According to DNA results, if the highest ethnicity estimate is around 30%, and let's say that would be Scottish, would you consider yourself Scottish?
I'm Scottish. I was born and have lived all my 51 years in Scotland. My mum was Scottish and could trace her family back until the 17somethings up in Shetland and Airdrie — there is some Irish in there.
But I'm not white. See my dad was from Mauritius — off the coast of Africa — and his dad was from China. I can't trace that side so well. Less records — further away.
But I am totally Scottish. Being Scots has nothing to do with Race. Nothing to do with the colour of your skin. It's about where you belong and how you see yourself.
If you find that according to some DNA matching site that you are 30% Scottish, take that with a grain of salt. What they call Scottish other sites will call something else. It’s justification for expecting that somewhere in your ancestry in the last 500 years you had ancestors who lived in what is now Scotland. Had it been 5%, that could be due to “statistical error”.
But it doesn’t mean you’re Scottish any more than my DNA matches mean I’m English, Irish, Dutch, or the rest of the nationalities listed in my DNA matches. None of my ancestors were born outside the United States in the last 150 years. It would be foolish for me to claim to be any one of them.
With all possible respect, this idea is distinctly American and completely ridiculous to anyone on this side of the pond.
If you’re an American with 30% Scottish ancestry, you’re not Scottish, you’re an American. Your DNA is not a substitute for having grown up in a certain place embedded in a certain culture with certain values and principles.
I’m about 20% Polish, and the whole idea that someone would even begin to consider me Polish sounds absolutely absurd to me. It’s a completely foreign cultural identity that I don’t participate in and, frankly, don’t even want to.
Then again, y’all consider someone with 1/8th African ancestry a black person, so what the heck do I know…
Being Scottish has nothing to do with race. Historically it was allegiance to a set of values that made you Scottish. Scotland has always been a multiethnic state.
What makes you Scots?
- All men are equal in the sight of God. “We are all Jock Tamson’s Bairns’
- Never present yourself as something different from what you are. “What you see is what you get”
- Reason. Scotland was the first literate nation in Europe - 200 years ahead of England. Love of education is a Scots tradition.
Of course not.
I mean, my DNA results may very well be in that ballpark, or at least overwhelmingly British, but whatever they say, that’s not what I am. I wasn’t born in Scotland, nor did I grow up there, nor do I live there. I didn’t learn English with a Scots accent nor do I natively speak Scottish slang. I’m not involved in Scottish politics or popular entertainment or folk practices and lore. And that’s true of everyone around me. I may have genes which point to Scottish ancestry, but that was literally centuries ago. I may have several-times-great-grandparents from here, but that’s them, not me. By every meaningful criterion, like where I was born, where and how I was raised, and what my community and associations have been through my entire life, I’m not Scottish.
I live in the US and based on a recent DNA test the 2 most prominent ancestries are Lithuanian at 43% and Irish at 31%, that reflects my mother’s family that was Polish speakers living in Lithuania and Latvia when they were part of the Russian Empire. There was no independent Poland when the emigrated to the US. My father’s family was Irish and English when there wasn’t an indepent Ireland. My mother’s family identified themselves as Polish and my father’s as Irish. When I was a child most of the immigrants from my mother’s family were still alive. None of the immigrants in my father’s family were alive when I was born.
I am certainly not Polish or Irish in the way people living in Europe are but I identify with other Americans who have Irish or Polish families. As a child we celebrated on Christmas Eve the way people in Poland did. The church I went to had Irish born priest and almost all the priests had Irish surnames.
My connections with Polish and Irish culture are real even if distant in time (the last immigrants came around 1910–1911).
So, in the case of the person who wrote the question. You aren’t Scottish though you might have genuine connections to Scotland. If you only learned about your Scottishness from a DNA test, it has almost no meaning at all.
I would say no but still don’t be ashamed of Who your Ancestors are and where they came from . I celebrate Who I am and My American Roots. I’m not afraid to say I’m of English descent and of Irish descent, Scottish Etc . How could I deny My Ancestors lineage.
I will not be politically correct.Nationality is belonging to a state regardless of your ethnicity.Etnicity is totality of specific social expression of that group acquired by inheritance from previous generation.Basically nationality is from French revolution and ethnicity from tribal times.Genetics is showing your make up.Your genes what are now and which genetic population contributed to your genes.There is problem in definitions of Scotland perfect gene.Don’t exist as such and never existed.Even at the time when Scots was “pure breed” it was mix of different genes of which some of them never survived up till today.”Pure” Scott today will don't survive and will be plagued by genetic deformity because to stay “pure” has to interbreed in the primary family.Second is the issue with “natural selection” where “good “ genes survive infections and various diseases thought the century.Medically your gene pool today is important including your Scottish ancestry for survival.You can't accept bone marrow transplant from anyone.Has to be genetically close probably from Scottish ancestry.Another issue is that culture developed in Scottish people was to generate healthy lifespan and offspring and was closely created by experience with life vs genes from food ,drink,customs ECT.Person who has above 30% Scottish genes should learn Scottish culture for his/her own benefit and with the rest of the gene pool has to be the same specially where other genes are with high genetic distances from Scottish one.For this best is to test autosomal chromosomes and check through promethease ECT databases for every significant snip mutation.
It's simple, it's the Country of Birth noted on your Birth Certificate and/or passport. That's the legal definition of your Nationality and/or your Mother/parents. As sometimes children are born whilst their parents are abroad on holiday for example, which would mean it difficult to go back to the Country your Mother/Parents reside in as you were born elsewhere & your parents would have to apply for Citizenship for you in the Country you “would” have ordinarily been born in. That doesn't apply for example if your parents live in Scotland & you were born in England because it is also classed as Britain.
One can divvy up ones DNA as much as they like, nobody is generally 100% anything when you map it out. So it boils down to where you were born or at least grew up, because that would be your main cultural influence.
I have Ancestors from all over the UK, theoretically, I could claim to be anyone of them if they were 30% this or that. I was born in England it makes me an English Brit.
If you were to really to go deep into it, I could claim Viking or Roman… a family tree has many, many branches.
The truth is we are really all from everywhere, but ultimately it boils down to where you were born or grew up.
You are mixing up ethnic origin and nationality. There are Scots of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and origins, all equally Scottish. Everybody's DNA may tell an interesting story, but it is essentially irrelevant as far as this question is concerned. If you want to be Scottish, then it doesn't matter who your parents or ancestors were. All you need to do is be normally and/or permanently resident here and/or want to be Scottish. I am half-German, und kann fließend Deutsch, but I am 100% Scottish.
It depends on the type of test. If it was recent ancestry you could consider yourself part Scottish as in by blood but the Scottish are mostly people who live in Scotland with long term Scottish Ancestry or another definition is anyone living in Scotland for a long time and intending to remain.
I share a lot of DNA with Scots but it’s not recent although I tend to think of myself as British.
Millions of people in England have Scottish Ancestry so I think if they had a known grandparent they would consider themselves part Scottish but it’s unlikely they would say they were Scottish if they didn’t grow up there.
Doesn’t mean you can’t embrace a third of your heritage though.
Well, no I wouldn’t because I consider “Scottish” a nationality, whereas I consider my DNA composition as my ethnicity.
As it happens, according to my DNA profile my ethnicity is more Scottish than anything else: 42% Scottish, 35% English, 11% Welsh, 7% Swedish and 5% Norwegian. But I don’t consider myself Scottish. I consider myself English because that’s where I was born, bred and have lived for every year of my life except two (those being Hong Kong).
I think that’s how most British people see things. You can be black, white, blue, green or pink but if you were born and bred in England, you are English to the bone. It’s also why I baulk when people (mostly non-British people for whom ethnicity is more of an issue) ask what I think about having a non-British prime minister. As far as I’m concerned, he’s as British as Tetley tea.
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