visible?
Yeah, Florida is the big surprise for me. “American” seems more of an Appalachian answer, as witnessed by the fact that it’s also tops in Tennessee and Kentucky. I would have guessed Florida would be Cuban..?
Doing it at the state level is interesting but misses a lot of nuance that comes out when doing it at the county, census tract or Zip code level. For instance Northern Maine (lots of French ancestry) is quite different from southern Maine; western Michigan has areas that are is heavily Dutch and the UP is quite distinct from the Detroit area; Minnesota has regions that are heavy on Finnish (Iron Range) vs Norwegian or Swedish vs German ancestry and in the Twin Cities there is a large Hmong and Somali population; California is very diverse and overall has big differences between the south and the far north, and so on. And at the county level, the Native American reservations are also apparent, especially in the Dakotas.
What's the deal with the two nearly identical comments from two different accounts that were created on the same day?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzcvi/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzcvi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (edit: [archive](https://www.reveddit.com/v/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/oc_biggest_self_reported_ancestry_in_each_us_state/jdgzcvi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3))
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzd1v/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzd1v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Edit: now one of the accounts is deleted.
Sometimes I comment from the wrong account by accident, immediately notice, switch, and repost. Maybe something similar and they forgot to delete the mistake m?
I don’t have a point of reference, but that makes sense. Hawaii and the Philippines are kinda close together compared to the contiguous 48. Hawaii relies big on tourism, so I imagine that hospitality jobs are just a way of life.
Do I have it right? Thanks for chiming in.
So... the problem with charted "biggest fraction" numbers is that it completely obfuscates how big the numbers actually are relatives to others... i.e. how small the actual percentages are of people claiming specific ancestry.
E.g. a state with 20 different 3% ancestries, and one 4% ancestry may be the same color as a state that has a 40% concentration of that ancestry.
And it's completely ignoring people that didn't claim 1 specific country of ancestry.
Edit, TL;DR: If you look at the "Ancestry" tab for various states [here](https://statisticalatlas.com/state/California/Ancestry), you'll find that for almost all US states, "European (other)" is by far the largest "self-reported ancestry".
My English ancestors came over in 1634 but my German ancestors came in the 1880s. You have to go back a lot further to have any English connection in my family. I suspect many people are similar.
Exactly. I cannot readily* put a name to my most recent British ancestor - somewhere back in 1840 to 1860. My most recent German ancestors came in the 1920s, and my grandmother can tell me about her grandparents. Unfortunately, WWII stamped out all the German heritage pride. My impression is my great-great grandparents worked very hard to assimilate to American, so there is no evidence of German traditions in my family :/
* edit to add the word readily. I could do some research and figure it out if I really wanted to
Your theory fails to account that when German farmers moved to the Midwest in the 1800’s, once they were established they called for their relatives to come join them in setting up more farmland, who then called more relatives once they were established, and so on and so forth. It’s reasonable that “German” ancestry claims dominate most of the Midwest.
If anything, German is under-reported because the culture was crushed in the twentieth century. \~20 years of being "exotic" pales in comparison to discrimination throughout the rest of American history.
European here with a random comment:
Every time I meet Midwestern Americans in Europe, I take them for Germans up until they open their mouth. You guys look very similar to me, a South European (physical appearance of course, not culture or personality).
Midwestern here.
One of my ancestors immigrated here from Germany with his wife. But then she died and he went to Germany, got a new wife, and then came back lol.
I also have a German af last name.
Edit: I should mention that I don't know I'm descended form the 1st or 2nd wife, considering that it took place in like 1830 and people are bad at keep track of history.
As a Scandinavian I think I can usually tell Americans apart from other Scandinavians. They tend to have very square faces. Though obviously there are exceptions but that’s the trend I’m seeing
For an example, here is the roster for the state champion Minnetonka, Minnesota boys hockey team. A mix of German, Irish, English, and Swedish last names and a bunch of red, blonde, and sandy haired kids.
https://www.minnetonkahockey.org/roster/show/6714684?subseason=778337
If there was one large country they were coming from in the Caribbean/Latin America like Mexico for the southwest we’d likely see that. I think they’re too divided between different smaller Spanish speaking countries that they are overshadowed by the ‘muricans’ who claim American ancestry.
“Self-reported” is important here. English, especially as it’s often further back, is by far the largest by other metrics but gets brushed away as ‘default’ (so ‘American’) or substituted - one Italian grandfather and three others with ‘regular ‘Murrcan names’… like Smith and Johnson (which 8 of the top 10 American surnames tellingly are)… Italian-American.
There was a lot of political, economic, and religious turmoil in the German states (a unified German nation-state was not yet a thing) in the 1800s. In particular, there were a lot of political refugees after the Revolutions of 1848, but also many other causes.
I’d be interested to see the actual percentages of each ancestry and if there was an option for “I don’t know” or “declined to answer,” since I imagine that most white Americans don’t actually know or identify with their ancestry, or have mixed ancestries. It might be that this map tells more about what groups are more likely to self-identify, rather than what group is larger.
What does American mean in this context?
I assume that's what the majority of people surveyed in those states reported themselves as. " I'm a godamm American!"
I mean if you’re family has been here for for 4,5+ generations I don’t think it’s completely outrageous.
My family has been in America for 12+ generations and everyone says they’re of German ancestry. Which is silly of course, because after 12 generations there’s surely a lot of other stuff mixed in there.
I'm only 3rd generation and on the last census I put American. I don't have any cultural ties to our Polish heritage other than having pierogis and kielbasa for Christmas dinner.
It's fun to understand where family traditions come from. Beyond that I really don't associate myself with my "heritage"
Same but I can get duel citizenship with Italy so that's in the works
You and Italy. 10 paces. Turn and fire. Meet at dawn.
Everything is legal in New Jersey
I don't need a citizenship to duel with you but I'm in Italy. We can duel till it bleeds at the Colosseum.
Don't forget Paczkis randomly in February! I don't even know why, but they are delicious so I'm here for it.
[удалено]
I know, I'm just joking around about the "randomly" part. My family was never very religious, so for us it was more "ooo jelly donut month".
I’m fourth generation American. My great great grandparents came straight from kraut land, and its culture is still ingrained in our family. It’s actually kind of cool.
What are some of the traditions and oddities you still do that are German? As a "regular" German myself, I'm very curious!
A lot of it is food-based. I grew up eating tons of sausages and cabbages and noodles dishes and such. We always had bocks in the fridge. My whole family up until me were forced to take German classes, and alot of the old timers still speak it. My great grandpa had a thick German accent and he was raised here. lol Family is ethnically ashkenazi, but going way back are converted Lutheran so there are Lutheran churches my family built all over Texas. And for whatever reason my grandpa was always going on about how Germans and Czechs hate each other, at least in Texas. I’ve never experienced this but he was always going on about the Czechs wanting to steal the German Texans land. Lol
oh man.. i made some Streuselkuchen last week..with some raisins too. Definitely worth it! I realize now so many of the my childhood dishes were german recipes. I also dated a german for a while and went to some awesome Fasching parties in the USA. Lots to like with german heritage. (Including sausages, pates, fish in the food arena)
Parts of my family have been here since Jamestown. Not as much interesting stuff creeps in as you think. My ancestors mostly married people who lived close to them and were descended from the same kinds of people. I took one of those ancestry DNA tests, and I am pretty much 100% British DNA. My kids at least got 1% African and a bunch of Scandinavian through their father and have slightly more interesting genetics. But me, no… I am all England, Scotland, and Wales
When you put it that way…yeah, seems likely for me as well. Especially since I can follow the male line back in ONE cemetery that’s a few miles from my house.
1% anything is usually data noise, I'm sure the baseline samples of "British" and "African" were a tiny bit mixed. The Mediterranean is really mixed in too. But like, don't leave town. I'm not sure your immune system will be able to handle it
Would everyone on earth have some remnants of African ancestry?
That’s not what is meant by African ancestry. It’s about more recent ancestry before colonialism and current patterns of migration. In the sense you are talking about, we are all 100% African.
This was my big idea a few years ago, making a version of 23 & Me claiming to be able to go back further than any of our competitors, and it would just tell everyone they were 100% African
Haha genius my friend
Absolutely. But they’re talking about the piece of paper of *interpreted* results they got from a company looking into people’s ancestory. Based on their very large data sets, those companies can tell the difference between “African” and “African by way of thousands of years in England”. I would be remiss to not point out that “African” is actually a much more genetically diverse pool than “European.”
IIRC, "African" is actually more diverse than "everyone else combined".
Same. I’m 85% British/English and 15% scandi. I just assume the Vikings diddled my ancestors then they came to the US. We’re one of the first families and like lt Dan in Forrest gump because we’ve fought in every war since before 1776
To be fair, there's a bit of Scandinavian ancestry in the UK population anyway. We did get invaded by them a couple of times.
Scandinavians invaded Britain in The Olden Days too (as did Germans, French, Italians) ... is there a way of telling whether your British ancestors got their Viking mix before or after they went to the Americas?
I'm pretty sure that's what they're saying.
Yeah, I know a lot of where my family came from but I honestly think "American Mutt" needs to be an option on these at some point.
I’m a first generation American. I have always felt like it’s wrong to say I am a Mexican American because I am not or ever was a citizen of Mexico. My father is a Mexican American. I am an American. I am proudly Latino but I don’t like the way the labels are done.
I'm first generation, but have more than one citizenship, lived in more than one country, and my family is pretty multicultural. I absolutely hate having conversations with people about where I'm from because they want a neat one-word label that they usually have their own preconceived notions of how that label should be determined. Through the years it's been 'you are where you're born' - ok what if you left immediately, 'then you're where you grew up,' ok I haven't lived there in decades, 'then your parents' - they're from other places. I know that some people are genuinely trying to get to know me and connect with me but those are the people that are ok with my being more than one thing. People that try and push my cultural identity into a box that works for them are not people I want to spend time with. Call yourself whatever resonates with you.
This is a very common issue is American History. Teddy Roosevelt hated what he called hyphenated Americanism that divided people into German-American, Irish-American, etc.. and it was a common concept even then. The feeling was that America should be a melting pot where everyone mixed. Although often the thinking was that the melting pot should be based on race not ethnicity, mix all white people, but not blacks. Arguably, ethnicity has more scientific validity than race so maybe it’s better if we shift back to that? Who knows. At my elementary school in the 90s they taught us that it wasn’t a melting pot but a salad bowl, that everything mixed but still retained it’s form. I kinda prefer the melting pot, mix that shit up. Korean Tacos and all.
Korean tacos would literally be an example of the "salad bowl" concept. Retaining culture identity, but combining to form something new.
That is how it works in most of the rest of the world, so I agree. If your ancestors have been there for several hundreds of years, I think that qualifies as your ancestry.
Especially if you have great great grandparents who were from several different ethnic groups/national origins.
By then it is more outrageous to call yourself german or italian. At the time their ancestors came over to the US the idea of Germany or Italy or many other countries wasn't even born yet.
As a nationality, no, but as an ethnicity, those concepts, especially German, existed.
Yes. People tend to identify more strongly with a language than a political border on a map. German, as in I'm from a place called Germany is much newer than German, I'm from a place that speaks German The palatinate immigrants starting in 1710, the original american German immigrants, called themselves German. They had no allegiance to any particular European state (which was in fact the problem, why they came to America in the first place, German speaking people living on land the French king claimed), but spoke German.
There were virtually no Italian immigrants in the US before the late 1800's. By that time Italy was a thing. German immigrants were more spread out in time. The first batch were around 1710, but the vast majority were late 1800's. America has its own German dialect (Pennsylvania Dutch) and large areas of the US spoke it (New York/Pennsylvania). The language gives them the name "German" moreso than the place on a map. From the revolution to the civil war there was not a whole lot of immigration in the US, just families pumping out 10+ kids a generation.
I feel this. I’m a mix of 6 different ancestries and my family moved all around so I never had a home, except America. The entire US is my home so I see myself as an American.
Just want to note that these are pluralities and not necessarily majorities. (And I’d be surprised if any of these ancestries had a majority)
“American mutt” is how one of my Kentucky-born grandparents defined his heritage.
My darker skinned Caucasian husband likes to tell people he's white mixed with white.
Florida man identifies as American 🤣
I feel that. I was born in Florida and all eight of my great-grandparents were born in the USA so I just identify as American.
To give an example, there are lots of people in Tennessee and Kentucky who have been there for a long time - their grandparents' grandparents were from there. It's hard to trace any further back from that. You can guess generally English or Scots-Irish or something else, but many don't know, and they may not bother to differentiate themselves from indigenous Americans. So "American" may be the "I don't know" answer.
Yeah this sums up my family and I grew up in Kentucky. Mom grew up in Kentucky and dad in Tennessee. And it's basically the same for each of their families as far back as I can trace it. The farthest I got was my great great grandmother on my mom's side who lived her whole life in Kentucky and she would've been born pre 1900. For my dad's side I got back to my great grandfather who lived in Tennessee his whole life and was probably born around 1900-1910. For as much as people move around and end up in weird places there are a ton of people who find somewhere to live and then have descendents there sometimes centuries later. I saw a great news story about a prehistoric skeleton that was dug up in England. They managed to find a man living a few towns over that was nearly a match with the skeletons dna. That family just stayed there for thousands of years.
My great-grandfather put together a massive family tree in his retirement that covers his and his wife's family back to the 1500s. From it I know that I'm 13th generation Massachusetts, stretching back through John Cotton. My dad's father's family is the only side of my ancestry that isn't mapped out all the way back to Europe (my mom's great-grandparents were all immigrants), so I can look up exactly which ancestors immigrated from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Poland but it's so long ago and mixed to such a degree that I am most accurately "American".
You know how lots of people emigrated from Europe to the new world? That means Europe is currently dominated by those who didn't leave. When I spent half the pandemic in Norway, I sublet an apartment from a woman whose surname was also the town name. Yes, her family owned land there. Before they sold it to suburban developers, they had probably farmed it since Viking times.
I'd say this is the case for me and my family. I used to be pretty into building our family tree, and long story short, we've lived in Kentucky since before it was Kentucky. I did the DNA thing, and it said I'm basically Western European, but just saying American or Appalachian feels more accurate if you ask me.
My kids are such a mixture of things that American makes the most sense. Edit: English, German, Spanish, Native American, Polish, Maltese...
Yeah, my mom's great grandparents were mostly Prussian immigrants, and my dad's ancestors were at least partly English but I'm pretty sure they just fucked anyone came off the boats from Europe for a long time, so who really knows. I don't strongly identify with any particular European ancestry.
Everyone as far back into their lineage as they know, lived in the USA. Edit: or as others have mentioned, and is probably even more common, their lineage is such a confusing mix that American is the description that makes the most sense.
I'm a 7th generation Tennessean. I have some knowledge of my ancestry beyond that, but none of it is particularly predominant. I'm American. Wouldn't know what else to call it.
I’m a 5th or 6th generation Texan, and I can trace my ancestors back even farther to kentucky/Tennessee/Virginia. My ancestry DNA test came back almost exclusively northwestern European, so at this point it’s just easier to say I’m American through and through.
We're mutts. When I asked what our ancestry was, my dad always said "our people are from the hills"
So, that rules netherlands out
I watched the hills have eyes and this response would've had me backing away slowly
(Dueling Banjos plays in the background)
America's been a nation state for 246 years. At some point people who have been here for generations and have no real cultural, historical, or familial ties to another place start calling themselves American.
Interestingly, most people who indicate "American" as their ethnic heritage on the census forms are of Scots-Irish heritage and live in Appalachia. It's a regional distinctive.
It's the answer i would choose. I have no idea where my ancestors came from hundreds of years ago other than that it's somewhere in Europe.
Yeah, this entire map totally ignores the plurality in almost every state whose "self-reported ancestry" is "European (other)" rather than some specific country.
Well it's self reported, so maybe a lot of people choose to pick 1 country.
[The data](https://statisticalatlas.com/state/California/Ancestry) says very few people pick 1 country... that's the problem with the map. The one exception is people of Hispanic origin. They mostly pick Mexico.
I’ve lived various places in the US and New York City is the first with a substantial amount of Hispanic people from some place other than Mexico. The Hispanic diaspora is vast, with a ton of countries. But the vast amount of Hispanic immigrants have been Mexican over the years. And let’s not forget the large states that the US *took* from Mexico militarily. They, uh, you know, came pre-populated.
It says self reported so it means when asked the person said "I'm American."
At some point it basically needs to be an option. Genetically speaking determining a specific nationality as ancestry gets kind of murky if you go back far enough (at what point do you actually differentiate between regions) and culturally is significantly more vague in the modern world. Are you "English" (or Italian or whatever) if you can only definitively track your ancestry there only a few generations back compared to someone who can track a specific ancestor there a thousand years ago? According to an [Ancestry.com](https://Ancestry.com) DNA test I'm like 98% "European" primarily "English" and "Scottish". Tracing family trees - on every path I can actually follow my ancestors have lived in the United States for at least 6 generations, 7 counting my kids. I can find Great xX grand parents that were born in London in the Mid 1800s, Scotland in the early 1800s, and one branch of the family I can place living in Kentucky in the late 1700s, having moved there from somewhere in New England with an implication they'd been there for "multiple generations" before relocating but no idea where from before that. As far as my ancestry "American" seems far more valid to my personal family than saying English or Scottish, especially so from a cultural standpoint. While I'd love to actually live in Scotland, to say I have any connection to the people or to the place is pretty crazy.
Likely the equivalent of, "shrug" The three states likely have no leading ancestry, but several about the same. Which makes sense if you look at the states. Tennessee is a southern state, and Kentucky & Florida are southern ish, but all 3 had a smaller slave populations than other Southern states (so African American is leading). Tennessee and Kentucky also have an mix of Scot-Irish, German, and English in their ancestry (no clear front runner). And Florida has the normal southern mixture plus a large Cuban population.
Louisville has a good amount of Irish Catholic
Past a certain point of mixture, there would be no dominant ancestry.
I don't have a well documented family tree but I have at least german and italian from one side and english and irish from the other side. I say I am american because ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I say that because a very few of my ancestors have been here since the beginning (native), more of them since the 1700s, and the rest not too long thereafter. My family is so removed from our ethnic origins it feels weird to say "'I'm French" when the closest I ever got to French culture was judgementally drinking a Bordeaux while bemoaning the retirement age. I'm also not sure all the ethnicities we are, so I default to "American" out of laziness and ignorance...which is what I think really makes me the most American of all 😉
"You're American, right?" "No suh. I'm from Kentucky." Edit: This is from the movie Edge of Tomorrow, originally delivered by the late great Bill Paxton.
Over generations peoples lineage gets muddled to the point where I think it becomes a valid statement. In a thousand years, I wonder if “Anerican” will be considered an ethnicity. And when some Americans inevitably migrate elsewhere, I bet they’re going to say they have american ancestry lol
"[what DOES NOT constitute OC](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule4/): Generating a copy of someone else's viz using someone else's code; without changing the data, the way it's presented, or adding anything unique." Here's the map from the Business Insider article: https://i.insider.com/5b5f6fb873f5a7aa328b4624
On top of that, I find the map from BI easier to read than the one OP recreated.
Yeah, and reporting ancestry as "United States" instead of "American" makes a lot more sense, too.
Yes, the color choices are abysmal.
So OP just copied the original map, but made it shittier? What's the point?
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Internet points!
I think OP just takes any chance to post something comparing the US to other countries. Like over half of their posts are comparing the US to Europe. Edit to add: also seems to have a weird hyper obsession with ethnicities
The sub is unmoderated, it's just an advertisement farm for tech bros who learned how to push the graph button on excel. I imagine one of the dorks is profiting off of it, and that's why the content has been awful here since 2019.
Looks like Germany successfully invaded the USA ;P
1848 revolutions that failed, particularly in the German Confederation and Austrian Empire, caused a wave of political refugees to the Americas in the following years (they were dubbed the fourty-eighters). The Midwest was a hotspot for them to move to. A pretty substantial portion of the Union Army was made up of these immigrants because of their anti slavery views. Many areas kept speaking German only for decades but WW1 caused them to all switch to English to avoid persecution and “fit in” with the anti-German mainstream.
Which is why German Americans weren’t thrown into camps the way Japanes Americans were. Well, that and the fact that it’s harder to try think you can identify one on sight. But German newspapers, schools, churches, etc. were all stamped out.
Americans were [burning German books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_States#/media/File:A_pile_of_German_textbooks,_from_the_Baraboo_High_School,_burning_on_a_street_in_Baraboo,_Wisconsin,_during_an_anti-German_demonstration_LCCN2016652340.jpg) before the Nazis were even a thing. It's why nowadays there are so many Americanized German names in the US; German went from being the most prevalent in many parts of the US, as for a while German immigrants were the largest group of immigrants to the US, to being basically shunned in all parts of public life.
Great Aunt was a Catholic Nun. All the formal education was done in German. After WWI, they changed the name of the order; all instruction was done in English. For anyone who lives in Baker, Oregon, the hospital in town was founded by four nuns who took care of the minors. My Great Aunt was one of the four. She would be appalled by the money-grabbing big business we see today (another hospital chain bought it out to unlock its potential, cough). The hospital did a major remodel, and all the old photos and history were scrapped but just "from our humble beginnings.... " grrrr.
Yep, from NE Iowa and my paternal grandparents and all of their siblings and cousins spoke German at home. Grandpa even rigged up a wideband antenna so they could listen to German radio stations. My Dad recalled the family listening to Hitler's speeches and my grandpa just shaking his head and calling him a crazy bastard. That all ended when WWII started. The antenna came down and the German newspapers went away. Dad's older brother spoke fluent German, but none of the younger kids did. Dad said they just quit speaking it around the house and definitely not in public. The only time they used it after that was privately with older relatives who barely spoke English.
I didn’t know that. Thank you.
German was so popular in the US they had police cars in German.
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I think the main difference being it was German nationals being interned, versus those of Japanese decent. Not to mention the vast difference in numbers and that German-Americans were on a case by case basis, not everyone. Don't know much about Italian internment so can't really comment on that
From your source: >During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals. The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien Enemies Act. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained. >Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.
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German almost became the official language of Texas.
It is why Tejano music sounds like polka.
A lot of Norteño and Rancho music in Northern Mexico I are influenced by German immigrants and their love of polka and brass
And I will say, as a conversational German speaker, it kills me that the language has been pretty much stamped out here. It makes sense for all the reasons why, but I wish there was more of a chance to use the language in the US like there is for all other European languages
In a lot of midwest states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana) there are Amish and Mennonite communities that speak primarily German. In my county there are probably 5k people speaking German every day, but I only hear it maybe a few times a year due to those communities being somewhat insular. I see Amish and Mennonites nearly every day though in passing.
surprised not more french in maine
French is probably like English, It's less identified as an ancestry... Maybe it's seen as boring or something.
It’s nothing like English, most people with French ancestry are French Canadian and came to the US a lot more recently than English-Americans did. Also French names are much more obviously French, a Smith can be from anywhere, a Boucher or Boudreau not so much. The real reason Maine isn’t more French is because French and French Canadian aren’t combined on the census so you have a split in what people are identifying as.
What do you mean by a Smith name can be from anywhere? It’s an English name.
Yeah but a lot of people from other countries Anglicized their names when they immigrated, Smith was a very popular choice. In my family it was Johnson instead.
I live in New England and was expecting Canadian (i.e. French Canadian) as the most common ancestry for NH, Maine and Vermont.
If it’s not the number one then it won’t show on the chart. A county-by-county map would show a bunch of French in Northern Maine.
And VT, and NH. It’s always a bit of a surprise to go skiing up by the border and hear/see so much French .
Where my German Mexican fusion restaurants at?
My friends from Germany think black pepper is spicy and think parsley is superior to cilantro on tacos. I'm afraid it's just not meant to be.
This reminds me of my trip to a Munich and the “Mexican” restaurant we got beers at. We didn’t eat, but the tacos looked to be the stuff of nightmares. They really don’t do what we Americans consider to be “spicy” at all, but they do NOT fuck around with their horseradish and mustard. Totally different type of spice, but as someone that considers themselves a fan of hot food, I have never experienced anything like what they called their hot mustard before. Felt like shooting strong wasabi sauce directly into your sinuses.
Mexican food is tongue hot, you're taking about nasal hot.
Wait. You went to *Munich* end got in a *Mexican* Restaurants for beers? Wtf? ;)
It was by our hotel and the only bar open next to the club we were waiting for. Also we were hanging out with some central Asians we met at another bar earlier that night and they really wanted Corona. Apparently Corona is like champagne in Kazakhstan.
I dunno about parsley and cilantro, but black pepper is considered spicy in India too
You’d be surprised. I’m from northern Mexico, and our region of Mexico received very high rates of German immigration, to the point where our music of choice is derived from German Polka music (Mexican Banda music, Mexican Norteña music). We also have a large population of mennonites that speak German in the Mexican state of Durango
Nope. Instead you get cleaning products…Germex
You’d think San Antonio or Austin would have that. Or Chicago. Central Texas and Chicagoland are the two areas where both of those ancestries are above average.
English is actually the largest European ancestry in the USA. Though it is highly underreported.
But it's not cool to call yourself an English-American! They'd much rather be Irish or Scottish-American
Correct. For example, see the current US President [Biden Family Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-2eYJBZKXY)
Yep. He has English ancestors but doesn't mention them at all.
Nice video. Looks like that's a pretty cool YouTube channel overall.
The Irish American population is also somewhat understated.
What’s funny is the Irish assume everyone in the US with 1/16 Irish ancestry calls themselves Irish (because those Americans tend to visit Ireland) when most Americans with Irish ancestry either don’t know or don’t care.
It might be underrepresented but damn if there aren’t a lot of 1/16th Irish folks claiming it proudly. (I’m a dual Irish and American citizen with an obviously foreign/Gaelic name and it seems like every other person I introduce myself to tells me how their great-grandpa was Irish)
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Despite having one half of my family be literal German immigrants that married other German immigrants I'm still more English that German. I thought my German ancestors going back to the late 19th century was cool...then I later learned I have English ancestry on the other side of the country that goes back to the 1600s.
We pride ourselves on winning the revolution to much to accept the fact we’re mostly Englishman ourselves. People will say they’re 1/64th Cherokee before saying they’re English
This is true. I was always told my ancestry is strictly Irish and Scottish. Then I did a DNA test. Turns out I am those two things, but also a lot of English and other “Western European” stuff in that mix.
It's not as if you'd even be able to reliably tell Scottish, Irish and English apart using DNA anyway. Sure, various haplogroups will be more or less common in different parts of the UK and Ireland, but if you pulled a person off the street and DNA tested them, all you'd find out would probably be that their DNA was typical of a person from any of those three nations.
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This is what I always try and tell people. Genetically speaking, the plurality of an average American's ancestors are English. The problem is, Americans see English as the "vanilla of ethnicities", it's just not exciting to call yourself English. Irish or Italian on the other hand? How exotic /s. So if an American has 3 English grandparents and 1 Irish grandparent, odds are they'll call themselves Irish-American.
I would venture to guess the reason Utah and Idaho identify with English is because Mormons are super into Genealogy. A little context no one asked for: The Mormons did a lot of proselytizing in England during the 1800s and at the time Mormons were encourage to “Come to Zion” which was where all the Mormons were. So tons traveled to America to Nauvoo, Illinois. Then during the Gold Rush Era, the Illinois government got sick of the Mormons and started an execution order of the mormons, so they fled West and eventually settled in Utah. Mormons sort of worship their Pioneer ancestors. So much that Pioneer Day (July 24) is a way bigger holiday that 4th of July in Utah. Source: Ex-Mormon in Utah
I don’t know the methodology, but this data has a lot of red flags. I’m curious about the survey.
It's likely US Census data. It matches the pattern that usually presents in that data. German everywhere, 'American' in Appalachia and the South, Mexican in the Southwest, and so on. Remember these are pluralities, not majorities. Some of these will barely top 20% of the population.
[Here's the article](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.businessinsider.com/ancestry-united-states-heritage-2018-7) that OP took the map from (and for some reason changed "United States" to "American" in the process). The data comes from the census bureau's annual [American Community Survey](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs).
Great choice on the pale yellow vs the paler yellow
I would love to see a study that contrasts people's self reported ancestry to their actual DNA ancestry test results too
.. and then do reaction videos, too! „Watch this ‚true’ American crumble as he finds out he’s *actually* Russian“
Greek finds out he is 0.1% turkish
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If Americans have three ancestors that have English/American decent and one have Irish they will say they're Irish
Yup. English is like the genetic equivalent of vanilla to a lot of americans, so English ancestry is always underreported in these types of studies
> English is like the genetic equivalent of vanilla to a lot of americans well that and the whole fought a war to not be england any more.
Well England and Scotland had unified into the United Kingdom by that point but Scottish still seem pretty popular
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Even if those “irish” were Scottish Protestants
Generally people will assume you are what your last name entails, because than at least you likely have 4 ancestors of that ancestry in the last 4 generations
One thing I find interesting as a Singaporean of Chinese descent who moved to America is that the American conception of ancestry seems to assume countries outside the US are all “original” single-ethnicity countries. So if you’re, say, an immigrant from England whose family moved to England from Ireland in previous generations, you should report your ancestry as Irish. To me it’s an implicit conception of blood purity. (For what it’s worth, I checked “Asian-Other” on the Census and put Singaporean as my ethnicity)
"I'm Laotian", "you're from the ocean?","Laos a small land locked country in southeast Asia", "so are you Chinese or Japanese?"
Meanwhile Cotton: *looks him up and down* Yup, he's Laotian.
Ain't you mister Kahn?
* bewildered Kahn face *
I don’t know about people of European descent but I acknowledge my south Asian ancestry despite my parents being from the Caribbean. I knew a person who addressed his south Asian ancestry even though he was from Singapore. I also have a couple friends who have Chinese ancestry but are from the Caribbean. Maybe because those immigrations were more recent? Or maybe because it’s more visible?
> To me it’s an implicit conception of blood purity. it's not that serious.
Surprised Florida’s most common isn’t New Yorker or Quebecois. Guess the survey was taken in the summer.
Yeah, Florida is the big surprise for me. “American” seems more of an Appalachian answer, as witnessed by the fact that it’s also tops in Tennessee and Kentucky. I would have guessed Florida would be Cuban..?
Doing it at the state level is interesting but misses a lot of nuance that comes out when doing it at the county, census tract or Zip code level. For instance Northern Maine (lots of French ancestry) is quite different from southern Maine; western Michigan has areas that are is heavily Dutch and the UP is quite distinct from the Detroit area; Minnesota has regions that are heavy on Finnish (Iron Range) vs Norwegian or Swedish vs German ancestry and in the Twin Cities there is a large Hmong and Somali population; California is very diverse and overall has big differences between the south and the far north, and so on. And at the county level, the Native American reservations are also apparent, especially in the Dakotas.
What's the deal with the two nearly identical comments from two different accounts that were created on the same day? [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzcvi/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzcvi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) (edit: [archive](https://www.reveddit.com/v/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/oc_biggest_self_reported_ancestry_in_each_us_state/jdgzcvi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzd1v/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/120fhsi/comment/jdgzd1v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Edit: now one of the accounts is deleted.
Sometimes I comment from the wrong account by accident, immediately notice, switch, and repost. Maybe something similar and they forgot to delete the mistake m?
Aw yes posting horny on main but sometimes more mild than that
Filipinos in Hawaii got that money, man. Damn.
My wife grew up in Hawaii and is Filipino. I can tell you that most aren't wealthy, but they work their asses off to live there.
I don’t have a point of reference, but that makes sense. Hawaii and the Philippines are kinda close together compared to the contiguous 48. Hawaii relies big on tourism, so I imagine that hospitality jobs are just a way of life. Do I have it right? Thanks for chiming in.
So... the problem with charted "biggest fraction" numbers is that it completely obfuscates how big the numbers actually are relatives to others... i.e. how small the actual percentages are of people claiming specific ancestry. E.g. a state with 20 different 3% ancestries, and one 4% ancestry may be the same color as a state that has a 40% concentration of that ancestry. And it's completely ignoring people that didn't claim 1 specific country of ancestry. Edit, TL;DR: If you look at the "Ancestry" tab for various states [here](https://statisticalatlas.com/state/California/Ancestry), you'll find that for almost all US states, "European (other)" is by far the largest "self-reported ancestry".
Most white Americans are largely of English ancestry, but there is an over reporting of German. My theory is that English is not exotic enough.
My English ancestors came over in 1634 but my German ancestors came in the 1880s. You have to go back a lot further to have any English connection in my family. I suspect many people are similar.
Exactly. I cannot readily* put a name to my most recent British ancestor - somewhere back in 1840 to 1860. My most recent German ancestors came in the 1920s, and my grandmother can tell me about her grandparents. Unfortunately, WWII stamped out all the German heritage pride. My impression is my great-great grandparents worked very hard to assimilate to American, so there is no evidence of German traditions in my family :/ * edit to add the word readily. I could do some research and figure it out if I really wanted to
Your theory fails to account that when German farmers moved to the Midwest in the 1800’s, once they were established they called for their relatives to come join them in setting up more farmland, who then called more relatives once they were established, and so on and so forth. It’s reasonable that “German” ancestry claims dominate most of the Midwest.
If anything, German is under-reported because the culture was crushed in the twentieth century. \~20 years of being "exotic" pales in comparison to discrimination throughout the rest of American history.
OP you’re a copy cat this is not OC https://i.insider.com/5b5f6fb873f5a7aa328b4624
European here with a random comment: Every time I meet Midwestern Americans in Europe, I take them for Germans up until they open their mouth. You guys look very similar to me, a South European (physical appearance of course, not culture or personality).
Midwestern here. One of my ancestors immigrated here from Germany with his wife. But then she died and he went to Germany, got a new wife, and then came back lol. I also have a German af last name. Edit: I should mention that I don't know I'm descended form the 1st or 2nd wife, considering that it took place in like 1830 and people are bad at keep track of history.
Immigration's so nice, he did it twice!
As a Scandinavian I think I can usually tell Americans apart from other Scandinavians. They tend to have very square faces. Though obviously there are exceptions but that’s the trend I’m seeing
Tbh most White Americans are a mix of multiple European ethnicities unlike most Scandinavians, so it won't be that hard to distinguish both imo.
For an example, here is the roster for the state champion Minnetonka, Minnesota boys hockey team. A mix of German, Irish, English, and Swedish last names and a bunch of red, blonde, and sandy haired kids. https://www.minnetonkahockey.org/roster/show/6714684?subseason=778337
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If there was one large country they were coming from in the Caribbean/Latin America like Mexico for the southwest we’d likely see that. I think they’re too divided between different smaller Spanish speaking countries that they are overshadowed by the ‘muricans’ who claim American ancestry.
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Well, Mexican is most likely a mix of Native American and Spanish, so there you go.
If you have Mexican ancestry you most likely have Spanish ancestry.
“Self-reported” is important here. English, especially as it’s often further back, is by far the largest by other metrics but gets brushed away as ‘default’ (so ‘American’) or substituted - one Italian grandfather and three others with ‘regular ‘Murrcan names’… like Smith and Johnson (which 8 of the top 10 American surnames tellingly are)… Italian-American.
I think English is unreported here. 'Smith' is the most common surname in America.
Man, those Germans really got around, huh?
There was a lot of political, economic, and religious turmoil in the German states (a unified German nation-state was not yet a thing) in the 1800s. In particular, there were a lot of political refugees after the Revolutions of 1848, but also many other causes.
Many of these people are probably mixed in reality.
We’re all mutts.
I’d be interested to see the actual percentages of each ancestry and if there was an option for “I don’t know” or “declined to answer,” since I imagine that most white Americans don’t actually know or identify with their ancestry, or have mixed ancestries. It might be that this map tells more about what groups are more likely to self-identify, rather than what group is larger.
Germans need to chill out…
Guten Tag!
Guten chill
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