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I identify little with my maiden surname, although I adore my father, so I kept it as my middle name. I'm much more inclined to see myself in my father's maternal line and both sides of my mother's family. I suspect it has something to do with my physical appearance. Both lines originated in the same part of the world, and that's reflected in the majority (85+%) of my DNA profile, along with what I see in the mirror. I have a very unusual maiden name, but my married name suits my ancestry much better.
Good question, I was just having this conversation with a friend who has a long and unusual German surname that he always has to spell out for people. He said he always identified as German, and studied the language, but after doing his genealogy he discovered he was really only about 1/64 German, and the rest mostly English and Irish. His paternal line came to the US in the early 1700's and married into English families. So he realized that his bias toward his German ancestry had only to do with his surname and wasn't based in his actual majority ancestry.
We, as a family, always identified more with the surname. My maiden name is Italian, and I married a man with and Italian last name, and we both knew the grandparent/great grandparent who actually immigrated from Italy. Plus the rest of our lines were just a mash-up of British Isle/Scandinavian stuff that wasn't nearly as fun as being Italian is.
Most of my dad's people are of Irish decent (dad has dual citizenship), I happen to have an Irish look, been told that I have the "wit", absolutely adore the music which btw was never played around the house. I've studied quite a bit about the history just out of curiosity and I'm about to start learning Gaelic just for fun. Can't wait to visit someday, yadda yadda...
That being said, my dad's family was less close knit and didn't share half as many stories as mom's - which is Colonial English by way of Germany and a few turn of the century Swedish immigrants, on both sides. Oh, and one Scot
My heart is just drawn to Ireland, it's almost a longing that I can't really explain.
Very interesting how many people in this thread identified closeness to the extended family of one side as being a major factor. Definitely a factor for me as well. My mother's parents were Ukrainian immigrants, and my extended family on my mother's side keeps a lot of Ukrainian tradition. Always been closer to that side - they're always the ones we see for the holidays. We do Ukrainian Christmas Eve, etc.
My paternal side is much more Americanized & the immigrant connection is considerably more distant. Plus, we don't see them nearly as often. I don't know why.
I consider my ethnicity just to be Ukrainian because at the end of the day, that's what I identify with the most & feel closest to, and I care about Ukraine above all else. The flag hanging atop my desk right now as I compose this message is the Ukrainian flag. I consider it my bloodright to call that flag my own.
The only grandparent I knew, personally, at one point was baba (maternal grandmother), as everyone else had been deceased either since before I was born or since a period in time I was too young to remember. But I have been told by my uncle that if my maternal grandparents were alive today, they'd be very happy about my support for Ukraine, so that's good to know.
I think which side you identify with is directly related to which side of the family you are closest with, if you grew up learning more about one side (like cultural events and if one of your parents cooked traditional foods), and also if you "look" like a certain side more than the other.
My last name is extremely Greek. So naturally anyone who is Greek automatically assumes I know things about being Greek, but I know nothing. I've never been to Greece, didn't grow up eating traditional Greek foods, never went to Greek cultural events, I'm not religious, and also don't have the strongest relationship with my Greek grandparent just because he lives far from me.
However, for some reason I always identified with my dad's Norwegian side. I wasn't any closer to the Norwegian relatives in my family than I was with my Greek ones, but for some reason I gravitated towards this heritage. I think it's because people in my family have always told me that I looked just like my Norwegian grandmother when she was young! I was also the only blonde in my family. My parents both have dark features and thick wavy dark hair. I had straight blonde hair and light features like my Norwegian grandmother. I also spent 3 1/2 years growing up in Scandinavia, so I always latched onto that personal history. Knowing that I was part Scandinavian made me feel a personal attachment to living there.
I think which side you identify with is directly related to which side of the family you are closest with, if you grew up learning more about one side (like cultural events and if one of your parents cooked traditional foods), and also if you "look" like a certain side more than the other.
My last name is extremely Greek. So naturally anyone who is Greek automatically assumes I know things about being Greek, but I know nothing. I've never been to Greece, didn't grow up eating traditional Greek foods, never went to Greek cultural events, I'm not religious, and also don't have the strongest relationship with my Greek grandparent just because he lives far from me.
However, for some reason I always identified with my dad's Norwegian side. I wasn't any closer to the Norwegian relatives in my family than I was with my Greek ones, but for some reason I gravitated towards this heritage. I think it's because people in my family have always told me that I looked just like my Norwegian grandmother when she was young! I was also the only blonde in my family. My parents both have dark features and thick wavy dark hair. I had straight blonde hair and light features like my Norwegian grandmother. I also spent 3 1/2 years growing up in Scandinavia, so I always latched onto that personal history. Knowing that I was part Scandinavian made me feel a personal attachment to living there.
Yeah, family closeness definitely influences these things.
But for me as well, I feel personally connected to Ukraine in a way that's hard to relate to any other heritage. I don't think all forms of ethnic identity are the same with respect to each ethnicity.
I feel connected to my Italian heritage too... But it's sort of a different form of connection, if that makes any sense. I think the two identities are rather distinct: not just in my case, but in general.
So I don't even see an issue emerging that pertains to a conflict of interest or identity, because these two lineages do not compete in any significant way. I could go into much further detail, but that's the crux of my thinking on this matter. I find it comforting that I genuinely don't believe I need to choose one side over the other to be at least substantially connected to both. I don't think that's always the case.
I am half Germanic, including my surname, and a solid quarter Irish (Kerry). The remaining quarter is a soup of English, Dutch, Huguenot Walloon, and Ukrainian. Most of the family tree documentation goes back to this last mixed soup of different lines going back to about 1290. This group includes my earliest colonial settlers and explorers in America (1608).
Although I'm making progress with my Irish group, I mostly identify as having German heritage but those people in my family didn't - and don't - care about family history. My paternal line is from Pomerania and that is pretty much a lost cultural and social group after being expelled from what became the Baltic coast of Poland after WW-II. The rest were from western Germany and there were some differences in religion and high or low German dialects so even the German ancestry is mixed.
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