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I've long heard that German is the most common ancestry for Americans, but I've always wondered how that was determined. I think they may be counting total imm
by curtis 10y ago
I've long heard that German is the most common ancestry for Americans, but I've always wondered how that was determined. I think they may be counting total immigrants, but not allowing for when the immigrants arrived.
I can readily believe that more immigrants arrived from Germany than from the British Isles, but it's also possible that by the time those German immigrants showed up they were outnumbered by the descendants of the earlier immigrants from the British Isles, perhaps even just immigrants from England itself.
I've never seen any sort of analysis like this, though.
- c3534l 10y agoThey just ask people where their ancestors came from, like on the census. Brits may be undercounted because they've been here so long they don't even know they were British, but also the European population was quite small when they first started to settle here.
- curtis 10y agoOh, this is pretty interesting: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Analysis_by_2000_Federal_Population_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...: Fifteen largest ancestries in the United States as self reported in the 2000 Census:[58] Rank Ancestry Number Percent of total population — U.K. (1801–1922) 66,224,627[59] 23.3%[59] 1 German 42,841,569 15.2% 2 Irish 30,524,799 10.8% 3 African 24,903,412 8.8% 4 English 24,509,692 8.7% 5 American 20,188,305 7.2% 6 Mexican 18,382,291 6.5% 7 Italian 15,638,348 5.6% 8 Polish 8,977,235 3.2% 9 French 8,309,666 3.0% 10 American Indian and Alaskan Native 7,876,568 2.8% 11 Scottish 4,890,581 1.7% 12 Dutch 4,541,770 1.6% 13 Norwegian 4,477,725 1.6% 14 Scotch-Irish 4,319,232 1.5% 15 Chinese 4,010,114 1.4%
- int_19h 10y agoEven more interesting if you look at it state by state. You'll find that most states in the northwestern part of the country are majority German, for example.
- laurencerowe 10y agoI can't find the source, but a couple of years ago I saw a fascinating presentation from a genealogy & genotyping company showing that genetically more American's had English heritage than German heritage. Combining the 'American' census category into the 'English' category pretty much removed the discrepancy...