Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages PL
I just happened to be thinking about it today and I want to see what you think.
It started because I was thinking about the pope. I can't help but think of him as Italian even though he wasn't born in Italy. And then a thought came to me: If his mother and father were born in Italy, then he would be Italian (genetically) no matter where he was born.
Culturally, he might be something else unless he was raised in an Italian community. Was he? I don't know.
Why does any of this matter? I don't know, I just thought it would be interesting.
What counts more? Genes? or Culture? Or is it about equal?
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Ancestry.com is a wonderful educational tool with which to delve into your ethnic background or to learn more about immigration from the various countries around the world..........
Pope Francis was born in Argentina, however, he is of Italian ethnicity.
Italian is his ethnic background and his ancestry.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Flores, a barrio of Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of five children of Mario Jose Bergoglio, an Italian immigrant railway worker born in Portacomaro, Province of Asti, Italy which is the Piedmont region in northern Italy. His wife, Regina Maria Sivori, a housewife born in Buenos Aires to a family of northern Italian (Piedmontese-Genoese) origin.
My own paternal grandfather and all of his siblings were born in Italy.
Most of them emigrated to the United States; some stayed behind in Italy.
One of my grandfather's brothers could not get into the United States via Ellis Island, so he and his young wife went instead to Buenos Aires Argentina where they had a large family of children, born in Argentina. He found work on a cattle ranch.
They are all still of Italian descent or Italian ethnicity, even though subsequent generations were born in Argentina.
It is your BLOODLINE that determines who you are. Not the country that you were born in. That is your citizenship.
Just like we who were born in the United States have various ethnicities in our background.
Unless we were Native American Indians.
The U.S. used to be called the "melting pot", thus many of us have numerous ethnic backgrounds, depending on how long our "greats" have been here.........and whom they married.......
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The new Pope is of Italian ancestry, as are both his parents.
He was born and raised in Argentina.........so Argentina is his country of birth. But, he's still Italian.
My youngest grandchildren have an interesting genealogy as on their maternal side, their grandfather's family came to our country from Germany back in the 1700's......then migrated from Pennsylvania up to New York State and up into Canada......across Canada to British Columbia and then down the Pacific coast of the U.S. to California.........along the way, the young men of this large German family married many English, Irish and French women.........so the babies have a very large and interesting ancestry............but their original ancestors were from Bavaria..........the Bavarian Forest in Germany. Of course, we also follow the female lines as well.
So, these "trees" become huge.......
In any event, their ancestors have been here so very long that they truly do not even consider their ethnicities..........compared to say our Italian immigrants who came in the 1890's.
Ditto for the various Slavic immigrants who came in the early 1900's and whose children and grandchildren still celebrated various ethnic customs......like the Italians, knew what they were or who they came from..............subequent generations just consider themselves to be American........while still having an ethnic background.
When I was five years old, my dad wanted to teach me to speak the Italian language but I told him, "NO, I'm an American". Even at five, I knew that I was an American. But, do I wish I had studied Italian.......it would have been so much easier to learn at a young age.
In ending, I should add that GENEALOGY is a wonderful hobby.......it's like solving a mystery or putting a large puzzle together...........I began about 12 years ago as my mom was "disappearing" from end stage Alzheimers...........I did it for my newest grandson, about to be born.......I found out that I was NOT just Italian and Ukrainian, but that my dad's line had French in it (as he had always told me ....on his mom's side.....as well as Greek, ditto on his mom's Italian side)........and I "mushed through" the complexities of my maternal side from the Austrian Hungarian Empire of Franz Josef.........and all the border changes.........to my husband's Polish side. The Polish records are now in Ukraine and the Ukrainian records are now in Poland. *The Italian ancestry was much EASIER than the Slavic.......but it's all "good for the brain" as far as learning and growing. Plus, once you get the software and begin compiling all the data.............it's a wonderful historical record for the children and grandchildren............
*The reason the Italian ancestry was easier is that Napoleon was a stickler for keeping good records.......birth, marriage and death all had to be recorded.
Plus the Italian microfilms and records could be translated more easily; I had help from others who could read Italian. The Slavic records were very difficult, but I did have help from some kind priests who would translate my Ukrainian grandparents records for me...........etc.
The Ukrainian records were all in the Cyrillic alphabet and NOT the Roman alphabet. Cyrillic is very hard to decipher without help.
I learned that my mom's ancestors were Rusyns or White Russians; they were not called Ukrainians back then........but she always knew she was a "Ukie" or Ukrainian.
Ukrainians were called Ruthenians..........this led to me discovering that my husband's maternal grandfather declared his ethnicity as Ruthenian when he arrived in Ellis Island while his wife delcared hers as Polish. He knew what he was. Most of the men did. Some could read and write. My Ukrainian grandfather also declared he was Ruthenian. That was pre revolutionary for Ukrainian. They all spoke Ukrainian and wrote the cyrillic alphabet. There is a great website in Canada called Info Ukes.