Random Question - Heritage

[Guest Lynnx]

excuse this what seems like an off topic question.... but this is the general forum...

I wandering about what your heritage is.... like i'm german and irish... but more importantly:

how important is your heritage to you? Do you want to trace your family back? Your roots? If it is important to you, is it important to you because you grew up experiencing the culture that goes with it? Or do you want to?

I like to ponder such things.. Just curious.

[Guest Viccy]

For me , I am Irish , German , a dash of French for flavor , heritage was not important in my family , I don't know why. Personally I would like to learn all that I can about it , it is important , at least as important as who we are now.

[Guest Alice4016]

Our family is 100% Greek. My sisters and I are only the second generation in America (my grandparents on both sides of the family were arranged marriages back in Greece) so heritage is very important to our family. We still speak Greek in the home (we'll not my wife and I but when the family gets together it's in Greek because it's easier than trying to translate for some of those who don't speak English very well yet). All marriages, baptisms, etc. are done by the Greek church.

I was the first person to ever marry out of the "Greek" community (both my sisters married Greek men, pretty much picked out by my father). So, needless to say I'm not the most popular of my family ...but they are slowly adjusting...they let me around the family now so thats a big step.

[Guest Alice4016]

Oh, thought I'd add this the church my wife and I used to go to has pretty much expelled us...so yeah the Greek Orthodox church is not accepting of transsexualism (or any LGBT issue really)...but what else would you expect right?

[Guest Valentine]

I'm half Polish-half American, (a mixture of German, English, Native American, French, and a bunch of others).

I'm proud of being Polish, although growing up in the era of Polack jokes was hard.

[Guest Chris_421]

I've got Native American in me and a mix of European (my mom's half Ojibwa and half Czech I think, My dad's metis which is half native and half french/European).

I'm more in touch with my Native side, or more interest is there as in those who carry the same ideals as Aboriginals from a long time ago actually hold LGBT* with much higher respect, as they were teachers, healers and the wiser ones. If that makes sense

[Guest Drew]

i'm german and scottish...heritage wasn't really a big deal to my family....although there was always bratwurst at family events. where i'm from i was one of the only people i knew who didn't have a ridiculously german last name

[Guest Keira]

I'm Irish - hence the Irish name! - with some Welsh and Scottish.

My heritage is pretty important to me, though I haven't experienced much of its traditional culture. Genealogy fascinates me, so I would definitely like to trace my family back one day... and maybe even visit some of the places that my ancestors lived.

[Guest StrandedOutThere]

Let's see. I think I've got a lot of Europe covered here. I am a mix of English, Welsh, good bit of Scottish, and a dash of Irish, and German. For good measure, we've even got a little Native American in there, Cherokee.

My family isn't big on heritage. Like a lot of Americans, I guess we just kind of built our own heritage.

Lately I have become more interested in understanding my heritage. I have no clue why that is. One thing I think might have gave rise to this new curiosity about my roots is that I lived in Germany for 3 months. It was clear that there was this German culture that my German friends all shared. I kind of felt left out and couldn't really connect those traditions with anything in my own life. Certainly Americans have culture and tradition, but this felt somehow...different. I don't know. I can't explain it. So, I guess maybe I wanted to learn about my own heritage to somehow feel connected to the past or to feel some kind of group membership...something like that.

[Guest Lynnx]

thanks for all your responses.

like i said i'm mosty german, and irish or scotish.... but i feel just american.

I don't currently want to find my roots, but i remember when i was kid i did want to look up my fathers side, but maybe that 's because he died when i was two.

It is because we are american and were such a big melting pot... we have an "american" culture but it feels like it's a hodgepodge of other cultures, and therefore if we weren't brought up with any special culture, we want to adopt a culture? Just rambling here, but i may be onto something. Or not

anyway, i like to visit scottland someday.... i looks very green in the pictures.

[Guest dolly]

im irish and black irish, welsh and scottish with a splash of cherokee and quapaw. as far as tracing back lineage, its kinda hard cus my moms side is named after a town instead of an actual family name and i dont associate with my father or his family after the last time we talked and he told me he was the last of his bloodline.

[Guest Martin]

I am 100% German, born in Germany, but I grew up in the U.S. My culture is very important to me, and I'm trying to improve my German reading/writing/hearing/speaking skills. They're there, but not as developed as I'd like.

[Guest JoAnnDallas]

Scott-Native American on my fathers side

French-Native American on my mothers side.

[Guest Silver]

My heritage is VERY important to me. It is one of the things in life I am most proud of. I'm Irish, Scottish, Dutch, German, Welsh, Native American (i dont think thats the term anymore), Polish and probobly a lot more. I have a very mixed backround, and I'm still not sure of everything. I would love tp trace it back properly.

[Guest brandt]

my heritage is filipino. i'm proud of being a filipino. its pretty cool and i grew up knowing the traditions and the culture of what my kind of people do. we are very religious. our roots are spanish because the spain took over our country once and thats how most of the filipinos i know have spanish last names. but the odd thing is we are considered either asian or pacific islanders. but yeah. so i have a lot of knowledge of my own heritage and tend to keep this knowledge going and learn more about my own culture.

there is one thing i could never understand though. well gay people are widely known in our country and i'm guessing they are pretty acceptive because they are always in our shows and movies in the philippine tv network. i just don't get why my mom can't even accept a transgendered because technically its kinda the same problem in a way. and we are all people. so thats what i wonder.

[Guest theEND]

I have Israeli, Czech and Irish heritage, my dad speaks fluent Gaelic but I don't know a lot Its pretty important to me, but I can't trace much back into my Czech relatives sadly since, other than my grandparents, most of them were killed during the Holocaust. Even though I am interested in my heritage, I always think of myself as English and I'm much more involved in that culture.

[Guest brandt]

hmm well i was born in germany. so does that make me german? i was born an american citizen from the start and was born on an american base in germany so am i american? i know really that i am filipino because of my mother and father. but being in germany for about 13 years and being born there people tend to think i'm german. so am i?

[Guest My_Genesis]

My heritage is VERY important to me. It is one of the things in life I am most proud of. I'm Irish, Scottish, Dutch, German, Welsh, Native American (i dont think thats the term anymore), Polish and probably a lot more. I have a very mixed backround, and I'm still not sure of everything. I would love tp trace it back properly.

I'm also a big European mish-mosh ...Italian on my mom's side..and on my dad's side, I'm Polish, Austrian, German, a bit of English..and like you said, possibly some others I don't know about. My dad is Jewish, so he could be from pretty much anywhere, lol. I know someone who's Jewish who traced back her family tree and found out she also has Irish and Native American in her..now how many Jews are there in Ireland?

Lots a Scots here...my dad has always said he's felt an affinity to Northern Europeans, and I've kind of been wishing I had Scottish in me, I feel like I identify with them really well. (I also can do a pretty decent Scottish accent, after listening to it a few times ) So I'd also like to trace my heritage back properly..and my dad's grandparents lived in England, so it's gotta be a possiblity

[Guest RainBird]

I have Irish, English and Aboriginal from my Mum's side.

German, Italian, English from my Dad's side.

[Guest Sara N]

I'm Chinese. Heritage hasn't played a major role in my family, but it does have an influence.

[Guest Paula82]

My dad actually has a family scrapbook with information on our relatives going back to the 1700's which is pretty amazing and very interesting. My family on that side have a Welsh heritage.

My mom's distant relatives were gypsies, so goodness knows where their roots lay, LOL.

It's important to me on both sides as it's shaped who I am. I look at old pictures and can see the family resemblance going way back. So many of my interests were interests of various members of my distant family and it's great getting to know them better as you find out more information on them. I found out a great Aunt of mine on my dad's side was an author (through looking at the scrapbook) and found some memoirs she had written for a local newspaper that had been published online all about her childhood in the Victorian times, which was fascinating. I also managed to buy a book she had published online (the last copy available I think).

[Guest Jack Solomon]

I'm also a big European mish-mosh ...

So am I...estonian/scottish on the father's side, french/german/possibly ? on the mother's side, and probably some others I'm not sure of. I know more about my father's side, I usually go with saying I'm partially estonian. Heritage played next to no role in my upbringing, although I do know a bit of information on distant relatives before they left Estonia. The ones I'm directly descended from left Estonia before Estonia got invaded (mainly, you don't find too many estonians nowadays because they've had a bad century from WWI and II between getting taken over, killed, and then killed again).

Personally, I've often wanted to be more fully estonian as well as have more of a varied (but more direct) background. Sometimes I kind of feel like I missed out.

Solomon

[Guest Priestess Jean]

Hi Lynnx,

I'm of French-German descent.

If you trace out the DNA, you'll find everybody comes from places

a lot more remote than they think... originally Africa, by way of the

Middle East if you take it back far enough.

I distinguish between my genetic heritage and my spiritual heritage.

Spiritually I descend from a line of transsexual Priestesses who served

the Great Mother... She's an ancient Anatolian (Turkish) deity.

I feel that my spirit links me to them. Not the modern Turks who are

mostly Moslem, but the ancient cultures of that area, circa 6000 BCE

through about year 0.

As to feeling American.. no, I have never really felt that way. I'm here,

and I don't see anywhere else I would prefer to move to, but I have no

great love of it, as many others seem to.

Thanks for a great question, and Many Blessings,

Jean