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Historically, there's not been much identification with ancestral ethnic identity.
I have a German derived last name. My mother's side of the family has an English last name. I have no idea when my ancestors came from their mother countries.
The 2000 map only show English ancestry while the 2010 map combine all British ancestries (English, Welsh, Scottish and Scotch-Irish), that's why. Same for Scandinavian ancestry in 2010.
I can only speak for myself, but ancestors have been here a long time (late 1600s) and I've got bits of multiple European ancestries, so it seems silly to try to pick one. The places my ancestors came from has changed between France, Germany and Benelux multiple times.
When your family has been here since before the revolution it seems ok to put American.
My ancestors have only been in the U.S. since the late 1800's , but I don't identify with any of their ethnic origins. I never met any of the first generation immigrants, having been born in the 1960's. Plus in this era of ancestry DNA testing, many of us are discovering that at least some of our ethnic origins don't match what we were always told. Covered up hanky panky back in the day... perhaps immigrants lying about their countries of origin to make quotas (??? maybe ???)... At some point when do you stop identifying as an American descended from people of particular European countries when so many of us now are highly mixed?
The people that put American are most likely the true originals (other than Native Americans). We’re talking the people here since before the revolution that built this country. If your family got here after the Civil War, you’re likely of a more ethnic immigrant background and still identify as such.
I think if your family has been here a long time, it makes sense to ID as "American".
I didn't have a single ancestor in north America at the time of the Civil War, so I don't really have to go that far back to figure out most of my lineage (mostly German).
I guess I forgot to answer the original question. I believe Southerners (like myself) tend to be largely from this original American stock that got here in the early 1700s like the Scots Irish or English that got here even earlier. For a long time, the South went on with little immigration and created its own regional identity most people are aware of. Regions like the Midwest continued to receive German and Irish immigrants or Italian and Irish in the northeast.
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