Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

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sacesta
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by sacesta »

BrownEyedGirl wrote: 21 Aug 2016, 05:22 wo of my great grandmothers were redheads. One had fire-engine red hair and blue eyes, and she was from Western Ireland. The other had auburn hair, porcelain/fair skin, and hazel eyes. She was from Campania. So there ARE natural redheads in Italy! Few and far between but they're there! 8)
Testarossa! Many Sicilians and Southern Italians have blue eyes and/or red hair. A legacy left by the Normans and maybe the Goths. In Sicily, the surname Lombardo is fairly common. They were Northern Europeans. I have many Lombardo ancestors in my tree. I have (or had) blond hair and blue eyes as did my paternal grandfather.
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BrownEyedGirl
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by BrownEyedGirl »

sacesta wrote: 06 Mar 2017, 16:02
BrownEyedGirl wrote: 21 Aug 2016, 05:22 wo of my great grandmothers were redheads. One had fire-engine red hair and blue eyes, and she was from Western Ireland. The other had auburn hair, porcelain/fair skin, and hazel eyes. She was from Campania. So there ARE natural redheads in Italy! Few and far between but they're there! 8)
Testarossa! Many Sicilians and Southern Italians have blue eyes and/or red hair. A legacy left by the Normans and maybe the Goths. In Sicily, the surname Lombardo is fairly common. They were Northern Europeans. I have many Lombardo ancestors in my tree. I have (or had) blond hair and blue eyes as did my paternal grandfather.

Absolutely! I have a close friend with the surname Lombardo BTW. He was born in Campania but now lives in the Northeastern US. :)
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datxcali
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by datxcali »

I'm only 25% Italian (well, Sicilian to be exact).

My great-grandparents were born in Italy. My grandfather was born shortly after they moved to the US. He married a Polish Catholic. My mother is 50% Italian. She married my father, who is 100% Polish Jew (and subsequently converted to Catholicism before marrying my mom).

I was raised as Roman Catholic with my maternal grandparents heavily involved in my upbringing and my paternal parents not involved at all.

So I consider myself closer to my Italian ancestry than my Jewish ancestry despite being more genetically Jewish.
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BrownEyedGirl
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by BrownEyedGirl »

datxcali wrote: 28 May 2017, 23:47 I'm only 25% Italian (well, Sicilian to be exact).

My great-grandparents were born in Italy. My grandfather was born shortly after they moved to the US. He married a Polish Catholic. My mother is 50% Italian. She married my father, who is 100% Polish Jew (and subsequently converted to Catholicism before marrying my mom).

I was raised as Roman Catholic with my maternal grandparents heavily involved in my upbringing and my paternal parents not involved at all.

So I consider myself closer to my Italian ancestry than my Jewish ancestry despite being more genetically Jewish.


Just curious. Have you had a DNA test? Sometimes DNA looks a bit differently than our family tree. You might have more Italian in you than you think.
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datxcali
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by datxcali »

BrownEyedGirl wrote: 29 Jul 2017, 05:39

Just curious. Have you had a DNA test? Sometimes DNA looks a bit differently than our family tree. You might have more Italian in you than you think.
Yup. I did test. I came back with a small percentage of true Italian (about 5%), but also a mix of Middle Easten, Scandinavian and Baltic. After doing a ton of research, this kind of mixture is very normal for Sicilians. My mother was only about 25% true Italian.

Sicily was only part of Italy since the unification in 1861. It had been a melting pot for several hundreds of years.
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Filiotedesco »

Hello,

I think, I am mixed with different ethnicities, too:

Even if I am nearly at the beginning of my researches about my Italian ancestors (I am half a German), I only had to take a view to my Italian grandparents to know the difference:

My grandfather has been a small man with dark hair in his younger ages and with brown eyes, born in a city, which has been founded by the Islamic conquerors in the middleages.
My grandmother was bigger, blond, had green eyes and was born in a village near "il stretto di Messina" - one of the main settling-regions of the Norman conquerors...

Not only beause of this it might be very interesting to me, reaching the middleages with my Italian genealogy, as it did with my German one.

Greetings from Germany
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parkergambino
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by parkergambino »

My father's family is from Sicily, though my grandparents met and married in New York City (I made a little side trip just this past weekend to walk past - and of course reminisce about - the apartment house that they lived in during my life).

My mother's parents also married in NYC, both having emigrated from an area with a complex history. I'm actually not sure if they were both from the same place. Depending on who had won the most recent war, it was in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus (where it currently is), and, through the centuries, who knows what else?! They identified as Russian, though my grandfather's brother was in the Polish army.

My wife is 100% Irish, so my kids are more thoroughly mongrelized. By the way, though I understand that it is a charged term, I take no offense whatsoever about having the word mongrel applied, it has no derogatory association for me personally. In animal breeding, the mixing of different breeds sometimes confers certain advantages, possibly "diluting" negative aspects of the purebreds. I would be curious to know others' feelings about the use of this word.

I'm going to need to educate myself a bit more about DNA testing before going there.

Parker
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by NickAndreola »

The results from the Family tree DNA site were pretty confusing for me. See the spread they gave below.
As far as the paper trail goes; My father was the first child born in the USA to immigrants from Casalvecchio di Puglia, Italy---so you'd think with my 50% inheritance from him, my 'southeast europe' would be significantly higher!

BUT Casalvecchio di Puglia was/is largely populated by 'refugees' from Albania (Arbereshe) so the plot thickens HA!

West & Central Europe 58%
Southeast Europe 18%
British Isles 9%
West Middle East 7%
Sephardic Jew 6%
Central Asia & Asia Minor (Each <1%) 2%
cdemarco
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by cdemarco »

Mongrel here, but grew up tending towards identifying as 'Italian' because I was one of the few people where I grew up with an Italian last name.
Ing#2
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Ing#2 »

Hi I am also Sicilian and German too and I am pretty dark skinned. I wanted to bring up that my mom's side and dads side before their divorce I dealt with many issues surrounding mixed italians. Mom german Dad Sicilian
I am proud of my roots. I wanted to find out more than what I know. My family acts kind of greek too so I am wondering about that aspect (if I get my dna tested) I would also like to know more about my fathers side and their Sicilian roots I think they also are polish!!! Thanks to anybody for reading. I am also involved in a newcomers group in my church at St. Mark's and I even looked up Catholic church history in the south. Yes I moved to NC to get a better life, and If anybody wants to connect with me about newcomers group please message me! Thanks, I hope my post was understandable and it helped somebody!
JohKlove2
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by JohKlove2 »

Half thai half italian here, I'd love to get my DNA tested too.
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Jacevoni »

I am (as far as family tree, but unknown by actual percentage through a DNA check) 1/8 Italian from my mother's side. It was my great grandmother who was a first generation Italian, and we grew up knowing her and seeing her a lot. She passed away when I was 16 (only a little over 3 years ago), but I was used to seeing Italian-American customs and even grew up learning cuss words (which I find funny because I knew only a couple clean words (like ciao and grazie), and she did the whole "stereotypical Italian grandmother" thing of having a freezer full of frozen tomato sauce she made and sent us home with like 8 of them. I grew up more around my dad's side of the family, but I felt much closer and more comfortable with my mom's side when we all saw each other. I for that reason, and being that fact that she is the only really lineage I am completely aware of and can trace back to Italy, I just tell people I'm mostly Italian-American because it was just the culture I was used to. Sometimes I think that people are going to tell me I'm stupid bc there is hardly any in me, but culturally and in my heart I identify with it the most.
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Tbella78 »

I did the Ancestry DNA test and I cannot figure out for the life of me how I have both sets of maternal grandparents who came from Italy (I can trace the family towns and have cousins currently still living in the towns they’re from that I talk to). My father’s side is from Palermo, Sicily and his mother’s side is from Scotland (her father’s side was from a Scottish clan in the highlands) and mother was from Poland). So my genes should read a good amount of Italian, Scottish, polish and maybe a little German.. I get my results back and I’m more than half “Germanic European” and I have NO idea what the heck that’s supposed to mean?? I don’t know if I’m German or what? (59% Germanic Europe). Then it said I’m 16% Eastern Europe which I figured that would be right (the polish)...but only 10% Italian??? Does this mean I’m not even Italian when my entire family names on both sides are all Italian?? I’m stuck too!
Ascertain20
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Ascertain20 »

According to 23andMe I'm 22.1% Italian. On my Father's side 3 out of 4 of my Great Grandparents are Italian. Both sides of Paternal Grandmother's lines are from Toritto and my Paternal Grandfather's Father's line is from Naples. My Paternal Grandfather's mother was German from the Russian partition of Poland, and may have been born in Lomza. My Mother's side of the family is Ashkenazi Jewish. My Maternal Grandmother's side is Romanian from Iasi and Barlad. My Maternal Grandfather's side is Polish from the Bialystok, Poland/Grodno, Belarus region.

Interestingly enough my Italian-American Grandmother on Ancestry came up as 5% Jewish so of course I noticed on 23andMe through chromosome painting that I may have inherited a little bit of that 5% Jewish on Chromosome 3.
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Edward Keeports
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Re: Anybody else mixed with another ethnicity?

Post by Edward Keeports »

I'm only 1/8 Italian. I also have Slavic, Irish, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Scottish roots.
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