Question:
In your presentation "Identifying a People Group" you say a name is
insufficient for identification. Can a person's ethnicity be
derived if you have a surname/family name and country? If not,
what's the minimum amount of information needed to derive
ethnicity?
Answer:
Names are related
to ethnicity, since names take on the character of the language, region
and group identity, as well as the history of families and social
groups. Thus we commonly associate various names with certain
ethnicities or their histories. This means that a surname is a
rough clue to a part of someone's ethnicity. And note,
detribalized people are harder to peg down, like English-speaking
Canadians and US citizens. What tribe or ethnicity (or
ethnicities) are they?
Changing Streams
But a name, surname or first name, is only one clue among many and
can be misleading, because of changes experienced by a family or larger
human group and their identity through history. Individuals and
families can change ethnic streams, language streams, and of course,
geographical locations.
Foreigners may move to a new geographical location with a different
ethnic character. They bring their name with them. but they marry
locally and join that local ethnic stream. They adapt to the
local culture and language. And their children grow up in the
local host culture.
Ethnic Heritage — Cultural, Historical and
Genetic
Another term for ethnicity in practical terms is ethnic
heritage. But how important the ethnic history of a
particular individual or family is depends on that person or family.
We might in our western scientific approach also associate
ethnic identity or ethnic heritage with genetic heritage.
But this is an abstract level, in the sense that an individual
could come to awareness of genetics in the scientific sense only
comparatively late in life compared to the natural and subconscious
development of family-ethnic identity as an infant and young child.
Ethnicity is inherent in family identity. How it is
understood is a more formal and cognitive level or function.
There is also a social component to ethnic identity, as any
individual or family is always aware of the fact that they relate is
various ways to other individuals, either blood kin or neighbours.
To what extent, for instance, does a migrant family retain their
old-country practices and dress? To what degree do they adapt and
consciously choose to re-identify themselves as members of the new
culture-group, ethnicity or language?
Some societies are blood-line oriented. Others are totally
incidental geographical gatherings. The kinship heritage
component is important for some groups and not for others, though
either can be an ethnicity.
Ad Hoc Designations
Many ethnic designations are ad hoc to the era or country or
cultural milieu. Like "Scots-Irish" in the US. This is a
New-World ethnicity, which has
very vague defining edges. It refers to a broad steam of
migrants from Scotland and Ireland, or perhaps more specifically to the
Northern Irish of Scots origin, who flooded in as a group merged into
settled rural and urban family groups in the 1800s. So it is not
very defining.
And the new Scots-Irish intermarried with Polish, German, English,
Dutch, etc. The defining characteristic was no longer in what
geography they were born, but other commonalities found in the new-
world setting. So we are always redefining ethnicities, because
ethnicities are always changes and developing.
One of the coalescing or cohering factors is often religion.
In some
societies, religion is more important than others in determining the
boundaries
of ethnicity. This has to be discovered and cannot be imposed by
some
metaphysical fiat.
Terry — Irish, Viking, English or Frankish?
My grandmother's maiden name was Terry. She said they
were always told they were Irish. Terry is a name associated with
Ireland. But there are English Terrys, too. And history
tells us that it is originally a Germanic name, most commonly found in
the French form Thierry. But the French Terrys are French, and
the Irish Terrys are Irish.
But the Irish Terrys came from the Normans, who were Germanic
Vikings who conquered and settled in a little piece of the Gaulic
mainland of the Franks, though inhabited by the earlier Gaulic tribe of
the Bretons. So the Irish Terrys are really from a Germanic
heritage, that intermarried with Celts in France, Germanic Franks who
spoke French, and then came to Ireland, where they also intermarried
with the Irish Celts.
So it depends on the view you want. How far back in history?
And which part of the broad mix?
A View
And now the Terrys are American. So it depends on what you
are asking, who is asking, why they want to know, and what they plan to
do with the information. All these factors affect the answer you
are likely to get when you ask someone. The answer may be
tailored to the setting. In persecuted minorities, such
information may be withheld, or answers may be disinformation out of
self-defense or pre-emptive security. But we still try to learn
the self-identity, because that is a determining factor.
This means a designation of ethnicity represents a view of
identity. We try to account for what we find, and relate
it to standard definitions and categories for consistently. In
the long run a surname (which it sounds like you are asking about) is
not very important. But names, especially in traditional
societies, remain valuable clues. And in more tribal societies,
the value of a name as an ethnic identifier rises.
Luo or Luhya
When I hear the name Omamo, I will know that the person is from
one of the Nilotic groups called Luwo, from Southern Sudan through
Uganda in to Kenya. In Western or Central Kenya, I will know the
person is a member of the Luo cultural or tribal group. When I hear the
speech I can tell definitely the person is a Luo.
Okelo is another Luo name. But then if I meet a man named
Okelo, which is also a common Luo name, but I hear him speaking to his
wife or children in a Bantu tongue, I will know he is a Luhya person
from a Luo background who has joined the Luhya Bantu stream of culture
and language. The Luo and Luhya are neighbours, and sometimes
enemies. They have intermarried for generations. Names are
helpful but not definitive.
In Kenya I had a dear friend and colleague named Zepher Okello.
Working down-country among the Kikuyus as we were, near Nairobi,
he always made it clear he was a Luhya, because the Kikuyus would first
assume an Okello was a Luo. When they learned he was a Bantu-
speaking Luhya, and not a Nilotic-speaking Luo, this put him in a
different category of identity with them.
It put him in a different view for them. His Luo name
indicated he likely had some Luo ancestors, but he spoke the Bantu
language Luyia, so he was a Bantu, not a Nilote.
In the smaller and more isolated tribes, the name may be more
highly definitive.
Three Generations
It seems to me that names are at best only one clue among many.
Sometimes a name will correlate highly with other factors
indicating the ethnicity.
You need three generations of information to see if there is any
commonality of name association. Then you still need geography,
language and other factors that go into ethnicity. The list of
key factors is given in my article What is a
People Group.
Over three generations you can get some clue as to the direction of
cultural assimilation. See my presentations and articles on Assimilation.
Ideas of shared worldview go into this, but are somewhat complex.
See my PowerPoint presentation Describing a People Group. This includes
some questions to ask
to determine groups and segments by worldview, self-identity and group
boundaries.
Self-Identity
But self-identity is the critical factor. A name does not
give you the critical core value of that person's or group's own idea
of who they are, or what group they are part of. It gives you
only one part of their past heritage.
We can identify human individuals, families and social groups as
units, but there is a critical historical dimension that gives a
dynamic character to the question. The group has continuity
through history, and that group can go through various changes.
The designation name can change, the language can change, the
geography can change, they can merge or divide. As time passes
languages change, in sound and structure, and the names associated with
members of the group or groups that speak that language will change in
the same way.
North American Mix
Do you know anyone in North America who has one genetic or
cultural heritage? All Scottish, all Polish, all English?
For that matter who are the English? A mix of old Celtic,
Irish Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman, Viking, Jewish,
German and Russian refugees (e.g., Peter Ustinov).
What does the name tell about their being English today? This
indicates a political component, that may be chosen or imposed, as well
as cultural and linguistic components.
Is a person born of Scottish immigrant parents in Canada a Scot or
a Canadian? Well, what passport does he carry? Where do
they own land? What do they feel to be home? Are they
becoming citizens? What accent do they have?
German-American
My wife has an ancestor who came to America from Prussia, on of
the German states of Europe, in the 1800s. In the 1880 census, he
is listed as John Miller. but his place of birth is reported as
Prussia, as well as both of his parents. German is listed as his
mother tongue. John is married to a woman born in Mississippi in
the US.
Now we know that "John Miller" is not a German name. So his
name here does not tell you anything about his ethnicity. It does
not even tell you what country or language group his family came from!
We cannot tell whether John himself told the census enumerator
his name was John Miller, or the enumerator decided to translate the
name. John's son is listed as John Miller Jr. My wife's
family did not even know they had been German.
All through the Germanic languages and even others in Europe, you
have occupation names. Thus Mueller (German), Moller (Danish) and
Miller (English) are naturally understood as the same name.
Migrants to America often Anglicized their names, because they
were moving into the English-speaking stream (We also know that
sometimes the immigration officials "helped" them with this process by
writing their names down as some English name, rather than the original
ethnic-language name of the immigrant.)
You see the importance of personal intent and self-identity here?
We see this with other families name Groene —> Green, Braun —>
Brown, etc. At what point did the original migrant stop being
German? We see a pattern of assimilation. German ethnicity
moving to American Anglo ethnicity, to put it broadly.
Language and Tribe
You may recognize Steinberg as a Jewish name, but what is the
nationality? How complete an ethnicity does that give you?
Is this Steinberg family German-speaking, Yiddish-speaking,
Russian-speaking, English-speaking? Language and other
associations are involved. The ethnicity we commonly refer to as
Polish Jews are actually Yiddish-speaking (German-language and
geography based) Jews primarily in Russia, though all through Eastern
Europe.
Names get attached because of a certain period of the history, a
certain language in the history of the ethnic stream or a certain
aspect of culture out of many. Or a name can develop because of a
mis-identification by others, whose name for them gets circulated
through broader international society. Thus Gypsy, Roma, Domari,
Romany, etc. Family names may be more stable or continuous, but
then they change with marriage and other social factors. Often
surnames are ethnic clan names, caste-occupation names.
Legal and Arbitrary
There is an intermix of identities in today's world:
genetic, cultural history, language, place of birth or residence,
political requirements for official identity. The term
"ethnicity" is sometimes used to refer to various ones of these and
their combinations.
This means there is a somewhat arbitrary character, or to
put it positively, a definitional factor: You have to be
sure what you are referring to. In some countries there are
legal or social definitions for just that country, that might
not necessarily be consistent with actual findings and approaches or
definitions in the human sciences like Anthropology. Like the
designation of Race on a census, the options vary according to usages
and definitions there.
Thus in one sense, I am not sure what is required to determine the
ethnicity of a person, because it depends on what you have in mind.
In my context, I look for a current self-identity of a family and
the larger social group to which they relate, a tribe, people, ethnic
group. These terms are interchangeable, and serve as working
terms. Cohesive self-identity with a shared identity and sense of
history seem to be common characteristics.
Self-Identity Again
An identifying question then is self-identity: what other
families or groups of people or nations do they themselves feel they
are related to? Sometimes your answers will not correlate to
known objective facts of history, genetics, language, geography or
other identifying parameters. This indicates that ethnicity is
partly a matter of will. But at least it indicates that
ethnicity, in some classifiable sense, depends on the self-identity of
the group. So a concepts of ethnicity has to have a dynamic
aspect to account for the human variable that won't fit a database-
field data boundary.
Let me do some more musing on situations and examples before trying
to draw some summary perspectives that might yield guidelines.
In many places we find mixed societies, like in North America,
where a name may represent one steam of the history of someone's
ethnicity, but it cannot capture the total ethnicity. How many
Americans are part of only one ethnic group? If you add up the
surnames of mother, father, the four grandparents, and the eight great-
grandparents, will you come up with one solid ethnic origin? Only
rarely.
Kikuyu
On the other hand, in Kenya, if you meet someone named Kamau, you
can bet he will tell you he is a Kikuyu. As you probe further,
though, you will perhaps find that his mother was a Maasai.
Maasai and Kikuyu have been intermarrying for a couple of
centuries. But the Kikuyus, like the Icelanders and other
ethnicities around the world, do not have surnames. At least they
did not until recently, when modern systems required a standard listing
for official purposes. Even so, people will have a variety of
names, associated with different levels of their social identity the
stages of their life, and this applies to virtually all African
tribes.
The Kikuyu people have an inclusive social structure, which in
general incorporates individuals or whole families or clans from other
ethnicities. The naming system of the Kikuyu people ensures the
bequeathing of a Kikuyu identity, even if one parent is of another
tribe or race. This is a strengthening mechanism, adding to the
tribe. Kikuyu people are of a wide range of physical type and
color. But in general if he speaks Kikuyu, he IS Kikuyu.
If the parents follow the Kikuyu naming pattern, the first boy will
be named after the father's father. The second boy after the
mother's father. The next male children will get the name of the
father's brothers, etc. The girls follow a similar pattern of the
mother's family. This perpetuates the clan names, and indicates
kinship. If the non-Kikuyu parent does not agree to carry on this
pattern, the clan link is lost.
And the next question is whether he speaks the Kikuyu language.
Language is a key factor is ethnicity, both perceived and self-
identified. He might say he is Kikuyu but he does not speak
Kikuyu. What if he moves into the English-language stream, and
can no longer speak to his grandparents in their native language?
He and his family have to decide what it means to be Kikuyu.
But they are kin whether he is Kikuyu or not. You see the
problem?
So Kamau is half Maasai, half Kikuyu? What is his ethnicity?
Requiring a decision may violate the realities of the
situation. And what if one of his other names is Ole Kisotu,
for his Maasai father. And there will be differences according to
whether the family moved to the Maasai boma (village) or the Kikuyu
farmstead. The determinations are made by the social conventions
of those families and that society.
Genetics and Ethnicity
Genetics and ethnicity are not the same. What about a
Chinese infant adopted by a white American couple and raised in their
society? Is the child Chinese or Anglo-American? Thus
usually our categories and concepts of ethnicity are arbitrary; they
are formal or informal according to law or custom.
Only Some Information
Names tell you some information and provide some clues, but
ethnicity is more complex and less easy to pin down. It is more a
working concept, and it varies from society to society.
Since ethnicities are always in flux to one degree or
another, new ethnicities are always developing and others are
dying out. Genetic streams continue, but ethnicities as social
units are another matter. Some do, some don't. Individuals
may have a continual genetic stream, and whole families or clans may
remain related while others disperse. Geographical proximity does
not ensure a close social tie, even of blood-kin.
This means each case has to be evaluated on its own grounds and
integrity. Again self-identity must be taken into account, and
often is a distinguishing factor between otherwise identical groups of
related individuals.
This is a rather impressionistic commentary, to give the feel of
the problem.
Reference Points
Here are some factors to keep in mind:
1. Individuals and families, can change ethnic streams. Even
whole tribes or clans. So a name may be an historical
artifact.
2. A surname gives you only 1/2 of one generation's heritage.
A child whose surname is Schmidt — is he German? Well, I
don't know yet.
What was his mother's
maiden name? McIntosh? That does not sound German.
But is the child Scottish? We do not have any clues yet to
tell us.
Where do they live? Scotland? OK, a
German refugee married a Scottish girl and they have settled in
Scotland, so now Mr Schmidt is a Scot? Likely, a Scot with a
German surname. And little Johnny Schmidt — he is certainly not a
German, is he? But how does the family relate to the surrounding
community? Maybe Mr Schmidt still thinks of himself as a German,
but his wife and son as Scottish. But do the Scottish community
consider Mr Schmidt a Scot? And do they accept Johnny as
Scottish, since he has a Scottish mother, and was born in Scotland?
We have to ask.
There are communities in the Appalachians from
Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and west through the Ozarks, where no matter
what your name or how long you have lived there, you are a foreigner,
because your folks did not settle in the isolated clannish mountain
communities at the time of the Revolutionary war or the Western
frontier movement. Likewise Afrikaner communities in the Northern
Cape Province of South Africa.
3. Group self-identity is a critical component, so you have to
learn more. Who do they feel they are related to, why?
4. Language is one defining factor — communication across groups is
one factors of ethnic boundaries. A different language is usually
an indication of a separate ethnicity. But in India, caste has
more weight and priority in self-identity than even language.
5. Ethnicities are always changing, new ones developing, others
passing away.
6. Ethnicity includes a component of (or can be affected by)
geography and broader society.
7. Religion may be a significant factor in some societies.
For instance, a Spanish-surnamed person whose native language is
now English. Is the person Roman Catholic or Protestant?
That might indicate what social group she associates with or
identifies with. In Texas, for instance, this would be a mild
distinguishing factor, though not necessarily definitive.
8. Self-Identity entails a deeper shared Worldview, which is harder
to elicit and describe.
Minimum Factors
I am not used to thinking in terms of the minimum amount of
information, but in how much more can help clarify the situation.
It seems the minimum factors you would have to have are:
national or genetic heritage (including parent's ethnicity)
self-description in ethnic terms or group identification
language
geographical history
current associations
In a detribalized society like much of the US, helpful for
determining self-identity would be formal factors like:
choice of race on census
minority heritage claimed
religious affiliation
occupation
Also related
Assimilation: Articles and
Presentations
Classifying
Ethnicity: Coding and Comparing Ethnic Information:
How the Peoples and Languages Codes of the
Harvest Information System Facilitate a Broader Knowledge Base of World
Ethnicity
Ethnicity, Language and Population
Ethnic Names and Codes: Correlating
People Lists:
How Codes in the Registry of Peoples
Enrich the Exchange of Ethnic Information
Identifying a People Group
Multi-Level
Ethnicity: Illustrating Different Views of the Same Ethnic Group
at Different Levels
Peoples and Languages
The
Rough Edges of Ethnicity
OBJ
First written in an email answer to a query 6 December 2007
Finalized as an article and posted on OJTR 29 April 2008
Last edited 6 July 2012
Orville Boyd
Jenkins, EdD, PhD