Just half english? =O

[Miaka1991]

[ Message temporarily off-line ]  

[A Lost Iguana]

Me?

My Dad is from Kent [where I was born] but my mother was born and grew up in Guyana, coming to the UK to study. Though, while I was born in Kent I spent my early years in Scotland, where my brothers were born.

Now residing just inside the M25 [next door to Ali G's home town. <_<]  

[Foetus In Fetu]

Completely of Irish descent, but my parents were both born in England and so was I. I lived in London briefly as a child and now I live in Nottingham, often visiting family in London; I also, obviously, spend a bit of time in the Irish community while I'm down there. Officially I'm of dual nationality: English and Irish, but in practise I just consider myself English.  

[Miaka1991]

Groovy. mrgreen

I quite like being half Hungarian. The family tree is very interesting. 3nodding Not that you can trace that far back as most of my great aunts and uncles got killed (They were Jewish >.<)

I know loads of people who are just English, and seem very proud of that. When i say 'Oh well i'm half hungarian.' They almost start having ago at me for not having two English parents O.o;; But i also know quite a few people who are half American and half French 3nodding  

[A Lost Iguana]

I'm proud of my Guyanese blood [a couple of my great uncles played cricket for the Windies]

http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/player/51473.html [that's my great uncle Robert]

There is also supposed to be some Italian heritage but it is quite diluted by now.  

[Invictus_88]

"Egad! A Hun in our midst! Fix bayonets! scream "

Well, the joke was inevitable..

My blood is, I suppose, less than half English. I'm essentially a Frenchman, as far as blood goes. But it's not saying much, each side of the channel is genetically about the same anyway.

Also; having been quietly proud of not having a single drop of Irish blood in me, a few weeks ago I found out from my grandmother that actually, that's not the case at all. Oh well..  

[ficklefiend]

Miaka1991

I've lived in England all my life but I do often get told I don't look English.

Now I wouldn't have said there was a look.

They did a poll on our news a while ago to find what people thought made you Scottish. Most people, 70% or something, said that it was being born here and raised here. I agree. It's the experience of growing up in the country that makes you part of it.  

[Boolean Julian]

Mainly of British descent, although I've got some Irish in there too. If you go a couple of generations back on my mother's side someone was a housemaster at Harrow, I think. The interesting bit of my family tree is my paternal grandfather, Alfred Bacharach (never met him, he died about 20 years before I was born). He was the son of a German Jew, Otto Bacharach, who emigrated to England in the 20s (sensible move). Alfred was a nutrition biologist I think, but he was also quite an eminant amateur musician and musicologist. He edited several editions of the four-volume monster Lives of Great Composers, and probably a few others as well. He was also goood friends with the composer Arnold Bax, and the pianist Harriet Cohen (who I believe was Bax's lover at some point...she was also my father's godmother) and so as a result we've inherited all these first edition signed copies of Bax's music.  

[and_solo_said]

Half Hungarian...You wouldn't happen to work in a shop for a meiserly uncle would you?  

[Shadow of an Illusion]

Half (north and south mixed) Irish, quarter Swedish and quarter something British. Born and raised Scottish though.
The only notable ancestor I can think of is one whose name I can't even remember. think he was Mad Major Sir but it might have been General.  

[Miaka1991]

Wow. Looks like just about everyone is half english O.o;;

Anyone else got a very complicated surname?

Mine is Eldekvist, which is actually completely made up. When my grandparents immigrated to Sweden they had to change their name and so the official people made one up.
No one can spell it. xd My family have had mail with some very amusing names on: Elderhurst. Elderflower. Fieldsithurst. Elderkick. (and many more!) 3nodding  

[Warnersister]

Miaka1991

I know loads of people who are just English, and seem very proud of that. When i say 'Oh well i'm half hungarian.' They almost start having ago at me for not having two English parents O.o;; But i also know quite a few people who are half American and half French 3nodding

This reminds me (in reverse, as it were) of a passage in the Dorothy L Sayers / Jill Paton Walsh book, "Thrones, Dominations":

"...the English are pleased to be thought even more mongrel and exotic than they are. It appeals to the streak of romantic sensibility in the English temperament. Tell an Englishman that he is pure-bred Anglo-Saxon or a hundred per cent Aryan, and he will laugh in your face; tell him that his remote ancestry contains a blend of French, Russian, Chinese or even Arab or Hindu, and he will listen with polite gratification."

I'm just English myself, but I have 3 older cousins whose mother is Polish. When they were little, they would apparently start sentences in English and finish them in Polish. Unfortunately, they now know barely a word of Polish, which I think is a darn shame.

DW  

[ficklefiend]

Ugh *sigh* I have no interesting ancestry at all. Pure Scottish, as far the eye can see. On one side they were farmers, on the other side they were fishers. I am related to half of the people I went to school with and it's a bloody wonder I only have ten, unwebbed, fingers.  

[and_solo_said]

Fishing; a p***k on one end of a line, waiting for a prickk on the other.  

[Invictus_88]

and_solo_said

Fishing; a p***k on one end of a line, waiting for a p***k on the other.

Eh?