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Hello, perhaps the religion section of this article could be touched up a bit. For example, Jewish English people are given quite a mention but not Hindu or Moslem. According to the demographics of England article..?
I have nothing against Jewish people, but why are they singled out above the other religions..? User:Dan Carkner 04:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, it's all kind of a fuzzy area. But you don't want to just say that all English are Christians and Atheists-- in the end it depends on how you define English. Dan Carkner 22:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a religious section and a need for a religious section? Surely the figures only reflect the people living in Rngland, not the English people? Secondly, I don't see how it's so relevant that it needs to be but in the fact box? ( Stpaul 08:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC))
Don't historically Calvinist peoples (Huguenots and Presbyterians) have a greater ethnocultural relationship with the English (Puritans) than others? This would mean the areas which have had significant Calvinist movements: France, Scotland, Ireland and the Holy Roman Rhineland (Palatines). Incidentally, these very places were on the royal coat of arms as displayed by King William III of England. While most people see Orangist activities and politics to be controversial, they would not deny the basically close cultural relationships in the Calvinist web. This is not so for the Lutheran issue (am I right?) that developed as a result of the 1701 Act of Settlement, which alienated the common man in those times by introducing truer foreigners than William actually was. William's Orange-Nassau territories straddled the old Duchy of Burgundy; the English and Burgundians were allies and trading partners for a reasonably long time. Lord Loxley 20:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The assumption that some people self-identify as English is questionable at best. The article on Scottish people does not make a similar distinction, and I think we should use that article as a template. Homagetocatalonia 12:32, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not a member here, so wouldn't want to edit anything, but was slightly surprised by some of the comments above. This page is supposed to be about the ethnic group known as the English. It clearly has at the top a link to the demographics of England as a nation, but this article is not about England as a nation. Therefore in the religion section on the template it should not include Muslim, Sikh, Hindu etc, because these are not religions in which you will find significant numbers of ethnic English people. Yes those religions exist in England, but that is a seperate matter that has no sway over ethnicity. It would be rather odd to a person of English ancestry living outside of England to be informed that their ethnicity ranks Islam as a religion that apparently occurs amongst their kin. Please could this be edited by someone who has the power and authority to do so, for the sake of accuracy. 18:08, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't know aboot the numbers myself, but I have many friends who are English of Chinese descent. Should a mention be made towards their religion? I also think the Jedi thing should be mentioned since more than 250,000 ppl stated it as their official religion. Halbared 14:12, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone has changed indigenous to pre-Roman on the history page. I have reverted this but feel then that this should be discussed. The British people, including the English, as detailed in this article, are the indigenous people of Britain. We are so because we are the direct descendants of the first people to live in Britain. There has been cultural shift but not genetic/blood shift from our aboriginal ancestors. The term indigenous has been applied here to differentiate between the various groups of peoples that have contributed to the English people in genetic and cultural terms. The use of indigenous Brythonic people is used to show that before the Roman occupation, the culture of our ancestors (in what is now England) was Brythonic. I believe that indigenous is the correct word to use here; others might have a differing opinion. Enzedbrit 21:14, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
How quaint; TharkunColl only believes that prehistorical issues are relevant to modern ethnic character when it suits him and you, Enzedbrit. We can go over the suppressed Celtic languages and culture in talks of the English, but nobody dare mention Anglo-French relations on pain of ostracism and accusations of trolling or vandalism. English and French languages have things in common. Answer for your political POV! Lord Loxley 15:05, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Come on TharkunColl; which happens to encapsulate English ethnic identity more? Would German culture be something English are, while English culture is something English are not? Keep thinking ill of the Norman Conquest. Defame Emma of Normandy for all you really care. I have placed this here, because you wanted to have the last word on my (and our) talk pages. For those unaware of the dispute, his desertion of the argument is here: User_talk:Lord_Loxley#Third_.28and_final.29_reply_to_User:Lord_Loxley. Lord Loxley 15:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
"in York and Norfolk, here the Germanic male sex chromosome occurs in about 60% of men, with indigenous Y chromosomes comprising about 40%"
By "indegenous," does this mean Celtic, the indegenous race/people of Britain? -- Rainsey 00:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
This is first time I have used wikipedia and find it a fascinating place. However I doubt whether this subject can ever be brought to a conculsion given the apparently vast amount of published works that in their turn give some form of creedance to any POV.
"So the simple answer to your question is that indigenous means the very earliest human inhabitants to occupy Europe after the end of the last major glaciation" -- I thought the "indigenous" peoples referred to in the study were Celtic peoples... Unless you're assuming the Britons are a descendant of those migrators to Europe.- Rainsey 21:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I have removed it because:
1) There's a Cornish people page were all this has been thrashed out.
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
2) 37,000 people claimed to be Cornish on in the last UK census.
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
3) The citation was probably put there by an English nationalist in the first place. Bretagne 44 15:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I think there's an issue among all this that is too easily forgotten. Englishness, Northumbrian-ness and Cornishness are not tangible, provable concepts and in fact aren't a lot more than a personal preference. None of them can be proven, if we accept that birthplace does not denote "nationality". Cornwall is rammed with people born in England with no Cornish blood, who "feel they are Cornish" or are "spiritually Cornish". You can't prove it, or prove otherwise. That's why the arguments about this sort of thing are just so much hot air. I can declare that I'm Scottish (I've only been there once) and no-one can prove otherwise. Britishness is the only thing that can be proven, with a passport or suchlike. Personally I consider myself Cornish and British, and that England is not a proper country - that's my point of view. Points of view are everywhere and almost infinite, so do they all need to be proven and documented? Isn't there a certain amount of futility that comes with this kind of territory? Or are we only documenting points of view held by a certain number of people? Where does that begin and end?
That's the legacy of the Union between the various regions that make up the UK. Everyone wants it all ways, so they can be British and Scottish, British and English, British and Northumbrian etc. Officially, and in terms of what's verifiable, we're all just British and anything else is in our heads. Bretonbanquet 19:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
You are quite right, which is why ethnicity is about the group one identifies with. All indiginous British people are descended from the very first inhabitants of the island, but we don't identify socially or culturally as paleolithic people (when was the last time we did a bit of hunter gathering?). Ethnicity isn't just about blood, or more accurately descent, it's as much to do with language/culture/society and even politics, so it's about identity. Many people in the UK have multiple identities, English and Scottish or Welsh and British, there are no hard and fast rules, it's not citizenship and it's not birth, no one has any right to dictate to anyone else what group to identify with. There is a name for people who try impose their discredited ideas of ethnic identity or ethnic purity on other people, they are called racists. Please note I am agreeing with you here.
We don't need proof, this is an encyclopedia, we require verifiability, if we can show that some people identify (or in your parlance, personally prefer to be identified as) as being Cornish not English using a reliable source then it can go in the article. We are interested in what people believe (as long as we can verify it), not in some concept of provable truth. Remember verifiability not truth. Alun 05:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any Wiki project designed to address this kind of thing? Bretonbanquet 17:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a report of what sounds like an interesting paper concering Anglo-Saxon immigration and the genetic composition of the modern English population at [5]. Perhaps somebody could have a look at the paper itself, since media reports of this type of study are not always reliable. Rhion 06:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I had a look at the abstract fot this paper and it's a bit sensationalist and doesn't seem to really provide evidence, It's based on a computer model of what ifs, so all it's really saying is if there was a small Anglo-Saxon population, it could have become biologically dominant if our computer model is accurate. [8] For one thing it is assuming that there is a 50-100% Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome occurence in England, there are two problems with this proposition, firstly they cannot differentiate between Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Viking Y chromosomes, so is it Anglo-Saxon or Viking Y chromosomes they are measuring? The second is that the 50-100% only seems to apply to York and Norfolk, and not to other areas of England. Journalists get this sort of thing wrong all the time and a proper reading of the original paper is required for a definitive cite, journalists are not interested in being neutral or properly verifying their articles, they are only interested in a good story and I have seen several examples of journalists overstating or even deliberately distorting scientific results in order to get good copy. I should be able to get hold of a copy of the paper from work when I go back on Monday, we have access to most molecular biology journals online there. Alun 12:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I am going to just comment on this: "a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language."
If this "Doctor" confuses language and genetics he is not even worth the efforf of reading him.
As I believe it can be useful for the discussion, I am offering a link to this paper by Capelli et al. on British Y-chromosome distribution and to my own clinal reconstronstruction of their results on a map (for easier visualization). (Legend: blue: over 50% Nordic, red: c. 100% Atlantic, the rest gradation in 10 percentual point stripes). Only York and Norwich are clearly more Danish-Saxon than Atlantic. The rest of England is mixed with rather higer "native" presence (on average, England seems 2:1 more Atlantic than Danish-Saxon).
I must say that some of that Danish-Saxon component may have come in prehistory (Maglemosian culture, Megalithic currents), not all is necessarily historical Anglo-Saxon or Viking input.
Also Denmark (and genetically akin Nord-German areas) is not so alien to the Atlantic genotype (c. 50% R1b, simmilar to that of England or France, clearly larger than Germany or Scandinavia proper) and that may cause some confussion.
Hope this is of help. -- Sugaar 11:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
"Some people concentrated in several English counties, generally further from the south and west, notably the Cornish and the Cumbriaans claim to have a noticeably stronger connection, culturally, linguistically and politically, to the ancient Britons; As a result of this some historians claim that Cornish people can be considered distinct form English people.[18]"
I have trouble parsing this sentence. Maybe "notably the Cornish and the Cumbriaans" should be in parentheses. Also, forget the semicolon and start a new sentence.
Sorry if I'm violating convention in any way with this comment, as I'm new here. -- BLHersey 02:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly is the neutrality of the article disputed? That tag seems to have been there since June, but I cannot find the problem on the talkpage and there doesn't seem to be any active discussion over the article's neutrality at the moment. Does anyone mind if I remove the tag? -- Rudjek 20:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I correct you. There is and has been evidence presented by other editors on WIkipedia. There is no definitive proof yet whether there was such a thing as Anglo-Saxon mass migration to the British Isles..however there is indeed some evidence for the theory. Also the ENglish culture was founded by tribes (or members of tribes) from the continent and so the Frisians, Danes, Germans...etc..are a related people to the English through cultural bonds if nothing else. Just because you do not like the idea that the English are a Germanic (or related to a Germanic) culture does not mean that the evidence that they are indeed a Germanic culture, is false. Sigurd Dragon Slayer
I have included only UK and Irish peoples as ethnically related. My reasoning is thus:
Please provide evidence against such great amounts of English identity and culture from being traced back to the Anglo-Saxons and Danish-Vikings. I am not arguing that modern English culture is more similar to continental groups that to Welsh or Scots culture, but I am saying that there is still many shared elements in common which is worth mentioning. IT should be noted there is a great deal which the Welsh or (especially) Scots don't share with English culture. You need to show how English people wouldn't identify having an shared ethnic elements with Frisians, Danes , etc. The English have alot in common with their insular neighbours, but they also share a great deal with certain continental groups. 69.157.126.241 21:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
English (people) share current similarities in culture, language, history and genealogy with other Germanic-speaking and continental groups
"A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal." - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. 69.157.126.241 23:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
slight majority claiming their "nationality exclusively" and "their nationality first and then British".
I have been keeping an eye on this article for a couple of months. As it is obvious that the conflict is not going to go away, I have taken the liberty to place this request for comments. The origin of the dispute is about whether Bretons, Danes, Dutch and Frisians should be added to the list of related people to the English. E Asterion u talking to me? 20:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Statements by editors previously involved in dispute
- I am under the impression that one of the main policies of wikipedia is the verifiability policy. It has long been a problem with related ethnic groups that they are difficult to verify (at least online). I cannot even find any reference to a definition of related ethnic groups with a google search. I would like to see this section removed from the info box completely as I'm not convinced of it's merits. Be that as it may the definitions of what constitute ethnic groups have varied from the purely racial (only descent counts) to the purely linguistic (English people are ethnically German because they speak a Germanic language), neither of which are particularly accurate or reflect the realities of the situation. There has been a fair amount of nationalistic posturing, with English and non-English nationalists stating that there are greater differences between English people and Welsh, Scots and Irish peoples than really exist. These are largely based on events that may or may not have occured well over a thousand years ago and tend to ignore the more recent history of the various constituent parts of the UK. If there is to be a related ethnic groups section then I think it should reflect the realities of the present, which is that the peoples of Great Britain have a shared culture that goes back centuries that they just don't share with any peoples of continental Europe. If we are to include Danes, Frisians and Bretons, then we should also include French and Germans, in fact we should probably just include all Europeans and have done with it. Ultimately we are related to all these groups, it's the degree of relatedness that is disputed. I simply think that in that case we should include only the very closest of related groups, and that would be the other peoples of the islands of the archipelago. I am aware that we should not accept concepts such as common knowledge. Given that these are all unverified anyway (and I have placed unverified tags in the references section in the past but they have been removed at some point, I stopped editing this article for a while) and seem to be unverifiable I think it would be best just to remove them all and let people draw their own conclusions. Alun 21:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Comments
- Wobble, you make some valid points in this paragraph that I agree with, but also you make alot of unfounded claims. Ethnicity itself is a touchy subject and its definition includes various elements. It does primarily consist of shared/common ancestry ( kinship and descent) as well as cultural, behavioural, religious, familial, linguistic, phenotypic/genotypic traits which may or may not result of such descent. We are debating whether certain ethnic groups should be included under this subject based on their level of similarity or relation to English people. This is obviously a highly subjective subject area, even if relying solely on shared genealogy/kinship and descent. There is no need to argue for the inclusion of the other Insular peoples, but if they should be included, then why not other groups who are closely related to the English (even if not considered by some as being as similar). The French should not be included since they have only had limited influence on the English language with little similarity in terms of culture. The French have practically no significant relation with modern English in terms of shared ancestry (that is what can be traced in historical records). Some argue against this by citing the invasion and influence of the Normans. This however is flawed by the fact that 1) the Normans settled in very small numbers and were easily absorbed into the English population 2) the Normans themselves were primarily Norse or of Scandinavian descent 3) their culture was a hybrid of northern French and Scandinavian elements 4) their langauge was a Norse-influenced Oil language different from standard Parisian French 5) other than the language, what lasting influences and impacts on English culture they did have were not uniquely "French" and were common of most continental Kingdoms and nations of the Middle Ages. As for the Germans, it is questionable whether they should be included since they do not share a great deal with the English other than limited linguistic and cultural similarities as well as possible shared ancestry with especially northern Germans. Getting to the matter at hand: whether the Frisians, Bretons, Dutch and Danes should be included under "related ethnic groups". The Frisians should obviously be included if any such subject is to be in this article. They may not share as much in common with the English as the other Insular peoples but they do share a great deal in common in terms of 1) language: English and Frisian are the only members of the Anglo-Frisian branch of West Germanic languages and are closer to each other than any other langauges 2) shared ancestry: the Anglo-Saxon based surnames still form the majority of English surnames and most English can trace varying degrees of descent to the Anglo-Saxons. Even going by the one or two inconclusive y-chrom. analyses of some British populations ( "A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles" (pdf) Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration), there is clearly a significant "Germanic" line of y-chrom. descent in such studies in the sample populations in England, especially in the east of the country. The "Germanic" samples taken to compare were from Friesland, Schleswig-Holstein and southern Denmark. The Anglo-Saxons who migrated to England included Frisians and the peoples were very closely related speaking the same language ( Anglo-Frisian) and inhabiting the same geographic region (the German Bight) 3) Culture: the national identity and creation of England as a Kingdom traces back to Anglo-Saxon England as well as the origins of disinctively "English" culture and language. Although evolving over time and receiving other influences (Scandinavian, Norman, etc.) they persist to the modern day. Many of these cultural traits are shared with other Germanic based cultures and peoples, including the Frisians. The Danes should be included mainly because of their shared history with the English, influences on English culture and language (especially Northern English dialects) as well as their significant shared ancestry with the English (due to Danish Viking settlment), especially those from northern and eastern England. As for the Dutch, they do not have any more reason to be included than the Germans would (being speakers of a Germanic-language and possible shared ancestry), while the Bretons would only be able to make a case based on shared ancestry (like the English, also descending from Brythons) and arguably shared history during the reign of the Angevin Kings of England (see history of Brittany). I am not arguing really for their inclusion anyway as much as I am for Frisians and Danes and I strongly believe these two peoples should be included if you are going to maintain keeping the related ethnic groups section. 69.157.126.241 22:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC) 22:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- This type of argument, i.e. one that provokes a large amount of strong personal feeling and can subsequently develop into a heated row, is often blighted by a poor definition of the topic in hand. "Related ethnic groups" is such a horribly vague term that differences of opinion are practically guaranteed. All ethnic groups are related to the English, some more closely than others. Where is the line drawn? 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 10,000 years ago? What is guaranteed to prolong the argument is that very little of what some people are saying is verifiable to the satisfaction of Wikipedia. Arguing whether the English are more closely related to Frisians or to the Welsh is ultimately futile when nothing can realistically be proven either way. I have had many run-ins with people who like to remove all mention of Britain from articles and replace it with England, either believing that they are one and the same thing, or that anything with a vague connection to England is English and not British. The point is not that they are wrong, but they cannot prove they are right. Englishness, like Welshness, Scottishness and Cornishness, is not a provable concept but an attitude with which people identify, often for reasons other than descent, place of birth etc. Likewise, one's opinion of the relative closeness of other ethnic groups to the English depends on personal experience and POV, in the absence of clear facts. So, without the prospect of any verifiability for any measure of relativity between the English and any other ethnic group, the whole question of "related ethnic groups" should be abandoned. The alternative is an infinite extension of this current dispute. Bretonbanquet 23:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is all very much a matter of degree. Of course, the English are more closely related to Europeans than they are to others. But if this info box actually has any use at all (which I doubt), then it has to reflect what the people themselves think about their kinship. The truth is that the English feel almost infinitely more akin to the Scots, Irish, and Welsh than they do to any Continentals - and this fact still remains true even if the feeling is not reciprocated. TharkunColl 23:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Here I must agree. This is, I believe, another firm argument in removing the section which is 'related ethnic groups'. To be honest, I had never known that there was so much argument amongt British peoples to be so detached from each other until I got involved in this forum and others like it. I, for one, am purely British first and foremost. It's my island, and although I'm happy to relate to regions within it, the island's identity has existed for so long, not the modern countries that have divided it. Enzedbrit 11:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think if you're going to call something related then you should either cite your sources, or define your criteria for a relationship. Of course you can't really do the latter without violating WP:OR - something I think one or more contributor has been doing in arguing for the inclusion of these groups. I am in agreement with those who say that virtually every group is related and this is all a matter of degree. I personally don't find the related groups infobox information useful at all. Perhaps it should be in the See also section where the nature of the ethnic relationship can be elaborated - possibly in a timeline or sprinkled throughout the article or something instead. TharkunColl makes the point that the related groups should be what the English people think - ie, which ethnic groups do the English think they are related to? This would be a fine approach, if there was a reliable reference. Otherwise, without a source which says which ethnic groups the English ethnic group are related to, I agree they should all be removed from the infobox. I think everyone involved in this discussion has said as much. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Someone could argue that places like Goole, Crowle or if you want to push it Epworth and the Isle of Axholme do have some relation with the Dutch, but I really doubt local people really think this way anymore. Regards, E Asterion u talking to me? 23:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think we should have the section. I think it the related groups box, we should have those that share similar cultural traits on the continent such as the Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes...etc...As I think histroy is an important part of current culture an dlike it or not they have a shared history with us. Their days of the week are another case in hand, all derive from the same Goddesses that were shared with all the other Germanic Pagan peoples and in this sense I mean the early English. They also are related by language. The Frisian language is the closest language to English, unless you count Scots as a language rather than a branch of English, either way the language is very close. Our Yule celebrations (as well as the word Yule > Jul) are also very similar to the Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples. Our folklore again is similar and derives from the same source, a lot of the time. In areas such as Northumbria the folkloric creatures still in many cases retain their old Germanic names (such as Dvargar for Dwarves or Dwarfs). And can anyone here say that folklore and folk customs are not important to a nations cultural identity and self view? Like it or not we are related to the continental nations and the Northern European ones even more so. The same goes for the other inhabitants of the British Isles, they share customs, language and traditions and also share a country (United Kingdom) so they are related. I don't see the problem with any of these groups being added. Not that it matters, I doubt this would change anyones minds. I just feel if this section is not re-added Wikipedia would lose another once of integrity. I'll speak more on each of these points later, when I am less busy! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
some responses to above comments:
This is all very much a matter of degree. Of course, the English are more closely related to Europeans than they are to others. But if this info box actually has any use at all (which I doubt), then it has to reflect what the people themselves think about their kinship. The truth is that the English feel almost infinitely more akin to the Scots, Irish, and Welsh than they do to any Continentals - and this fact still remains true even if the feeling is not reciprocated. TharkunColl 23:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Well, I do not doubt they would feel more closely related to other Insular groups, but I also believe, from my experience with people who are English, that they obviously feel more related to especially Danes and Frisians but also Dutch (especially if from the east of England) then to say French or Italians. [[User:|User:]] 23:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- You obviously have a very limited experience of English people. Have you actually ever been to any of these places you claim to know so much about? Alun 05:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Does that really matter ? Does one have to visit a certain place to know about English people ? English peopl and culture are spread around the globe and I have read much into this subject area. Do you in turn have expertise in this field of study ? Exactly. 69.157.126.241 21:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- You claimed to have personal experience of people specifically from the east of England. Now it seems that you have never been to England at all and have learnt all you know about the English from books. TharkunColl 22:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, I've had personal exprience with English people from all over England, but not in the UK itself. I myself am of mainly German and Flemish descent, but I know many English people from the UK as well as those of English descent who live here in the USA. I've also learnt much from books and other media. Whats your point here "TharkunColl" ? 69.157.126.241 22:23, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
- Someone could argue that places like Goole, Crowle or if you want to push it Epworth and the Isle of Axholme do have some relation with the Dutch, but I really doubt local people really think this way anymore. Regards, E Asterion u talking to me? 23:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I think we should have the section. I think it the related groups box, we should have those that share similar cultural traits on the continent such as the Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes...etc...As I think histroy is an important part of current culture and like it or not they have a shared history with us. Their days of the week are another case in hand, all derive from the same Goddesses that were shared with all the other Germanic Pagan peoples and in this sense I mean the early English. They also are related by language. The Frisian language is the closest language to English, unless you count Scots as a language rather than a branch of English, either way the language is very close. Our Yule celebrations (as well as the word Yule > Jul) are also very similar to the Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples. Our folklore again is similar and derives from the same source, a lot of the time. In areas such as Northumbria the folkloric creatures still in many cases retain their old Germanic names (such as Dvargar for Dwarves or Dwarfs). And can anyone here say that folklore and folk customs are not important to a nations cultural identity and self view? Like it or not we are related to the continental nations and the Northern European ones even more so.The same goes for the other inhabitants of the British Isles, they share customs, language and traditions and also share a country (United Kingdom) so they are related. I don't see the problem with any of these groups being added. Not that it matters, I doubt this would change anyones minds. I just feel if this section is not re-added Wikipedia would lose another once of integrity. I'll speak more on each of these points later, when I am less busy! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
Whatever the history, the fact is that the modern English perceive all those Continentals as foreign and alien, in a way that the other peoples of the British Isles are not. Folklore is all very well, but it is massively less important that everyday life and language. TharkunColl 13:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Sigurd, I think you should pay attention to Zzuuzz and TharkunColl's comments above, they are relevant. We do need to define what is related and what is not. We can't include groups just because we are of the opinion that they are related. And as he says if we start to define what level of relatedness is acceptable, this would constiture original research. Alun 17:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I have paid attention, but have you to me? Only you can answer that. I do not believe this to be the case. As the unnamed user has said in the East and North of England many people do consider themselves related to the Dutch and Danes, sadly due to the wars it has become unpopular to consider yourself related to the Germans. But the fact still stands that most English people do consider us connected to various continental groups (that have been mentioned), as well as the other British peoples. I do think that we need to take into account culture, history and tradition to define who is a related group, and not just opinion's on who is foreign. I am not saying certain groups are related because it is my opinion, but it is both reading up on the subject and also first hand experience of people in the country, specifically the North, East and Centre of England (I do not visit the South much). Evidence for the fact that many in the UK consider themselves (at least culturally) related to the Danes and the European Continent, can be seen at York, where the inhabitants take great pride in their Viking (Danish) heritage. So we should have the related groups box, and not just a bias one with only the other British peoples, or for that matter continental peoples. Sigurd Dragon Slayer
I think someone's behavior has been childish and uneccesary. There was no group in that box that were not mentioned as being connected to the English in the main article. The Scots and Welsh are connected obviously because they are from Great Britain and still share a large percentage of DNA with many in England. The Danes, Germans (in this case meaning North-Western Germans) and Frisians are mentioned as they are related to the Anglo-Saxons who are whether you like it or not the founders of the English nation and still are the largest percentage in the Gene Pool (that is Germanic Y Chromosome being strongest in Central, North and East England) and are thus genetically indistinguishable from these people. Their cultures are very connected due to shared history. So I shall put it back and nothing is unsourced and almost all the other Ethnic Groups have such a box! I will not let Wikipedia become a one opinion site! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
Alun, could i just ask why you feel that it is you, and only you that is responsible for what information is posted on a public page? I, like many people on here are english and would like to have a say about what is written about our history. At least put it to a vote, if the majority of people want a box that has english people's related ethnic groups then include it on the public page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexpayne ( talk • contribs)
Alun with respect just because people fail to recognise that they are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians does not make it untrue, isn't the whole point of this page to educate? If you are to include an ethnic box, could you at least include in it it 'Germanic and Celtic' elements thereby eliminating all of your confusion around welsh, irish etc. You know that the english are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians, and I can provide eveidence to back this up. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1008
Also again I ask, who put you in charge of keeping a public page, that is representative of my history as much as yours?
Thank you, Alex Payne, 16 Walsall
Alun, I'd appreciate it, if you weren't as patrionising and downright arrogant, thank you. Can i remind you that the box clearly states that peoples are ethnically 'related' not identical but related. How can you deny that the english are in no way related to the dutch, frisians, or celts? And this is about history Alun, as our history (e.g. germanic migrations) as defined who the english people are today.
lmao omg -'I have a BSc in genetics and so am fully au fait with what it says, and more importantly what it means), you may not fully undertand this paper,' don't insult my intelligence please.' you don't think that's being patrionising?? my god, lmao. Also Alun, i have never once said that I haven't accepted your opinions, but I get kind of annoyed when people think that they are in charge of a public page. You asked me to give proof that English people are ethnically related to the dutch and other europeans (so i could edit th page, which you then re-editied), you asked me to provide you with evidence and I did just that. Alun it seems to me that you are basing this on your wn opinons and judgements, as you feel that it's wrong to class groups ethnically. The fact is though, you can, and the fact is that english people are ethnically related to other european peoples whether you like it or not. Also, I think it's absurd that you or anyone else doubts a germanic migration. 65% of english people have blue eyes, we speak a germanic language, and our DNA is identical to that of other germanic peoples for no reason at all, is it? I know that this has nothing to do with ethnicity, but you brought up the theory that doubts germanic migration to england. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexpayne ( talk • contribs)
In the period 400-600 Britain was fragmented. Some territories retained British leadership, language and culture while others lost it, over variying periods of time, to incoming Germanic alternatives. How this happened is partially answered in principle, if not in precise detail, in the written accounts of leaders and battles. All forms of evidence are consistent with the establishment of an elite whose cultural, and probably biological, ancestry, lay in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. They took control of eastern Britain, probably piecemeal and over a long period. What that meant in terms of population remains elusive because much of the evidence is interpretable in more than one way. The situation is unlikely to have been the same in all parts of England. In some places new rulers may have displaced only the native elite - and married some of their daughters - while elsewhere that were followed, sooner or later, by many humbler settlers. Not only may the 'English' in Hereford and Somerset be closer to the Welsh in ancestry than to the East Anglians, but the populations of Wessex and Northumbria may have been different from each other long before the Vikings settled in the north. The origins of the English by Catherine Hills
Alun 06:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
{{ Wobble/sandbox}} Restore the related ethnicities box, with the peoples of Great Britain and Brittany only...
Éponyme 19:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
To try and build consensus let's start with the areas we all agree on. This is as I see it, if I misinterpret an editors opinion or position then I appologise, it is not my intention.
This is just my perception, I am under no illusions that this is a definitive list, I may have left some groups out, and others may dispute the order, or what constitutes a group, I am open to this being refined/changed. Alun 06:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Alun with respect just because people fail to recognise that they are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians does not make it untrue, isn't the whole point of this page to educate? If you are to include an ethnic box, could you at least include in it it 'Germanic and Celtic' elements thereby eliminating all of your confusion around welsh, irish etc. You know that the english are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians, and I can provide eveidence to back this up. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1008
Also again I ask, who put you in charge of keeping a public page, that is representative of my history as much as yours?
Thank you, Alex Payne, 16 Walsall
Alun, although you do seem knowledgeable in some respect, a lot of your statments and views are subjective, and supported with little evidence. I believe that an article, like this one, should be a concensus and represent the majority of peoples view.
There will always be conflict, however you seem to represent the minority, but have still taken it upon yourself to assert that your belief is correct and above everyone elses view - eventhough you haven't based your claims with evidence.
Take your statement on Alex's talk page: "I fail to see any connection between English people and Frisian or Dutch people."
Yet, this link is clearly proven in this article: [ [25]]
For example, the part of mainland Britain that has the most Continental input is Central England, but even here the AMH-1 frequency, not below 44% (Southwell), is higher than the 35% observed in the Frisians. These results demonstrate that even with the choice of Frisians as a source for the Anglo-Saxons, there is a clear indication of a continuing indigenous component in the English paternal genetic makeup. We also note that our analysis includes representatives of the Danish Vikings, which were not available in the Weale et al. study. Consideration of Danish Viking input is important because their activities on the British eastern coast are well documented [1]. Our evaluation of the Danish and Anglo-Saxon source populations, however, shows that the contributions of these groups are unlikely to be distinguishable by using the resolution available in our analyses.
I thought this article was about the people of English people of England. The religion section does not make sense because it is including none English people like Pakistani/Indian who are Muslim, and Indian Sikhs and Hindus. Related ethnic groups look better than a religion section that includes people other than english.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.149.183 ( talk • contribs)
I am questioning the statistics used here on religion since they are not really needed. They are only statistics on English people in the UK, and therefore ignoring millions of Englsh people around the globe, so they dont speak for all English people. More importantly, the numbers include many people in the UK who would not identify as being English. Epf 02:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Alun and I did have quite a good summer. I'm glad we came to a consensus on religion but theres still a disagreeance on our views towards the importance of descent in ethnicity. The classical (and most commonly accepted) definition of an ethnic group would in fact include descent as one of the main prerequsities in defining an ethnic group. You also seem to misunderstand partially how descent is related to the ethnic identity and distinction. It is hardly seen as a "consequence" of a group seeing themselves distinct from others over time and descent isnt merely attributed to race or inherited biological characteristics since many other socio-cultural traits are associated with kinship and descent. In fact, it is highly debated right now as to the origins of the kinship and descent system and as to how it actually developed in terms of distinguishing ethnic identity. The geographic, biological and familial closeness of a group itself is known to lead to certain socio-cultural traits developing within a group and in turn further distinguishing it from others. I do admit however that many believe it could also be developed vice-versa in the sense that the cultural associations of a group in close geographic proximity in turn lead to common descent. It is difficult to say which is more responsible in the formation of groups, but we can say with the utmost conifdence that in either case, descent is an integral part of ethnic identification. Now, obviously someone with very limited English descent who has no ties to English culture would be quite rare in saying the person is "ethnically English", but you still must realize the importance of descent in ethnicity. I need to stress here that biological traits resultant of common descent are obviously part of ethnic identification, but they are not the only traits resulting from common descent. As I have explained earlier, the closeness and isolation of groups also allows for socio-cultural traits to develop and in turn these can also be passed down (socially "inherited") to varying degrees (i.e. depending ones geo-cultural location) ranging from behavioural/personality, cultural, lingustic, religious, and other familial traits and traditions. Obviously many of socio-cultural traits can also be learned from residing in a society without being of that cultures descent, but some (behavioural) can't or at least aren't leanred in such away that often. Therefore, a person living outside of English society with very little or no identified English descent could hardly be described as part of the English ethnic group, but in turn the same could be said about a person living in England who is of no English descent (and therefore has some degree of ethno-cultural traits not shared with ethnic English people). As for the information in the ethnic group box, I think we should leave the numbers and information as is since as you say they are referenced, albeit from different sampling techniques and sources. We could possibly do the same as we did with religion, but I would personally say to leave it as is right now since it is in line with figures for all the other ethnic group articles. Good to be discussing with you again Alun, but I wont be on here regularly for another two weeks or so. Ciao, Epf 17:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I wonder why we have Elizabeth Tudor in the picture. Surely her grandad was Henry Tudor, who was Welsh (descended from Owain Tudur). Tudur was a family name for a Welsh noble family. Shouldn't we have people who are more English, and monarchs aren't really representative of ethnically English people, unless we go to before 1066 (so Alfred the Great might be better?). Why not some contemporary English people? And why not representatives from sports? W. G. Grace or even David Beckham spring to mind. Why Newton and Darwin? Do we need two scientists? I'd go for Darwin, but I'm biased as I'm a biologist. There should probably be a Prime Minister there, even the Milk Snatcher would do, and she's very recognisable. Any takers? Alun 17:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
This entire article is troubling. Of the millions of people you designate as "English" in Canada and indeed, around the world, many, if not most, trace their origins to a mix of celtic and anglo/saxon roots. Few would classify themselves as "English" accept as a referent to the language they speak. Most Canadians who would trace their entire ancestral line to the UK would probably find celtic branches and few would find entirely "English" branches as you imply in this article. This article needs to be modified or deleted, because defining "English" as a cultural designation of people outside the UK who trace their ancestral lines back to the UK is not justified. Most of those people are, at the very least, anglosaxoncelts, and they trace their lines back to a mix of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ldjenks ( talk • contribs)
I have a whole lot of books in my home library that state very clearly that the "Celts" are indeed living and well all over the world. The books talk exclulsively about the "celtic" culture as it exists today. My son plays and composes 'celtic' music. You can buy 'celtic' table cloths, art work, etc. all over North America. "Celtic" rock bands are very popular in North America. And yet you say "Celtic i Alun 07:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)s a linguistic classification". I beg to differ, because as an anglosaxoncelt, I only speak English. I'm afraid that English is more the linguistic definition, not "celt", and that is where this whole article is flawed. I am sorry for not signing. I don't know how to do that, but I certainly believe you should go over to google and google up anglosaxoncelt. It's seen increasingly on discussion boards such as BBC, and even more authoritative sources are starting to use it. Ldjenks 19:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
None of the article is troubling, and you are pushing an anglophobic POV. You are suggesting that "celts" are a pure breed, and English people are "mongrels" and are not legitimate which is obviously totally flawed. Actually, you are suggesting English people don't even exist. Just to point out though, that is is disputed how many, if any "celts" made in to Britain. Vinneyt6 21:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, as I said under the deletion discussion board, both anglo/saxon and celtic, exist in modern Websters to denote cultural groups. Remember, Websters is used extensively in North America, which likely has millions more descendents from the UK and Ireland than what currently inhabit the UK and Ireland. I am concerned that most of the discussion here is central to Europe.....Hello....the rest of the world is out there too. In any event, as I stated on another board, we decendants of colonists have truly mixed Celtic names like Mac...Mc... with anglo/saxon names are common in our lineage, perhaps not so common in the UK, but very much so elsewhere in the world. We are neither "English people" or pure Celts, but a mixture of what we in North America call anglo/saxon and celt. And yes, anglo/saxon is a commonly used term throughout North America. That's why it's in Websters folks. So, if "English people" is all that is acceptable for the people of the UK, fine, but it's not the best nor only acceptable term for the rest of us in the world, especially we descendants of colonists. And I can't believe the discussion of 'celts' not being a distinct cultural group, which by your own wikipedia definition, includes 'kinship'. Believe me, Celtic kinship is seeing explosive growth in North America. There are Celtic festivals all over the place, and Celtic rock music is popular. Those who try to dismiss 'celts' as a cultural group are expressing views that seem to be politically motivated. Ldjenks 01:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Ld, you obviously don't have even the semblence of a basic knowledge of the subject you are talking about, you seem to be saying that English people shouldn't have a right to assert their existence because a few uninformed and apparently biased Americans don't think they should exist, give it up. Alun 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Wobble, clearly I have touched a nerve with you and some others. To clarify, perhaps "English" is not necessarily the best term for people outside of the UK. We have an identity that is different from the people within the UK. Furthermore, I have discovered that many people of Australia are identifying themselves as Anglo-celts, a fact that is noted on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-saxon These terms are not available to tick off on census boxes, but to many people of the former colonies, English is our only option for those of mixed celtic/anglo/saxon backgrounds . We can't tick of only Irish, Scottish Or Welsh, which I believe are options, because we also have ancestral lines in the "England" part of the UK. You should know that in Canada we are given the option of ticking off more than one box on the census form if we want to, so when you see the number of people in the Canadian census who say they are English, many are also ticking off another box such as Irish, Scottish, etc, They are not truly saying they are pure English, but a mix. Therefore, the numbers you are reporting for Canadian "English" people on this "English people" page are somewhat unverified.
In North America, the term to identify us has often been anglo/saxon, (sometimes in a derogatory manner by other cultural groups) and the more deragatory 'wasp'. Just as an aside, in Quebec a new sports team's new logo is 'frogs', once a derogatory term to French Canadians, but now embraced by them. In the same way, people descended from the UK are now embracing the terms anglo/saxon, and celt.
You can't imagine how difficult it is to be unable to accurately tell someone, coining a simple universally accepted phrase, of one's ethnicity. African Americans had a difficult time coming up with an acceptable term. We are in the infancy in North America of creating a term acceptable to those of us who trace our ethnicity entirely to the United Kingdom and Ireland. "Anglo/saxon celt" is growing in popularity in North America to the same extent Anglo-Celt is growing in popularity in Australia. (I am even seeing people in the UK use the term "anglo/saxon celt".) A lot of this ethnic identity crisis is the result of massive immigration in North America of groups who have clear ethnicity as well as the recognition of the politically powerful and united "Acadian" nation in Canada. We know we have ethnicity as well; we are just having trouble coining the correct term. And let's not forget that the DNA research has focused extensively on the research of the 'celt' and 'anglo/saxon' genetic markers. Ldjenks 23:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Alun, perhaps The Brits see us exclusively as "Canadian". But you are missing a very important point. And now I have to get political, something I did not want to do. In Quebec, the 'English' population has nearly been wiped out. Despite statistics you may read, there are 'hidden' numbers you never hear about. Like the one that reveals that out of a provincial civil service of nearly 55,000,000 people in Quebec, only about 400 are English. Imagine a place where a boy can never dream of becoming a fireman or a cop, and that place is Quebec. Try as hard as you can and you will have a hard time finding an "English" boy who is a fireman or cop. But here is where the problem lies. Because the people who are having the most trouble in Quebec are not immigrants who may identify as "English" because of their language, but the people of anglo/saxon celt descent, who have all those last names that origin in the British Isles and the UK (and for heavens sake, I'm talking about LAST names, not first names). Now this very same problem is spreading in Canada. Google the the Air Canada page and look at all the executives and you will find that there are very new people whose last names are of British Isle and Irish descent and when you find them, they have one foot out the door to retirement. We're in big trouble in Canada, and as a result of never ending bickering in the UK and Ireland, we have been unable to attain the united face we that we all know we urgently need in Canada. And now you, Alun, want to also transfer the political issues of the United Kingdom and Ireland onto Canada yet again. This is not good for Canada's population which is descended from the UK and Ireland that people like you do this to us. I had an excellent conversation with a recent immigrant from England last year. He said that in the UK the people of the various areas of the UK and Ireland don't really mingle with each other and stay within mainly their Irish, Scottish, etc. social boundaries but he noticed that in Canada we all got along well. He further observed that the fact we are getting along in Canada seems to be necessary for our survival because we are losing a lot of ground. Now you come along, refusing to acknowledge that there are any other people from the UK who exist. Well, we do, and millions of us live in North America and still consider the UK and Ireland to be our mother land.; I'm moving there on an ancestral visa this fall with a dependent child, and we are both anglosaxoncelts, or, if you prefer anglo/saxon celts. Sorry if you don't like it, but stop assuming that UK and Irish tensions, which are permeating this discussion, also exist in Canada or the USA. They don't anymore, and we need unity here because we have issues of our own. Please remember Anglo/saxon is a very popular term in North America.
Wobble, just walk away mate. This is comical, but if he vandalises the page then we can fix it. If he tries to write an article on anglosaxoncelticcanadians then he'll need to source it. Won't happen so no worries. Wiki-Ed 21:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the numbers in Quebec. I meant to say the civil service is 55,000 people. And to you Wiki-Ed, I think your tone is condescending. As an educator, I may have to join the legions of educators who are telling our students that they cannot use wikipedia as a valid reference source. Wikipedia has been in the news lately for this kind of mean spiritedness. It's kind of sad. I'm trying to help find a solution to a growing problem. I see you are also from the UK. I hope you all don't act like spoiled conceited brats when we move there in a couple of weeks. I have seen what the Britts can be like. I have a brilliant son who is moving with me on an ancestral visa and I hope you all can behave better than you are on this page. In any event, wiki-ed, I can send you a file that is circulating Canada, which will likely really shock you, cause you clearly don't know what's happening over here based on your comment to me. Send an email address to lyjinx@hotmail.com and I will send it on. It's a pdf about 900 k. Ldjenks 23:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
One final note on this English people page. You have haphazardly allocated millions of Canadians as being "English people" from Canada. These people sign census boxes denoting more than one ethnic origin on a census box, a fact you stated on the English people page. These people are often not tracing their ancestry to the UK. Many tick of "French" and "English". Others - "Chinese" and "English" and so-on, often to indicate languages spoken. I have a Chinese friend who ticks off "English" and "Chinese" because she is married to a man who immigrated from the UK. She is 100% Chinese from China, but she ticks off the box for political reasons, mainly because the census determines the allocation of funding between English and French in Canada.
Furthermore, TharkunCo11, if you don't know anything about the visa issues of the UK, then I guess you are not nearly as well as informed as you think you are. Many of you people on this forum are shockingly ill-informed. You have virtually NO submissions from academic experts on this or any other issue. In making my submission, I was hoping to get input from such types of people, but I guess that's not forthcoming. Furthermore, topics increasingly are linked to topics inside of wikipedia, with little outside verification. I shall revert to standards such as the Oxford English Dictionary for future reference. Ldjenks 13:03, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
OK Alun I will consider another name for my webpage in Canada other than anglosaxoncelt. But I never did get any meaningful dialogue from this wikipedia site, other than the one link to anglo-celtic, and those people have no point of contact.
In any event, I am attaching an email that made the news in Canada. I received it from a so-called "English" Quebecor, who distributed it in bulk to the citizens of a bilingual community in Quebec. It is suspected that this email was massively distributed throughout Quebec. I have left it untouched. You can probably get copies of it on the Internet. This should tell you how complicated language AND cultural identity in Canada has become, and how politicized it is. Unfortunately, any statistics you take fromm Census Canada are suspect.
I've removed the e-mail. My French is not good enough to understand it all, but I'll assume it's politicised junk mail and has no place here. Just because this is a discussion page does not mean it is a soapbox. If it actually adds value to this discussion then it will need to be translated. Wiki-Ed 09:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This is complete and utter rubbish. There is No evidence of a White Dragon flag. This has aleady been rubbish on: http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/whitedragon/comments
http://crossofstgeorge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9457&highlight=white+dragon
If they cannot provide the evidence then they are lying.
I've added the following sentence to 'Symbols' on the England page:
"A new or indeed old symbol being resurrected is the 'White Dragon Flag' of the English. This particular flag pays homage to the Anglo-Saxons. It is believed that Anglo-Saxons used the White Dragon Flag in battles against the Celtic Britons - who themselves used the Red Dragon flag(now found in the Welsh flag). Evidence of the White Dragon can be found on the Bayeux Tapestry,in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies of Merlin, Stentons's Anglo-Saxon Britain and Barlow's The Godwins. This flag pre-dates any other flags and symbols currently used in England."
The evidence is on the discussion page of England.
Perhaps it should be added here? I'm neutral about the flag, but as there is some historical evidence to support the symbol of English/Anglo-Saxon culture, could it be added here? A cut downn version is fine, it probably needs a mention. Note that English-Nationalists are beginning to support this symbol. White43 22:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Here, incidentally, is a source for the white dragon being a symbol of Mercia, from the Flags of the World website [27]:
"There is a medieval map of the English "heptarchy", a period where there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at war with each other. This map, made I believe in the 12th Century after the heptarchy period is illustrated with banners of the kingdoms. Those shown for Essex, Kent and Sussex appear to be very similar to their "county standards" today, while East Anglia has three crowns on a white background, Mercia appears to have a white dragon of some kind. James Frankcom, 30 July 2001"
We also learn from this, for example, that East Anglia used three crowns, an arrangement identical to the Swedish coat of arms - perhaps not coincidentally, as there are Swedish archaeological remains in East Anglia and its dynasty may have been of Swedish origin!
The point is this - Mercia used both a white dragon and (later) a yellow saltire; Wessex used a gold wyvern but the Godwins, for some reason, appear to have used a white dragon; East Anglia used three crowns; and the other kingdoms used totally different designs. The white dragon is by no means universal, and it may just be a coincidence that Mercia and Wessex used vaguely similar designs. Heraldic beasts such as dragons are very common in European iconography. TharkunColl 11:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
User:The Green Dragon has added this to the Symbols section The Saint George flag replaced the white dragon flag which consisted of a white dragon on a blood red background in the 12th century. citation needed The Flag is still in use today by the English[citation needed] and some wish for it to be re-instated as the national flag. citation needed I have added requests for citations. Should it just be removed? Alun 06:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a link to the website of this party? It looks a bit like an endorsement by Wikipedia. Or are they considered uniquely representative of English people? If so, why did they get 0.7% of the vote at the last by-election held in England? 193.39.172.1 07:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
A think a List of English people within the 'Contribution to humanity' section adds to the article although there will no doubt be a debate about who to put here and who to leave only in the main list. But please see Wikipedia:Embedded lists. Wikipedia Style is to avoid the use of bulleted lists in an article ( except those in articles which are solely lists). Articles should try to describe their subject using prose and where a list is beneficial , use the Serial Comma method. Lumos3 12:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Since when do ethnicities stop forming? When a country such as Belgium or Switzerland, Spain or Russia and Germany is formed of composite former nation-states, do the newfound citizens not produce children that identify ethnically with their new nation? For instance, I am British, French and Irish ancestrally in the USA. I know that paternally, my ancestors came during the reign of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's one king. Then again, there were relatives of the same surname who were there in the old Virginia colony, who fought against their master George III of Hanover's yoke and declared themselves American. These remnants of 1776 still identify ethnically/ancestrally as American, rather than any UK-related fief under the Crown. British, French and Irish Protestants who were there in 1776 identify as American--but the Orange-Nassau/Pennsylvania Dutch and Netherlands/New York Dutch people still proudly claim their Continental roots. I would say that is proof that old roots don't always hold water. I have recently begun to shear off my British cultural allegiance, with an understanding of my own American heritage and am just fine adopting the mantle which better describes me. Although 3rd generation American, I have differences with the modern (Germanophile) UK and disagree with a lot of how it is going. In short, I would NOT want to live there now, in this day and age. If you do not believe me, at least believe the United States Census Bureau. People of the three major racial backgrounds apart from non-French Continental colonials present in 1776, are represented as: "American", "African American", "American Indian" in this map page... Maps of American ancestries I would consider American nation-state status to be more legitimate in the way of providing an ethnicity. Canada and other Commonwealth nations are still tied to the UK and it would be silly to pretend that the English in Canada have no identity, especially when contrasted to the French--even the Scots and Irishmen maintain individualist presences. Éponyme 09:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Right on. I am fully willing to accept what others will not. I cast the hyphen aside and found roots I hadn't known existed and even if they represented British colonial policy, I recognize the American component and am content to serve one master. Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Self-loathing Germanophiles, indeed. All recent culture in the UK has been mystified by Anglo-Teutonistic vs Celticist nonsense, omitting Roman this and that. I can't take it. It is precisely these intellectual hates that inspire me to say "that's fucking/bloody enough". I would be more ashamed to self-identify according to those hyphens indicating ancestry. It is enough for me to know where my colonial ancestors and recent ancestors were from--all the same place. Since they were all involved in my branch of our family's current nation (as well as other Anglosphere countries CA/AU inc. ministers in India), I just focus on my immediate situation and work my way outwards from there. Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
PS: I am desparately working on the American people article, to save it from destruction by anti-American sentiment where Americans are not seen as legitimate people. You guys know more than anybody that is not true and that we have a story that is so very ominous when George Washington is talked about. Imagine somebody saying that Mexicans or Brazilians aren't real people, just composites. Everybody is a composite of something else, but we all assume contemporary identities. I am not Anglo-Saxon, any more than the Anglo-Saxons were Ingvaeones. We Americans broke off from you and built our own Continental nation with our own ethnic group based on a mixture of British fiefs and the subjects of those lands (including Huguenots), minus the Dutch and Palatine Germans. Now, we have other ethnic groups coming here and saying they are just as American or even more American than the Founding Fathers like George Washington. What utter ignorant hatred. They don't understand the difference between a colonial populace which creates a political entity and the subsequent immigrants. Consider the French situation in Paris (Paris was once centre of Frankish potency), or the experiences of Brummies (glorious Mercia) and Londoners (where's old Middlesex?) in their own area. We all get the Political Correctness nonsense and young people thinking they can bring White Man's Burden to "ethnics", against the old order. I'm sick of counterculture's intolerance towards democracy and their insistence that a mobbish minority rule must supplant majority rule, catering entirely to their minority freakdom and bringing in wave after wave of ignoramouses to vote and work for them in our countries. Fuck Karl Marx and his utopia of class struggle. I'm going to have a heart attack one of these days! Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
In addition to the many studies that have been previously done pointing in the same direction, like the following one published by Oxford University Press, in which surprising genetic similarities can be seen between Britons and Spaniards (Spain is IberiaS) , in a genetic piece of research that takes into account up to 8 genetic loci, including mitocondrial, autosomal and Y-Chromosome DNA. See:
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/7/1361/T03
Now we have another Oxford study whose reference has been just published two days ago in which the origins of most Britons seem to be getting clearer and clearer and astonishingly very different from what it was previously thought (really, who would have thought that they come from the Spanish!.
It is also interesting in relation to the similarities between the Celtic areas of Britain and England.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1621766.ece
I cannot open the entire article from here, but it continues like this:
A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.
The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.
People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."
Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.
Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings. Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman clans.
These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in the British Isles. "Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not the case," Professor Sykes said.
It seems that here we have very interesting new information for the article.
Veritas et Severitas 02:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, it coincides with research that has been done before. In fact, most research seems to be pointing in that direction. The most common Haplotype in the British isles, within Haplogroup R1b, is the so-called Modal Atlantic Haplotype. Make a search for it in google. The two areas where it is most common is again Iberia and The British Isles. I think that there is a lot of information right now pointing in one direction, in any case, much more than in other directions. Veritas et Severitas 13:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
So, I think that this article and others about other British peoples right now are ignoring fundametal findings, which is very poor for Wiki standards and rules. But I am not going to make any changes myself. If anyone wants, they can do it themselves with my support. I personally do not want to engage in exhausting edit conficts. I just prefer to contribute with sources in the discussion page for the moment. Veritas et Severitas 13:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I do not agree. But let just people read it on their own and draw their own conclusions. In any case, do not confuse the links of Western Europe to iberia, with the closer link of the British Isles with Spain. Veritas et Severitas 14:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC) Veritas et Severitas 14:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There is a close genetic link that started thousands of years ago. Right now you do a DNA analysis on people from the British Isles and on people in Spain, and the relationship is more than obvious. I am not saying it, I am just a humble messenger, other academics and scientists are saying it. One of the characteristics of the human being is to know, more and more, and especially about their ancestors and origins. Now, in the 21st century, we have the capacity to know things that we did not know before, that is it. In your previous contribution you are lumping together very different concepts like language, culture, nationality and biological ancestry, by the way. Veritas et Severitas 13:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree basically with most of what you say. So what is the point of this discussion. I just said that there is information available about the genetic, biological, racial or whatever you want to call it, origins of the English and the British, which was not available just a few years ago, and the article does not reflect well those new findings. You do not see it like that, fine. Let just other people look at it and think for themselves. Veritas et Severitas 00:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
In any case, you seem to concentrate on the relationship of Western Europe and Iberia through R1b. But within R1b there are subgroups, and these subgroups put together closer the Britons and the Iberians again.
Then, those first migrations probably started 10.000 years ago, but the time frame also points to more recent migrations, 6000 years ago and even more recently.
Only in the British Isles do we find legends that may be a residue in the colletive memory of these migrations:
Ireland
One legend states that the Irish were descended from Míl Espáine, a king from Spain. The character is almost certainly a mere personification of a supposed migration by a group or groups from Hispania to Ireland, but it is supported by the fact that the Celtiberian language is more closely related to insular Celtic than to any other language.
Scottland
The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, following the War of Independence against England, tells how the Scots arrived in Scotland after they had "dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes".
Or comments by the Roman Historian Tacitus, dated less than 2000 years ago, describing the Britons in just a few words: “They are like Spaniards”.
Of course, those legends and comments were traditionally disregarded or almost ignored, probably because of the success of the Nordic Myth in Great Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries (still lingering, by the way), but now genetics seems to give new vigour and light to those legends and comments.
Those legends do not occur in other parts of Europe (that I know of), so the connection between the British Isles and Spain seems to be different than to the rest of Europe.
And do not confuse issues: The genetic relationship proven by science is not from samples collected 6000 years ago, it concerns 21st century Spaniards and Britons that are alive and kicking.
And I am not jumping to the conclusion that Britons and Spaniards are one people. That is obviously absurd, so let us be serious. Veritas et Severitas 01:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, Alun, I am not going to repeat things. Just I remind you that this issue is being brought up by English academics, not by me. I think people can read all this stuff and draw their own conclusions.
Just some basic information: The highest concentration of this population group is in Spain, not in England, peaking in the Basque country, although it is also the majority population group in England. This population group is not restricted to the Basque country in Spain. It constitutes the majority population group in all of Spain, from North to South and from East to West. In fact, about 70 percent of the population of Spain, more or less like the population of the British Isles as a whole. Even areas on the Mediterranean, like Catalonia, present percentages of about 75%.
As to the genetic fingerprint of the Britons and the Spaniards, Sykes states that it is almost identical in the population discussed. If you do not agree, send a letter to Brian Sykes, I am just a messenger.
As to the Celtiberian language and Celtic Languages in the British Isles, linguists also agree that they are more closely related than other languages. Again, if you do not agree, tell them, not me.
As to the name of Spain, it is quite old indeed. Its origins is attributed to the Phoenicians, who founded Cadiz, the oldest city in Spain, more that 3000 thousand years ago.
In any case, as I said, there is plenty of information out there for the readers here. They can do their own homework. I respect your view, but it is not the only one and I insist that the article poorly reflects a lot of important information. Veritas et Severitas 11:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I have reverted this edit. I don't think there is any doubt that there are many ethnically English Jewish people, anyone who claims that there aren't clearly knows bugger all about English people and history. I can't imagine anyone claiming that Benjamin Disraeli, Herbert Samuel or Rosalind Franklin are not English, in the case of Franklin how many people actually know she was even Jewish, because up untill recently I didn't. As for English muslims, well there have been quite a few, not least Nasser Hussain and Sajid Mahmood. There's also Monty Panesar, who's not muslim I know, but the same reasoning applies. English ethnicity is not static, as is no other ethnic group, the indigenous English group itself is the product of various different groups merging over the course of several centuries, English people have always had diverse origins and have assimilated various groups over the last millenium or so. People are not excluded due to their religion or skin colour. Excluding these people makes this article look like an advert for the British National Party. Alun 13:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There's a problem with the infobox that I don't know how to repair. -- Gray Porpoise 00:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I have removed this paragraph. It is far too unequivocal. There is no research team at Oxford, this is in reference to a book written by a someone who runs their own company that will genotype your DNA for you. The data included in this book are not produced by a research team at Oxford as far as I can tell. The sources used to back up this information do not constitute reliable sources. I refer you to the section In science, avoid citing the popular press. This information is more than adequately covered in the article as it is. I see no merit in inflating the importance of this, it's in the article already, we don't really need to repeat it ad nauseum. Alun 05:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
In addition, a research team at Oxford University has found that the majority of Britons are Celts descended from Spanish tribes who began arriving about 6,000/7,000 years ago, making the journey by boat from an area that is located in present-day Northern Spain. The proportion of this population group is 64 per cent in England, 73 in Scottland and 83 per cent in Wales. - Previously it was thought that ancient Britons were Celts who came from central Europe, but the genetic connection to populations in Spain provides a scientific basis for this new theory. Even in England, this population of Iberian origins outnumbers Anglo-Saxons by three to one. This study also identifies other areas of origins for the present English population, like areas in present-day Germany or Scandinavia, with part of the population also having their origins in Ancient Rome, The Middle East and North Africa. 1 2
It is not in the article. It is an update. It is reputable and verifiable. It is an Oxford Team:
See: http://www.bloodoftheisles.net/index.html
It is absolutely unacceptable that people erase this type of verifiable information. No one is erasing the next paragraphs, although the study is disputed by geneticists like Oppenheimer. Do not delete again what complies with all Wiki rules. See: http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817
then your edit will always remain unverified, please pay attention to what I said earlier In science, avoid citing the popular press. It is you who are in breach of wikipedia policies and guidelines. Alun 05:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Here you have another book that speaks of the same subject matter: That the relationships between the British Isles and Spain are multiple. They began with Paleolithic migrations, but there were several waves. It is now believed that Celts also arrived from Spain, much later than the first Paleolithic migrations. See: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.html
I have cut and pasted this part:
And what of the Celts we know – the Irish, Scots and Welsh? Scholars have traditionally placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe, but Oppenheimer’s new data clearly show that the Welsh, Irish and other Atlanticfringe peoples derive from Ice Age refuges in the Basque country and Spain.They came by an Atlantic coastal route many thousands of years ago, though the Celtic languages we know of today were brought in by later migrations, following the same route, during Neolithic times.
If you have reputable and verifiable information that criticizes these books or studies, cite them, but you have no right to erase this information and say that Dr. Brian and his Oxford team are not good enough. I hope that you do not say the same about Oppenheimer. I am sure that people here know him well, but here you have some information, just in case: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/stephen-oppenheimer.html Veritas et Severitas 17:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but do not agree. First you have tried to attack a reputable scientist like Dr. Brian Sykes. Then you mix arguments about language and culture which are not the point here. I do not have to repeat myself. Just add verifiable and reputable comments against those authors and books. I have no problem at all. That is what Wiki is all about in case of controversy. But do not erase key, updated and reputable contributions. I will continue restoring it, of course, not because I am arbitrary, but because it would be highly tendentious trying to hide this information from the article readers. As you will understand this is my last contribution in this discussion page. I think that we have already said it all. Veritas et Severitas 16:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Alun, I do not see such of an interest in you trying to erase other newspaper articles in that very same article. Look well. You have tried to attack Sykes. Read yourself. The point here is the Pre-Anglosaxon section, not other sections related to language and culture. Anyway, let us cool off. I left you a message in your personal page. Veritas et Severitas 17:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Do we really need to list practically every organized religion that exists here ? I find that this along with other elements in this article tend to make the English look like some multi-ethnic, heterogenous population. I am not denying that there are numbers of ethnic English who may be Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, etc., but there numbers are very minimal compared to the majority who are of a Christian denomination (the traditional religion of English culture, particulary protestantism) or who are atheist/agnostic. I mean, you might as well as list aminism, paganism, etc. all here if going by the current list of faiths. I propose changing this section back to including those denominations traditionally associated with the majority of ethnic English people and English culture, not simply the religion of people living in the UK (as is what the current references in the section refer to). Epf 07:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, as agreed, I have bought the book and read it. It is certainly myth shattering and in line with the newspaper articles. The maps and the data in the Scotland paper have been taken from pages 290 and 292 in the book.
The book is full of interesting stuff, I will start just posting some revelant issues:
Page 280.
...the presence of large numbers of Jasmines’s Oceanic clan, says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic see board north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. The number of exact and close matches between the maternal clans of western and northern Iberia and the western half of the Isles is very impressive, much more so than the much poorer matches with continental Europe.
Pages 281-82.
The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or the same time as farming reached the Isles.
The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus………. This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland.
Picts….. They are from the same mixture of Iberian and Euroepean Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles.
Page 283.
Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantic chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea routes of the atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles.
And this is just from the end section of the book, after brief browsing.
As I have been saying much before this book was published, the connections to Iberia are multiple, from the spread of the Paleolithic Populations from Iberia across Western Europe, to more recent migrations to the British Isles. In fact, according to Dr. Sykes, the majority of people in the Isles descend from these later migrants.
By the way, the Author is introduced like this: Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist,... Veritas et Severitas 23:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
So here is again the contribution that we are discussing. I will post it first here before I post it again in the body of the article, waiting for comments:
--- In addition, a research team at Oxford University has found that the majority of Britons are descended from Iberian tribes who began arriving about 6,000/7,000 years ago, making the journey by boat from an area that is located in present-day Northern Spain. The proportion of this population group is 64 per cent in England, 73 in Scottland and 83 per cent in Wales. Previously it was thought that ancient Britons were Celts who came from central Europe, but the genetic connection to populations in Spain provides a scientific basis for this new theory. Even in England, this population of Iberian origins outnumbers Anglo-Saxons by three to one. This study also identifies other areas of origins for the present English population, like areas in present-day Germany or Scandinavia, with part of the population also having their origins in Ancient Rome, The Middle East and North Africa. 1 2. Other population geneticists use the term "Basque" to refer to the population of Iberian origins. 3
Veritas et Severitas 17:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you and Alun about the term Celt. Bryan Sykes explains it. He also explains a lot of other issues. You should read the book. In any case, articles are not supposed to be based on our self-research and conlusions, but on the research and conclusions of authorities in the field. Brian Sykes states many things in the book. It is 306 pages long, where he also deals with the different migration wave theories. In any case I have avoided the term Celt in my contribution now.
I agree with you about Portugal too. In fact, the highest concentration of the Atlantic Modal Haplotype occurs in Portugal. But Sykes mentions Iberia and Spain in his book, not Portugal. Of course Portugal is in Iberia.
In any case Wiki rules are very simple:
We are supposed to add material produced by different authorities, if possible informing about different points of view, if that is the case, not delete different points of view of authorities in the field.
Veritas et Severitas 20:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
great now you can post this book review in all the other british and irish peoples sections. perhaps you could extract some statistical data and facts from the book to give brian sykes words more weight.
Alun, have you really read the book? Sykes explains why he uses the term Celt. You can call him confused, but not me. I am just trascribing statements:
Page: 287.
Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is stubbornly Celtic, if by that we mean descent from people who were here before the romans and who spoke a Celtic language.
But obviusly I do not think that I have to transcribe the entire book. I trust that you can read English well. You continue to cling to the idea that most Britons come from the Mesolithic inhabitans of the Island that arrived there 10.000 years ago (that also originated in Iberia). No, there is a more recent connection to Spain (through the Atlantic Chromosome and other markers) which are not in the rest of Europe in the same way, and not only to the Basque country, very strong also to the rest of western Spain and Portugal, were samples have been taken, far away from the Basque country. But as I said, I think that you can read yourself what I have posted above and the entire book.
So, what is your position now, let me see:
1. Articles are not reliable, we must see the book.
2. Now we see the book but it is not reliable either.
What is reliable for you?
By the way, also transcribing from the back cover of the book:
In a unique first, Bryan Sykes is simultaneoulsy publishing the detailed genetic results that led to his conclusions on the internet at www.bloodoftheisles.net
You know what? this is not new information, but Sykes has written extensively about it in a book. No other contribution has provided more proof than this one in this article. Read the book well, Sykes elaborates well on the ocean going theory, not just by a couple of guys, but for centuries. As you said, Wiki is not the world according to you, me or anyone else. I introduce a theory that is already being known by a lot of people and conclusions drawn by authorities in the field, not by me, you or any user here. The fact that you, me or my brother do not agree with these authorities has not much value here. If you know of other authorities that state that Sykes's research and conclusions on this issue are not good, cite them. You should know better how Wiki works.
Your positions are not acceptable. They go against all Wiki principles. I will post my contribution because it has the same right or even more than all the others. I have already provided more than reasonable and reputable evidence. And do not come again with the Sykes-is-no-good thing, etc. No one can take anyone else seriously anymore down that road. None of us can play the role of the Supreme Censors of the Inquisition Tribunal, deleting and thus hiding points of view of authorities in the field. Veritas et Severitas 18:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
In any case this is my last contribution here and in Wiki. Sorry, but this is not serious enough for me. Goodbye. Veritas et Severitas 21:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Over at Welsh people there's been some dismay expressed on the talk page about the dominance of arguments about what the genetic work actually means. I've been thinking about this a bit and my conclusion is as follows (from talk:Welsh people):
I think this section is impossible to verify to everyones satisfation, so I propose we use an alternative section or sections. I'd suggest we have a section entitled Contributing ethnic groups where we can list the ethnic groups that have contributed to English identity. I think it would be much easier to verify that Anglo-Saxons, Danish-Vikings, Ancient-Britons, Normans etc. all made a contribution to English culture and society, and contributed to the ethnic group we now recognise as English. It could also be argued that more recent groups have also contributed to English identity, for example Pakistani, Indian and West Indian people, but that's another issue.
If we included something like this I think we could also include a section like Derivative ethnic groups, with groups that English people have contributed to, like Australian peple, North American people etc. Just a thought.
Thirdly we could have a set of groups that are associated or similar in some way, call it something like Socially and culturally similar groups, we couls include people like Irish people in this group.
I think that talk of Frisians and Dutch more accurately belong on the Anglo-Saxons page. No one knows the aetiology of the Anglo-Saxons, and any discussion of such belongs on their page, not here. Alun 11:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Look at the article on the Frisian language, and you will see why people here wish to single the Frisians out in this way. English and Frisian are the only two surviving Ingaevonic languages. Here's a perfectly good English sentence: "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Friese." This means the same, and is pronounced the same, in Frisian (in which, however, it is spelt: Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is guod Ingelsk en guod Frysk.).
You keep talking about Germanic Protestantism, but I must inform you that when the Anglo-Saxons came to England they were Pagans - unlike most of the other Germanic tribes who settled in the Roman Empire, who had already been Christianised. This is presumably one of the main reasons why they did not assimilate to the local Roman culture, unlike in the rest of the former empire. Today, England is one of the most secular societies on earth. The distinction between Protestants and Catholics is meaningless in a country where only about 2 percent of the population are practicing Christians. You keep saying things about England that are simply untrue. Have you ever even been here?
By the way, I think Alun's suggestion for the info boxes is a very good one. TharkunColl 08:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I fail to see how any of this is relevant to improving the article. Éponyme, you keep making historical and political allusions, but this article is about ethnicity. One of the reasons for replacing the related ethnic groups section was to dispence with idea of relatedness. You have asked that we provide evidence of the relatedness of Frisian culture to that of English culture, but we don't need to because we are no longer claiming a relatednss. Now we claim that there are similarities between English and Frisian peoples because their languages are similar. We can claim linguistic similarities without claiming relatedness for the people. So Frisians can go in, with a footnote simply stating that Frisian is the continental language that is most similar to English, and for this reason Frisians can be considered ethnically similar. Language is a component of ethnicity, all we are claiming is that some component of Frisian ethnicity (language) is similar to some component of English ethnicity, we are not claiming ethnic relatedness. Alun 10:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
It's presumably a question of time. When did English ethnicity begin? That's a question that's just as impossible to answer as the one you're posing. TharkunColl 11:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's come to some consensus. If English people must stand apart from British people, then I hereby endorse his proposal above. England is usually described of as formed by waves of peoples and being the parent nation of colonial nations or peoples, which is exactly how Alun framed it (pun intended). Personally though, I would tweak the genetic component: ( Romano-British only if including Wales--e.g. England and Wales, because Brittany was founded for a reason,) Anglo-Saxons (includes the Danes), Normans (includes Scandinavians in general), Franks (Angevins). Those latter three are on the Royal Website: Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Angevins. Thereafter, it becomes partisan with Lancastrian/Yorkist/Tudor and future dynasties. I really feel that Angevin is an ethnic component, just as Norman is. After all, England was cut off from France when the Angevins changed their association to be a family business (Plantagenets were a combination of all three heritages, in succession just as English people are today). I would say that the time between Offa and John (30 monarchs) was what defined English people genetically (who among us cannot count non-Norman French {Flemish, Breton, Frankish etc.} ancestors from the Mediaeval period, or a Huguenot ancestor from the Enlightenment period?), the time between Henry III and Elizabeth I (17 monarchs) shaped English people sociopolitically (right, left and centre). Just IMHO. Éponyme 13:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed this part; 'However, the United States may actually have the largest number of English people. In the 1980 census, 50.6 million Americans claimed to have English ancestry.' In England Americans calling themselves English would be thought of as a)laughable, b)offensive, or c)displaced Europeans trying to create themselves an ethnicity. Basically, Americans wouldn't be considered English in England, and as this article is about the people in England their views would override American ones. SynthesiseD 11:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm one of those Americans who filled in "English" under ancestry/ethnicity in the 2000 census. (Actually, I filled in a series of several hyphenated terms, but the Census Bureau only tabulates the first word of the answer, so I was counted as "English".) Putting "English" first in the list was at least slightly arbitrary (since my known ancestors seem to have come from all over northern and western Europe), but my father's line is English, as were a significant fraction of my known ancestors, so I did it -- without wishing to make any attempt whatsoever to claim British citizenship, or an intimate knowledge of English culture. AnonMoos 19:32, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Either "American"/"Canadian" are recognised as valid ethnic groups of their own and that should be especially true in the "American" case, or we are a case of Yugoslavia. Please, why don't everybody sit down and come to consensus?! Either the creoles who founded America as an ethnic mixture of all the UK nations, including the Dutch (New Amsterdam) and Swedish (New Stockholm) colonial additions is a legitimate "peoplehood", or we just inherit our Balkanised heritages and live polyglot all about the States. I want a resolution, because this unclarified matter makes me steamed. Since when in history did ethnicities stop forming?!
On the one hand, I am "denied" ethnic American status by immigrants who come and say they are exactly (or even more) American compared to my Jamestown and Plymouth ancestors, on the other I am denied being considered British by my closest relatives outside the bounds of my country. On the one hand, I don't give a crap what immigrants have to judge about my Founding Father heritage and on the other, I would not want to be associated with the post-Stuart government and social atmosphere of the United Kingdom. I don't give a crap for reciprocation from hostile forces, whom have no interest in my feelings or security. The Anglosphere alliance we keep is a sham if you treat us like this and immigration needs to stop if Americans are not afforded proper respect in their own country. I myself consider the American government to be the right one to succeed the British failure. That is my honest opinion and I don't care if it "offends" your Uber-Protestant establishment!
The reason why we have so many Italians and Germans, is because of the Jacobite successors in Sardinia, Modena, Bavaria and now Liechtenstein. Americans have an unofficial connection to that line. As far as I am concerned, our experience is as a dynastically splintered country. You who love to pride on British contributions to our monstrous success ought to not talk down to us or face more lively Independence Day celebrations. Yeah, we got our Thomas Paine and most of the remaining Founder influence from the UK. That doesn't mean we salute an illegal succession and the tyranny of landlords, who conspired towards the most cruel ends of the general UK population, that either left or were evicted from their lands to make their way here. Screw your Clearances and theft of private property in the name of your self-righteous political cliques, your Parliamentary standard! Screw your arrogance to still talk down to our liberty!
Éponyme 15:56, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Points well taken from each and every one of you, but I digress for the sake of one more argument: Jews and their take on ethnicity. If the Jews can get away with it, why cannot I or you? Their nation refuses to recognise actual borders and all that jazz. They anachronistically adhere to the belief that they are citizens of Judea, even though that state disappeared so long ago. There is also a madman who thinks that the Jutes suffered an ethnic cleansing from the Saxons, while there are equally odd folks who think that Jutes still exist as a viably real group. On the whole, what one is called or how one deems himself can't change who they genetically are.
For myself, the Royal Arms of Canada pretty much sums up my most recent European heritage (the UK arms don't have France). Then again, the American arms evoke an earlier era when the Roman eagle stood for a state that combined lots of peoples I count as ancestral in some distant way or another (why list them all, one by one?). Where does one draw the line? I think that Roman (and the previous Greek) identity is pretty much inclusive ethnically for Whites in general, more representative in a racial sense. Then that means we pretty much all hold to the Greco-Roman experience as a combiner of our heritage and what largely and mostly distinguishes us from other races of the Earth. How would one address their Mediaeval and Classical ancestral heritage, that goes all over the map from dynastic connections? For myself, only the four countries represented in the Canadian arms (England, Scotland, Ireland, France) actually stir up sentiment. The American arms are very broad; Roman eagle (for Whites) and Egyptian pyramid (apparently for the Blacks), making it hard to feel relativistic or regional because of the racial component. Perhaps that is why we made arms, tartans, flags, flowers, etc. for each state.
I consider America to be a splinter country from Britain (and which is why we should associate with Brussells through London), but on a superior level more approximate to European Union status. The 13 original states provided their own quasi-ethnic status. In that case, I would be Virginian. That is how we largely deemed ourselves, before the Civil War and massive immigration to our country. Now, we are no longer "13 ethnicities" (Virginians, New Yorkers, Georgians, Pennamites, Rhode Islanders etc) but "Americans" as opposed to the various immigrants with their own diverse origins. The Founding Fathers had a "Continental" government, which meant we were trying to universalize our status in much the same way the Roman institution did (and still does with the Papacy). Could it be possible to say that Americans are a new race, with thirteen ethnicities? It's all about social structure.
For the record, I did try to get some folks to understand that there is such a thing as an American people (we are creoles) distinct from newcomers who've come here since Independence and distinct from their ancestors' homeland. Since the driving force against me was largely from immigrant/hyphenated American Wikipedians who entered via Ellis Island as opposed to Jamestown or Plymouth, I was beaten down completely. They wanted to say that the Indians were more American, which is insulting to both parties. Indians have their sovereign tribal nations and I have America with the capital that is Washington, D.C. I compared our situation as Americans vis a vis Britons with the Roman offshoot of Greece, but they had no clue as to the idea of it all. They called the Founding Fathers ignorant and hyphenated Americans, which is what has prompted me to join the discussion above. There needs to be a settlement and recognition here.
Most hatred for American culture, from those citizen or resident here, come from immigrants and their descendents. That means we have an indigenous culture, not related to the Indians either. Why some can't fathom this, I attribute to the sad state of our identity politics to Marxists and their war on our educational system.
Éponyme 18:30, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
"A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal." - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Epf 05:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen expressed here on Wikipedia. How old are you? My family has been in America since the 1600s and fought in every U.S. war since the Revolutionary War. To say "there is no unified American ethnic group" is beyond comprehension to me. We understand that 4 centuries ago, our ancestors came here from Scotland, England, Ireland, France, etc. but we no more consider ourselves to be "ethnically" Scottish or English than Bantu or Chinese. We don't go around sporting kilts, tossing cabers, drinking wiskey, eating haggis or yearning to frollick in the heather by the loch. We eat hot dogs, watch football (that's the NFL, not soccer), play baseball, fly the stars and stripes, spell "labor" without a "u", wear jeans, chew Skoal, listen to Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen, drive big (American) cars, shun public transportation, embrace capitalism, defeat communism and socialism, cherish our 2nd ammendment right to bear firearms, raise our children to work hard, celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree and Santa Claus, celebrate Easter in church and with the Easter Bunny at home, and watch NASCAR after church on Sundays. We are Americans. You're right, "much of who we are is about where we come from" and I come from Stockton, California, USA; my father came from Stockton, California, USA; my grandfather came from Broken Bow, Oklahoma, USA; my great grandfather came from Cove, Arkansas, USA; my great-great grandfather came from Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. That is who I am. I am an American, ethnically and nationality. I suggest that, before you make comments like that, you grow up a little, turn off your TV and get outside of the insulated big-city and see the "real" America.-- User:WilliamThweatt 03:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Americans have diverse origins like every other people in the world, but modern Americans and Canadians share a de facto ethnicity and cultural identity which every foreigner to that country recognizes. North Americans are far more distinct as an ethnic group than Austrians, who are no more a distinct sub-group of Germans than Bavarians or Saxons. Americans are certainly not English though. Yes, this is not the 19th century. The USA has been an independent state since the 18th century. Ethnicities don't come from the tower of babble, they are produced by political, social and other circumstances over time. And yes I have lived in the USA; I went to college there. User:Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 02:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Cheers, Alun 10:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
One more point, the infobox refers to Contributions from and Contributions to. The wording deliberately ommited mention of the term ethnic group. The reason for this is that the Romano-Britons/ Ancient Britons are not universally regarded as a single ethnic group. The same applies to Anglo-Saxons. These are often regarded as collective terms refering to several ethnic groups that have some similarities. The same applies to the Contributions to section, some people clearly see Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders etc. as ethnic entities, granted their ethnicity has a cultural and social foundation, but this is not unique or even new. Other people do not recognise these groups as ethnic groups. So it seems reasonable not to refer to them as such. But I do think that it is clear that these entities represent populations that are greater than the sum of their parts, they are not just a group of unrelated ethnic groups that happen to occupy the same geographical area, this is a gross misrepresentation and seems to be Epf's default position. There is an Australian identity and an American identity, and this is clearly not an artificial construct, or at least no more artificial than any other ethnic identity. Alun 05:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Alun, I think it is a strange case. Why should ex-British polities recognise their parent entity, but have no reciprocal affection? As you well know, international policies are aimed at our Anglosphere's survival. I would say that we tend to stand together, regardless of the divisions which have accumulated over time. It is obviously not the same as having Imperial Troops quartered in every outpost, or colonial viceroys born in London. That was the old way. The British don't want to be seen as the figurehead of any colony that refuses to let them have actual power. The British therefore, are bitter at the thought of colonists nuzzling up to them. They feel insulted to have been attacked for constitutional issues of independence, only to have the colonists try and warm back up with the home country.
Epf, you must know that Americans have been sovereign for all intents and purposes. Canada is a "half-ass" version of America. We Americans have held colonies of our own, so it makes no precise sense to say that we are merely English. In fact, the White and Black races each have pre-eminence in America. Our apartheid system was not so much about denying Blacks a place here, but maintaining separate identities within our inclusive nation. There are two parent nations for this country; UK and Liberia (an anachronistic, but well intentioned point). Liberia is an approximation for all the Africans that arrived here in the Triangular Trade. America is an imperial outfit of its own, the original 13 states having held their own colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains but east of the Mississippi River. America's federal government also held imperial jurisdiction over the Philippines (even a Governor-General) and Cuba, whilst we inherit the former countries of Texas and Hawaii. There is nothing comparable in Canada's case, or indeed for any other former UK offspring.
Éponyme 11:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
These governments obviously assert that there are ethnicities accompanying their countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Canadianethnicities2.png
Éponyme 11:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This web page shows the original seal of the United States, which included symbols for Holland and Germany, in addition to those symbols used presently in Canada's royal arms. Éponyme 14:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah man, but one can be "American" and also something else, you forget that the people in these stats could answer more than once. Most of those who said American or Canadian also said something else. WTF does it matter tho, I mean none of these sources exactly spell out what the heck a "Canadian" or "American" is or if an ethnic group like that even exists. Later, 69.157.105.101 06:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you feel this way. Éponyme 07:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I've corrected the figure of c.60% for the more accurate of c.70% for R1b haplogroup (Paleolithic substrate). 60% is true only in the more "Nordicied" areas of Eastern England. (Source: [33]). -- Sugaar 15:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Please cite that claim! Is it related to the East India Company?
You know, we often focus too much on the Old World people in the Old World and the New World. It would be interesting if somebody included Pocahontas as a New World visitor to the Old World, just for trivia's sake. After all, I don't want to have a blind eye to such things. I don't know what article that would belong to, apart from her and John Rolfe's biographies. Éponyme 18:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What Chinamen are you referring to? Éponyme 19:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
According to its own article, the British East India Company was founded on December 31, 1600 - which is, of course, the 16th century (the very last day of it). This company must have employed Indians in some capacity, even at its London HQ. Therefore, there were Asians in England in the 16th century. TharkunColl 23:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the fault might be with me. This is actually cited, so it seems odd to request a cite. The article cited is Asian and Black History in Britain 1500-1850, which is a UK government site. The article states There were many Asian and Black people living in Britain throughout the period covered by this exhibition (1500-1850). Looking at the article in a bit mare detail it states It seems that between 1500 and 1850 there were not as many people of Indian as of African descent in Britain. So I'll change it to read There has also been a very small Black presence in England since at least the 16th century and an Indian presence since the mid nineteenth.. Is this better? Alun 05:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
This might help!
About 34,000 people in Cornwall and 3,500 people in the rest of the UK wrote on their census forms in 2001 that they considered their ethnic group to be Cornish. This represented nearly 7% of the population of Cornwall and is therefore a significant phenomenon.
The source is from Cornish ethnicity data from the 2001 Census Malcolm Brown Cornwall County: [ [34]]
Bretagne 44 17:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
What is 7% of Cornwall compared to the UK, or England itself? Éponyme 02:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The current citation for Cornish people is pathetic, it has no authority whatsoever. This does not constitute a
reliable source, it appears to be a blog set up by an annonymous person. Didn't we used to have an interview with a proper historian here somewhere? It's good to finally get a published source for the data regarding Cornish response for the 2001 census. The Office for National Statistics did a pathetic job with regard to ethnicity in the last census. Let's hope they allow a tick box for everyone next time. As for considering one's ethnic group to be Cornish, this does not preculde them from also being English. Ethnic identity, especially in Great Britain is rarely exclusive, many people who think of themselves as ethnically Cornish may also think of themselves as ethnically English. One can have a multiplicity of ethnicities, and we all have many identities that we carry arround with us. I'm Welsh and I'm Brtish and I'm European. I think we need to mention this in the Unifying into a people section, here we can note Cornwall's different status, especially that the Cornish language continued to be used long after political and ethnic unification of the rest of England, and that a growing minority of people in Cornwall primarily identify as Cornish and not English. I think we need to be ballanced, we should make it clear that the vast majority of people in Cornwall see themselves as English.
Alun 05:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If anybody knows why Claret is also called Bordeaux and is so popular in England, then perhaps we should include Basques (e.g. Piers Gaveston). Basques entered English society at the same historic time as the Irish. I also find it odd that Normans should get monolithic mention, without Brittany. The Duchy of Brittany was a feudal subdomain of English Kings from the Norman Conquest until the 16th Century, in one capacity or another. Aside from that, we all know the British (Welsh) connection that practically makes them who they are by definition. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon has a flag and coat of arms which match English ethnic cousins on the Continent, because virtually all of New France was founded by those "Frenchmen" once under English yoke (north and west coasts of "France"). England's arms supposedly include Aquitaine and Gascony as well as the well-known Normandy, but omit Brittany just as Ireland was ommitted (Wales still is, of course). Shouldn't these ancient seals of the state have more relevance than the new fusion with the Scots, because the Normans succeeded to an Anglo-Saxon (Mercia-Wessex, in Winchester) state after all and that was it?
IMHO:
All of these domains were of great post-Conquest importance, with added Scotland under Stuarts. The union of the crowns under James (after the Tudor-Habsburg struggle) marked the divergence of a merely English people and it is from there, that a new British people was formed with participation in the Dutch and German dominions. As far as I know and now think, the new "British people" is mostly a network of upper class/parliamentary aristocrats and their personal heritage.
I am proud to sport a 1/8th Aquitainian (although Huguenot) ancestor (one great grandparent, the other "French" one is Norman and Catholic). I don't know further genealogy to find a recent Parisian (non-London) French (what is called France, but has English character) ancestor. You know what side this ancestor would have fought on if Buckingham's war with France got serious. This opens up a window to the past glories of the Angevin Empire for me because although I sport a Scottish colonial American wife, my own specific heritage does not leave the bounds of the three leopards of the Plantagenet dominions.
What some people should look at, is the French Wars of Religion maps. Huguenots are numerous in Aquitaine/Gascony and Toulouse, both former Angevin areas. One wonders if this Protestantism is an Albigensian Crusade relic, an Arian Visigothic vs Catholic Frankish relic or both combined with a culture of English resistance to the Capetians in the Hundred Years' War.
Also, if mentioning the Danes we shouldn't neglect the Norwegians (Manx people). I think the Royal Website summarizes our English ethnic roots by explaining them dynastically and the personal unions that encouraged a compatible mix of people. That is why I believe the "French people" are reasonably well related; to nitpick or split hairs on it is just ridiculous.
One wonders if we should not include these people as the related ethnic group called French, or should not include them as part of the constituent English people themselves.
Éponyme 09:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
stop being so rude please, nobody will take your opinions seriouslt if you abuse users like that.
-- Globe01 12:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok ive noticed someone has added a related ethnic groups page to the english but what is the point in having these related ethnic groups.
The most genetically similar set of peoples to the english are the belgians as it happens, yet they are not mentioned in related ethnic groups.
Cultrally speaking, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Northern Irish could all be considered candidates in terms of cultural similarities to the english.
linguistically, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, People from many of the Carribean Islands all speak very similar to english english as their first language. Dutch is also considered to be very similar to the english language.
As you can see we have a problem.
Ethnicity has many different meanings, involving genetics, culture and self identity and language.
The problem is that some groups of peoples share one type of ethnic link to the english but do not have other type of ethnic links to the english.
Therefore a related ethnic groups sections is pointless
Instead it would be much more appropriate to include:
A related linguistic groups secion
A related cultural groups sections
And if it is really felt essential by others, a related genetic groups section. -- Globe01 15:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
==
No the belgians and the dutch are genetically very similar to the english, I cannot find the url with the evidence now but if i find it at some time i will post it. Dutch is also more similar to english than german and dutch is probably the third most similar language to english so dutch should be included in some kind of related ethnic or linguistic groups section.
-- Globe01 15:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If you can find evidence that an American ethnic group doesn't exist, then this can be included also.
-If you can find one that really says a "Canadian" or American" one does exists, I'd give you money guy. I aint sayin they is a group that sees themseveles as this and are of a certain background, but there is no canadian or american group in those words. How can one person consider himself an ethnic "American", but one person who is a native american (example, a Sioux) and has a culture and background they can follow here for many centuries still make the distinction between them and other Americans ? This is my damn point, like its fuckin ignorant for someone to say they are just "American" or "Canadian" and ignoring the hundreds of diffrent backgroudns and cultures of everyone here who can also be canadians and americans. Only New World countries can call themselves to be actual countries of immigrants and our own (dumbass) President just said wes a "nation of immigrants." [37] I am 1/4 Sioux and I fuckin hate how our land became this with native peoples getting the shaft, but what are ya gonna do.
There is for sure the biology and upbringing one's parents give, but it would be incorrect to assume that the way your parents bring you up is the same way that they were bought up
-it would be incorrect to also say that there aint alot of similarities in the way they is brought up and the way your were brought up. Some peeps pass down more of their aspects of their proud culture and ethnicity to the next generation (eg. native Irish, Greeks, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Asians), some less so (eg. people from the UK in North America) but the core things like behaviour and the biological parts remain. Even for whats learned, alot of what we are is from the childhood upbringing (especially very early childhood).
But Epf has also used descent to mean the common origins of a whole population, these are clearly disstinct deffinitions of descent
-maybe, but when Epf, you or anyone is speakin on these common backgrounds, you are speakin of the common descent part of ethnicity and when a people has this, it includes the different types of thigns that come with it (like behavoiur, like physical appearance and like your "blood"/genetics). Most people know its not just about knowing the descent in ethnicity, its also the things that come with it. This is from William Z. Ripley, even thoug hes talkin on race:
"Race, properly speaking, is reponsible only for those peculiarities, mental or bodily, which are transmitted with constancy along the lines of direct physical descent from father to son. Many mental traits, aptitudes, or proclivities, on the other hand, which reappear persistently in successive populations may be derived from an entirely different source. They may have descented collaterally, along the lines of purly mental suggestion by virture of mere social contact with preceding generations."
As for the source from the List of Canadians by ethnicity site, it says "canadian" was only first asked in 2001 and anyways, only 6,748,135 answered "canadian" as a single answer, IF they understood the question right (I still think these people would make other distinctions, especially if they are native). I think Canada has a population of like 32 million, so this means most of them (26 million) would still identify with their ancestry outside of canada. This is the same in my country (only 20 million answered "American" as a single answer out of like 285 million people). Those who are native peoples of the americas, we are the real deal, we are the real "Americans and "Canadians".
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Hello, perhaps the religion section of this article could be touched up a bit. For example, Jewish English people are given quite a mention but not Hindu or Moslem. According to the demographics of England article..?
I have nothing against Jewish people, but why are they singled out above the other religions..? User:Dan Carkner 04:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, it's all kind of a fuzzy area. But you don't want to just say that all English are Christians and Atheists-- in the end it depends on how you define English. Dan Carkner 22:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a religious section and a need for a religious section? Surely the figures only reflect the people living in Rngland, not the English people? Secondly, I don't see how it's so relevant that it needs to be but in the fact box? ( Stpaul 08:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC))
Don't historically Calvinist peoples (Huguenots and Presbyterians) have a greater ethnocultural relationship with the English (Puritans) than others? This would mean the areas which have had significant Calvinist movements: France, Scotland, Ireland and the Holy Roman Rhineland (Palatines). Incidentally, these very places were on the royal coat of arms as displayed by King William III of England. While most people see Orangist activities and politics to be controversial, they would not deny the basically close cultural relationships in the Calvinist web. This is not so for the Lutheran issue (am I right?) that developed as a result of the 1701 Act of Settlement, which alienated the common man in those times by introducing truer foreigners than William actually was. William's Orange-Nassau territories straddled the old Duchy of Burgundy; the English and Burgundians were allies and trading partners for a reasonably long time. Lord Loxley 20:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The assumption that some people self-identify as English is questionable at best. The article on Scottish people does not make a similar distinction, and I think we should use that article as a template. Homagetocatalonia 12:32, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not a member here, so wouldn't want to edit anything, but was slightly surprised by some of the comments above. This page is supposed to be about the ethnic group known as the English. It clearly has at the top a link to the demographics of England as a nation, but this article is not about England as a nation. Therefore in the religion section on the template it should not include Muslim, Sikh, Hindu etc, because these are not religions in which you will find significant numbers of ethnic English people. Yes those religions exist in England, but that is a seperate matter that has no sway over ethnicity. It would be rather odd to a person of English ancestry living outside of England to be informed that their ethnicity ranks Islam as a religion that apparently occurs amongst their kin. Please could this be edited by someone who has the power and authority to do so, for the sake of accuracy. 18:08, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't know aboot the numbers myself, but I have many friends who are English of Chinese descent. Should a mention be made towards their religion? I also think the Jedi thing should be mentioned since more than 250,000 ppl stated it as their official religion. Halbared 14:12, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone has changed indigenous to pre-Roman on the history page. I have reverted this but feel then that this should be discussed. The British people, including the English, as detailed in this article, are the indigenous people of Britain. We are so because we are the direct descendants of the first people to live in Britain. There has been cultural shift but not genetic/blood shift from our aboriginal ancestors. The term indigenous has been applied here to differentiate between the various groups of peoples that have contributed to the English people in genetic and cultural terms. The use of indigenous Brythonic people is used to show that before the Roman occupation, the culture of our ancestors (in what is now England) was Brythonic. I believe that indigenous is the correct word to use here; others might have a differing opinion. Enzedbrit 21:14, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
How quaint; TharkunColl only believes that prehistorical issues are relevant to modern ethnic character when it suits him and you, Enzedbrit. We can go over the suppressed Celtic languages and culture in talks of the English, but nobody dare mention Anglo-French relations on pain of ostracism and accusations of trolling or vandalism. English and French languages have things in common. Answer for your political POV! Lord Loxley 15:05, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Come on TharkunColl; which happens to encapsulate English ethnic identity more? Would German culture be something English are, while English culture is something English are not? Keep thinking ill of the Norman Conquest. Defame Emma of Normandy for all you really care. I have placed this here, because you wanted to have the last word on my (and our) talk pages. For those unaware of the dispute, his desertion of the argument is here: User_talk:Lord_Loxley#Third_.28and_final.29_reply_to_User:Lord_Loxley. Lord Loxley 15:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
"in York and Norfolk, here the Germanic male sex chromosome occurs in about 60% of men, with indigenous Y chromosomes comprising about 40%"
By "indegenous," does this mean Celtic, the indegenous race/people of Britain? -- Rainsey 00:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
This is first time I have used wikipedia and find it a fascinating place. However I doubt whether this subject can ever be brought to a conculsion given the apparently vast amount of published works that in their turn give some form of creedance to any POV.
"So the simple answer to your question is that indigenous means the very earliest human inhabitants to occupy Europe after the end of the last major glaciation" -- I thought the "indigenous" peoples referred to in the study were Celtic peoples... Unless you're assuming the Britons are a descendant of those migrators to Europe.- Rainsey 21:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I have removed it because:
1) There's a Cornish people page were all this has been thrashed out.
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
2) 37,000 people claimed to be Cornish on in the last UK census.
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
3) The citation was probably put there by an English nationalist in the first place. Bretagne 44 15:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Bretagne 44 15:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I think there's an issue among all this that is too easily forgotten. Englishness, Northumbrian-ness and Cornishness are not tangible, provable concepts and in fact aren't a lot more than a personal preference. None of them can be proven, if we accept that birthplace does not denote "nationality". Cornwall is rammed with people born in England with no Cornish blood, who "feel they are Cornish" or are "spiritually Cornish". You can't prove it, or prove otherwise. That's why the arguments about this sort of thing are just so much hot air. I can declare that I'm Scottish (I've only been there once) and no-one can prove otherwise. Britishness is the only thing that can be proven, with a passport or suchlike. Personally I consider myself Cornish and British, and that England is not a proper country - that's my point of view. Points of view are everywhere and almost infinite, so do they all need to be proven and documented? Isn't there a certain amount of futility that comes with this kind of territory? Or are we only documenting points of view held by a certain number of people? Where does that begin and end?
That's the legacy of the Union between the various regions that make up the UK. Everyone wants it all ways, so they can be British and Scottish, British and English, British and Northumbrian etc. Officially, and in terms of what's verifiable, we're all just British and anything else is in our heads. Bretonbanquet 19:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
You are quite right, which is why ethnicity is about the group one identifies with. All indiginous British people are descended from the very first inhabitants of the island, but we don't identify socially or culturally as paleolithic people (when was the last time we did a bit of hunter gathering?). Ethnicity isn't just about blood, or more accurately descent, it's as much to do with language/culture/society and even politics, so it's about identity. Many people in the UK have multiple identities, English and Scottish or Welsh and British, there are no hard and fast rules, it's not citizenship and it's not birth, no one has any right to dictate to anyone else what group to identify with. There is a name for people who try impose their discredited ideas of ethnic identity or ethnic purity on other people, they are called racists. Please note I am agreeing with you here.
We don't need proof, this is an encyclopedia, we require verifiability, if we can show that some people identify (or in your parlance, personally prefer to be identified as) as being Cornish not English using a reliable source then it can go in the article. We are interested in what people believe (as long as we can verify it), not in some concept of provable truth. Remember verifiability not truth. Alun 05:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know of any Wiki project designed to address this kind of thing? Bretonbanquet 17:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a report of what sounds like an interesting paper concering Anglo-Saxon immigration and the genetic composition of the modern English population at [5]. Perhaps somebody could have a look at the paper itself, since media reports of this type of study are not always reliable. Rhion 06:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I had a look at the abstract fot this paper and it's a bit sensationalist and doesn't seem to really provide evidence, It's based on a computer model of what ifs, so all it's really saying is if there was a small Anglo-Saxon population, it could have become biologically dominant if our computer model is accurate. [8] For one thing it is assuming that there is a 50-100% Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome occurence in England, there are two problems with this proposition, firstly they cannot differentiate between Anglo-Saxon and Danish-Viking Y chromosomes, so is it Anglo-Saxon or Viking Y chromosomes they are measuring? The second is that the 50-100% only seems to apply to York and Norfolk, and not to other areas of England. Journalists get this sort of thing wrong all the time and a proper reading of the original paper is required for a definitive cite, journalists are not interested in being neutral or properly verifying their articles, they are only interested in a good story and I have seen several examples of journalists overstating or even deliberately distorting scientific results in order to get good copy. I should be able to get hold of a copy of the paper from work when I go back on Monday, we have access to most molecular biology journals online there. Alun 12:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I am going to just comment on this: "a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language."
If this "Doctor" confuses language and genetics he is not even worth the efforf of reading him.
As I believe it can be useful for the discussion, I am offering a link to this paper by Capelli et al. on British Y-chromosome distribution and to my own clinal reconstronstruction of their results on a map (for easier visualization). (Legend: blue: over 50% Nordic, red: c. 100% Atlantic, the rest gradation in 10 percentual point stripes). Only York and Norwich are clearly more Danish-Saxon than Atlantic. The rest of England is mixed with rather higer "native" presence (on average, England seems 2:1 more Atlantic than Danish-Saxon).
I must say that some of that Danish-Saxon component may have come in prehistory (Maglemosian culture, Megalithic currents), not all is necessarily historical Anglo-Saxon or Viking input.
Also Denmark (and genetically akin Nord-German areas) is not so alien to the Atlantic genotype (c. 50% R1b, simmilar to that of England or France, clearly larger than Germany or Scandinavia proper) and that may cause some confussion.
Hope this is of help. -- Sugaar 11:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
"Some people concentrated in several English counties, generally further from the south and west, notably the Cornish and the Cumbriaans claim to have a noticeably stronger connection, culturally, linguistically and politically, to the ancient Britons; As a result of this some historians claim that Cornish people can be considered distinct form English people.[18]"
I have trouble parsing this sentence. Maybe "notably the Cornish and the Cumbriaans" should be in parentheses. Also, forget the semicolon and start a new sentence.
Sorry if I'm violating convention in any way with this comment, as I'm new here. -- BLHersey 02:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Why exactly is the neutrality of the article disputed? That tag seems to have been there since June, but I cannot find the problem on the talkpage and there doesn't seem to be any active discussion over the article's neutrality at the moment. Does anyone mind if I remove the tag? -- Rudjek 20:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I correct you. There is and has been evidence presented by other editors on WIkipedia. There is no definitive proof yet whether there was such a thing as Anglo-Saxon mass migration to the British Isles..however there is indeed some evidence for the theory. Also the ENglish culture was founded by tribes (or members of tribes) from the continent and so the Frisians, Danes, Germans...etc..are a related people to the English through cultural bonds if nothing else. Just because you do not like the idea that the English are a Germanic (or related to a Germanic) culture does not mean that the evidence that they are indeed a Germanic culture, is false. Sigurd Dragon Slayer
I have included only UK and Irish peoples as ethnically related. My reasoning is thus:
Please provide evidence against such great amounts of English identity and culture from being traced back to the Anglo-Saxons and Danish-Vikings. I am not arguing that modern English culture is more similar to continental groups that to Welsh or Scots culture, but I am saying that there is still many shared elements in common which is worth mentioning. IT should be noted there is a great deal which the Welsh or (especially) Scots don't share with English culture. You need to show how English people wouldn't identify having an shared ethnic elements with Frisians, Danes , etc. The English have alot in common with their insular neighbours, but they also share a great deal with certain continental groups. 69.157.126.241 21:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
English (people) share current similarities in culture, language, history and genealogy with other Germanic-speaking and continental groups
"A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal." - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. 69.157.126.241 23:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
slight majority claiming their "nationality exclusively" and "their nationality first and then British".
I have been keeping an eye on this article for a couple of months. As it is obvious that the conflict is not going to go away, I have taken the liberty to place this request for comments. The origin of the dispute is about whether Bretons, Danes, Dutch and Frisians should be added to the list of related people to the English. E Asterion u talking to me? 20:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Statements by editors previously involved in dispute
- I am under the impression that one of the main policies of wikipedia is the verifiability policy. It has long been a problem with related ethnic groups that they are difficult to verify (at least online). I cannot even find any reference to a definition of related ethnic groups with a google search. I would like to see this section removed from the info box completely as I'm not convinced of it's merits. Be that as it may the definitions of what constitute ethnic groups have varied from the purely racial (only descent counts) to the purely linguistic (English people are ethnically German because they speak a Germanic language), neither of which are particularly accurate or reflect the realities of the situation. There has been a fair amount of nationalistic posturing, with English and non-English nationalists stating that there are greater differences between English people and Welsh, Scots and Irish peoples than really exist. These are largely based on events that may or may not have occured well over a thousand years ago and tend to ignore the more recent history of the various constituent parts of the UK. If there is to be a related ethnic groups section then I think it should reflect the realities of the present, which is that the peoples of Great Britain have a shared culture that goes back centuries that they just don't share with any peoples of continental Europe. If we are to include Danes, Frisians and Bretons, then we should also include French and Germans, in fact we should probably just include all Europeans and have done with it. Ultimately we are related to all these groups, it's the degree of relatedness that is disputed. I simply think that in that case we should include only the very closest of related groups, and that would be the other peoples of the islands of the archipelago. I am aware that we should not accept concepts such as common knowledge. Given that these are all unverified anyway (and I have placed unverified tags in the references section in the past but they have been removed at some point, I stopped editing this article for a while) and seem to be unverifiable I think it would be best just to remove them all and let people draw their own conclusions. Alun 21:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Comments
- Wobble, you make some valid points in this paragraph that I agree with, but also you make alot of unfounded claims. Ethnicity itself is a touchy subject and its definition includes various elements. It does primarily consist of shared/common ancestry ( kinship and descent) as well as cultural, behavioural, religious, familial, linguistic, phenotypic/genotypic traits which may or may not result of such descent. We are debating whether certain ethnic groups should be included under this subject based on their level of similarity or relation to English people. This is obviously a highly subjective subject area, even if relying solely on shared genealogy/kinship and descent. There is no need to argue for the inclusion of the other Insular peoples, but if they should be included, then why not other groups who are closely related to the English (even if not considered by some as being as similar). The French should not be included since they have only had limited influence on the English language with little similarity in terms of culture. The French have practically no significant relation with modern English in terms of shared ancestry (that is what can be traced in historical records). Some argue against this by citing the invasion and influence of the Normans. This however is flawed by the fact that 1) the Normans settled in very small numbers and were easily absorbed into the English population 2) the Normans themselves were primarily Norse or of Scandinavian descent 3) their culture was a hybrid of northern French and Scandinavian elements 4) their langauge was a Norse-influenced Oil language different from standard Parisian French 5) other than the language, what lasting influences and impacts on English culture they did have were not uniquely "French" and were common of most continental Kingdoms and nations of the Middle Ages. As for the Germans, it is questionable whether they should be included since they do not share a great deal with the English other than limited linguistic and cultural similarities as well as possible shared ancestry with especially northern Germans. Getting to the matter at hand: whether the Frisians, Bretons, Dutch and Danes should be included under "related ethnic groups". The Frisians should obviously be included if any such subject is to be in this article. They may not share as much in common with the English as the other Insular peoples but they do share a great deal in common in terms of 1) language: English and Frisian are the only members of the Anglo-Frisian branch of West Germanic languages and are closer to each other than any other langauges 2) shared ancestry: the Anglo-Saxon based surnames still form the majority of English surnames and most English can trace varying degrees of descent to the Anglo-Saxons. Even going by the one or two inconclusive y-chrom. analyses of some British populations ( "A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles" (pdf) Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration), there is clearly a significant "Germanic" line of y-chrom. descent in such studies in the sample populations in England, especially in the east of the country. The "Germanic" samples taken to compare were from Friesland, Schleswig-Holstein and southern Denmark. The Anglo-Saxons who migrated to England included Frisians and the peoples were very closely related speaking the same language ( Anglo-Frisian) and inhabiting the same geographic region (the German Bight) 3) Culture: the national identity and creation of England as a Kingdom traces back to Anglo-Saxon England as well as the origins of disinctively "English" culture and language. Although evolving over time and receiving other influences (Scandinavian, Norman, etc.) they persist to the modern day. Many of these cultural traits are shared with other Germanic based cultures and peoples, including the Frisians. The Danes should be included mainly because of their shared history with the English, influences on English culture and language (especially Northern English dialects) as well as their significant shared ancestry with the English (due to Danish Viking settlment), especially those from northern and eastern England. As for the Dutch, they do not have any more reason to be included than the Germans would (being speakers of a Germanic-language and possible shared ancestry), while the Bretons would only be able to make a case based on shared ancestry (like the English, also descending from Brythons) and arguably shared history during the reign of the Angevin Kings of England (see history of Brittany). I am not arguing really for their inclusion anyway as much as I am for Frisians and Danes and I strongly believe these two peoples should be included if you are going to maintain keeping the related ethnic groups section. 69.157.126.241 22:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC) 22:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- This type of argument, i.e. one that provokes a large amount of strong personal feeling and can subsequently develop into a heated row, is often blighted by a poor definition of the topic in hand. "Related ethnic groups" is such a horribly vague term that differences of opinion are practically guaranteed. All ethnic groups are related to the English, some more closely than others. Where is the line drawn? 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 10,000 years ago? What is guaranteed to prolong the argument is that very little of what some people are saying is verifiable to the satisfaction of Wikipedia. Arguing whether the English are more closely related to Frisians or to the Welsh is ultimately futile when nothing can realistically be proven either way. I have had many run-ins with people who like to remove all mention of Britain from articles and replace it with England, either believing that they are one and the same thing, or that anything with a vague connection to England is English and not British. The point is not that they are wrong, but they cannot prove they are right. Englishness, like Welshness, Scottishness and Cornishness, is not a provable concept but an attitude with which people identify, often for reasons other than descent, place of birth etc. Likewise, one's opinion of the relative closeness of other ethnic groups to the English depends on personal experience and POV, in the absence of clear facts. So, without the prospect of any verifiability for any measure of relativity between the English and any other ethnic group, the whole question of "related ethnic groups" should be abandoned. The alternative is an infinite extension of this current dispute. Bretonbanquet 23:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is all very much a matter of degree. Of course, the English are more closely related to Europeans than they are to others. But if this info box actually has any use at all (which I doubt), then it has to reflect what the people themselves think about their kinship. The truth is that the English feel almost infinitely more akin to the Scots, Irish, and Welsh than they do to any Continentals - and this fact still remains true even if the feeling is not reciprocated. TharkunColl 23:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Here I must agree. This is, I believe, another firm argument in removing the section which is 'related ethnic groups'. To be honest, I had never known that there was so much argument amongt British peoples to be so detached from each other until I got involved in this forum and others like it. I, for one, am purely British first and foremost. It's my island, and although I'm happy to relate to regions within it, the island's identity has existed for so long, not the modern countries that have divided it. Enzedbrit 11:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think if you're going to call something related then you should either cite your sources, or define your criteria for a relationship. Of course you can't really do the latter without violating WP:OR - something I think one or more contributor has been doing in arguing for the inclusion of these groups. I am in agreement with those who say that virtually every group is related and this is all a matter of degree. I personally don't find the related groups infobox information useful at all. Perhaps it should be in the See also section where the nature of the ethnic relationship can be elaborated - possibly in a timeline or sprinkled throughout the article or something instead. TharkunColl makes the point that the related groups should be what the English people think - ie, which ethnic groups do the English think they are related to? This would be a fine approach, if there was a reliable reference. Otherwise, without a source which says which ethnic groups the English ethnic group are related to, I agree they should all be removed from the infobox. I think everyone involved in this discussion has said as much. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Someone could argue that places like Goole, Crowle or if you want to push it Epworth and the Isle of Axholme do have some relation with the Dutch, but I really doubt local people really think this way anymore. Regards, E Asterion u talking to me? 23:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think we should have the section. I think it the related groups box, we should have those that share similar cultural traits on the continent such as the Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes...etc...As I think histroy is an important part of current culture an dlike it or not they have a shared history with us. Their days of the week are another case in hand, all derive from the same Goddesses that were shared with all the other Germanic Pagan peoples and in this sense I mean the early English. They also are related by language. The Frisian language is the closest language to English, unless you count Scots as a language rather than a branch of English, either way the language is very close. Our Yule celebrations (as well as the word Yule > Jul) are also very similar to the Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples. Our folklore again is similar and derives from the same source, a lot of the time. In areas such as Northumbria the folkloric creatures still in many cases retain their old Germanic names (such as Dvargar for Dwarves or Dwarfs). And can anyone here say that folklore and folk customs are not important to a nations cultural identity and self view? Like it or not we are related to the continental nations and the Northern European ones even more so. The same goes for the other inhabitants of the British Isles, they share customs, language and traditions and also share a country (United Kingdom) so they are related. I don't see the problem with any of these groups being added. Not that it matters, I doubt this would change anyones minds. I just feel if this section is not re-added Wikipedia would lose another once of integrity. I'll speak more on each of these points later, when I am less busy! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
some responses to above comments:
This is all very much a matter of degree. Of course, the English are more closely related to Europeans than they are to others. But if this info box actually has any use at all (which I doubt), then it has to reflect what the people themselves think about their kinship. The truth is that the English feel almost infinitely more akin to the Scots, Irish, and Welsh than they do to any Continentals - and this fact still remains true even if the feeling is not reciprocated. TharkunColl 23:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- Well, I do not doubt they would feel more closely related to other Insular groups, but I also believe, from my experience with people who are English, that they obviously feel more related to especially Danes and Frisians but also Dutch (especially if from the east of England) then to say French or Italians. [[User:|User:]] 23:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
- You obviously have a very limited experience of English people. Have you actually ever been to any of these places you claim to know so much about? Alun 05:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Does that really matter ? Does one have to visit a certain place to know about English people ? English peopl and culture are spread around the globe and I have read much into this subject area. Do you in turn have expertise in this field of study ? Exactly. 69.157.126.241 21:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- You claimed to have personal experience of people specifically from the east of England. Now it seems that you have never been to England at all and have learnt all you know about the English from books. TharkunColl 22:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, I've had personal exprience with English people from all over England, but not in the UK itself. I myself am of mainly German and Flemish descent, but I know many English people from the UK as well as those of English descent who live here in the USA. I've also learnt much from books and other media. Whats your point here "TharkunColl" ? 69.157.126.241 22:23, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
- Someone could argue that places like Goole, Crowle or if you want to push it Epworth and the Isle of Axholme do have some relation with the Dutch, but I really doubt local people really think this way anymore. Regards, E Asterion u talking to me? 23:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I think we should have the section. I think it the related groups box, we should have those that share similar cultural traits on the continent such as the Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes...etc...As I think histroy is an important part of current culture and like it or not they have a shared history with us. Their days of the week are another case in hand, all derive from the same Goddesses that were shared with all the other Germanic Pagan peoples and in this sense I mean the early English. They also are related by language. The Frisian language is the closest language to English, unless you count Scots as a language rather than a branch of English, either way the language is very close. Our Yule celebrations (as well as the word Yule > Jul) are also very similar to the Scandinavian and other Germanic peoples. Our folklore again is similar and derives from the same source, a lot of the time. In areas such as Northumbria the folkloric creatures still in many cases retain their old Germanic names (such as Dvargar for Dwarves or Dwarfs). And can anyone here say that folklore and folk customs are not important to a nations cultural identity and self view? Like it or not we are related to the continental nations and the Northern European ones even more so.The same goes for the other inhabitants of the British Isles, they share customs, language and traditions and also share a country (United Kingdom) so they are related. I don't see the problem with any of these groups being added. Not that it matters, I doubt this would change anyones minds. I just feel if this section is not re-added Wikipedia would lose another once of integrity. I'll speak more on each of these points later, when I am less busy! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
Whatever the history, the fact is that the modern English perceive all those Continentals as foreign and alien, in a way that the other peoples of the British Isles are not. Folklore is all very well, but it is massively less important that everyday life and language. TharkunColl 13:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Sigurd, I think you should pay attention to Zzuuzz and TharkunColl's comments above, they are relevant. We do need to define what is related and what is not. We can't include groups just because we are of the opinion that they are related. And as he says if we start to define what level of relatedness is acceptable, this would constiture original research. Alun 17:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I have paid attention, but have you to me? Only you can answer that. I do not believe this to be the case. As the unnamed user has said in the East and North of England many people do consider themselves related to the Dutch and Danes, sadly due to the wars it has become unpopular to consider yourself related to the Germans. But the fact still stands that most English people do consider us connected to various continental groups (that have been mentioned), as well as the other British peoples. I do think that we need to take into account culture, history and tradition to define who is a related group, and not just opinion's on who is foreign. I am not saying certain groups are related because it is my opinion, but it is both reading up on the subject and also first hand experience of people in the country, specifically the North, East and Centre of England (I do not visit the South much). Evidence for the fact that many in the UK consider themselves (at least culturally) related to the Danes and the European Continent, can be seen at York, where the inhabitants take great pride in their Viking (Danish) heritage. So we should have the related groups box, and not just a bias one with only the other British peoples, or for that matter continental peoples. Sigurd Dragon Slayer
I think someone's behavior has been childish and uneccesary. There was no group in that box that were not mentioned as being connected to the English in the main article. The Scots and Welsh are connected obviously because they are from Great Britain and still share a large percentage of DNA with many in England. The Danes, Germans (in this case meaning North-Western Germans) and Frisians are mentioned as they are related to the Anglo-Saxons who are whether you like it or not the founders of the English nation and still are the largest percentage in the Gene Pool (that is Germanic Y Chromosome being strongest in Central, North and East England) and are thus genetically indistinguishable from these people. Their cultures are very connected due to shared history. So I shall put it back and nothing is unsourced and almost all the other Ethnic Groups have such a box! I will not let Wikipedia become a one opinion site! Sigurd Dragon Slayer
Alun, could i just ask why you feel that it is you, and only you that is responsible for what information is posted on a public page? I, like many people on here are english and would like to have a say about what is written about our history. At least put it to a vote, if the majority of people want a box that has english people's related ethnic groups then include it on the public page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexpayne ( talk • contribs)
Alun with respect just because people fail to recognise that they are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians does not make it untrue, isn't the whole point of this page to educate? If you are to include an ethnic box, could you at least include in it it 'Germanic and Celtic' elements thereby eliminating all of your confusion around welsh, irish etc. You know that the english are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians, and I can provide eveidence to back this up. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1008
Also again I ask, who put you in charge of keeping a public page, that is representative of my history as much as yours?
Thank you, Alex Payne, 16 Walsall
Alun, I'd appreciate it, if you weren't as patrionising and downright arrogant, thank you. Can i remind you that the box clearly states that peoples are ethnically 'related' not identical but related. How can you deny that the english are in no way related to the dutch, frisians, or celts? And this is about history Alun, as our history (e.g. germanic migrations) as defined who the english people are today.
lmao omg -'I have a BSc in genetics and so am fully au fait with what it says, and more importantly what it means), you may not fully undertand this paper,' don't insult my intelligence please.' you don't think that's being patrionising?? my god, lmao. Also Alun, i have never once said that I haven't accepted your opinions, but I get kind of annoyed when people think that they are in charge of a public page. You asked me to give proof that English people are ethnically related to the dutch and other europeans (so i could edit th page, which you then re-editied), you asked me to provide you with evidence and I did just that. Alun it seems to me that you are basing this on your wn opinons and judgements, as you feel that it's wrong to class groups ethnically. The fact is though, you can, and the fact is that english people are ethnically related to other european peoples whether you like it or not. Also, I think it's absurd that you or anyone else doubts a germanic migration. 65% of english people have blue eyes, we speak a germanic language, and our DNA is identical to that of other germanic peoples for no reason at all, is it? I know that this has nothing to do with ethnicity, but you brought up the theory that doubts germanic migration to england. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexpayne ( talk • contribs)
In the period 400-600 Britain was fragmented. Some territories retained British leadership, language and culture while others lost it, over variying periods of time, to incoming Germanic alternatives. How this happened is partially answered in principle, if not in precise detail, in the written accounts of leaders and battles. All forms of evidence are consistent with the establishment of an elite whose cultural, and probably biological, ancestry, lay in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. They took control of eastern Britain, probably piecemeal and over a long period. What that meant in terms of population remains elusive because much of the evidence is interpretable in more than one way. The situation is unlikely to have been the same in all parts of England. In some places new rulers may have displaced only the native elite - and married some of their daughters - while elsewhere that were followed, sooner or later, by many humbler settlers. Not only may the 'English' in Hereford and Somerset be closer to the Welsh in ancestry than to the East Anglians, but the populations of Wessex and Northumbria may have been different from each other long before the Vikings settled in the north. The origins of the English by Catherine Hills
Alun 06:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
{{ Wobble/sandbox}} Restore the related ethnicities box, with the peoples of Great Britain and Brittany only...
Éponyme 19:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
To try and build consensus let's start with the areas we all agree on. This is as I see it, if I misinterpret an editors opinion or position then I appologise, it is not my intention.
This is just my perception, I am under no illusions that this is a definitive list, I may have left some groups out, and others may dispute the order, or what constitutes a group, I am open to this being refined/changed. Alun 06:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Alun with respect just because people fail to recognise that they are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians does not make it untrue, isn't the whole point of this page to educate? If you are to include an ethnic box, could you at least include in it it 'Germanic and Celtic' elements thereby eliminating all of your confusion around welsh, irish etc. You know that the english are ethnically related to the dutch and frisians, and I can provide eveidence to back this up. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1008
Also again I ask, who put you in charge of keeping a public page, that is representative of my history as much as yours?
Thank you, Alex Payne, 16 Walsall
Alun, although you do seem knowledgeable in some respect, a lot of your statments and views are subjective, and supported with little evidence. I believe that an article, like this one, should be a concensus and represent the majority of peoples view.
There will always be conflict, however you seem to represent the minority, but have still taken it upon yourself to assert that your belief is correct and above everyone elses view - eventhough you haven't based your claims with evidence.
Take your statement on Alex's talk page: "I fail to see any connection between English people and Frisian or Dutch people."
Yet, this link is clearly proven in this article: [ [25]]
For example, the part of mainland Britain that has the most Continental input is Central England, but even here the AMH-1 frequency, not below 44% (Southwell), is higher than the 35% observed in the Frisians. These results demonstrate that even with the choice of Frisians as a source for the Anglo-Saxons, there is a clear indication of a continuing indigenous component in the English paternal genetic makeup. We also note that our analysis includes representatives of the Danish Vikings, which were not available in the Weale et al. study. Consideration of Danish Viking input is important because their activities on the British eastern coast are well documented [1]. Our evaluation of the Danish and Anglo-Saxon source populations, however, shows that the contributions of these groups are unlikely to be distinguishable by using the resolution available in our analyses.
I thought this article was about the people of English people of England. The religion section does not make sense because it is including none English people like Pakistani/Indian who are Muslim, and Indian Sikhs and Hindus. Related ethnic groups look better than a religion section that includes people other than english.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.150.149.183 ( talk • contribs)
I am questioning the statistics used here on religion since they are not really needed. They are only statistics on English people in the UK, and therefore ignoring millions of Englsh people around the globe, so they dont speak for all English people. More importantly, the numbers include many people in the UK who would not identify as being English. Epf 02:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Alun and I did have quite a good summer. I'm glad we came to a consensus on religion but theres still a disagreeance on our views towards the importance of descent in ethnicity. The classical (and most commonly accepted) definition of an ethnic group would in fact include descent as one of the main prerequsities in defining an ethnic group. You also seem to misunderstand partially how descent is related to the ethnic identity and distinction. It is hardly seen as a "consequence" of a group seeing themselves distinct from others over time and descent isnt merely attributed to race or inherited biological characteristics since many other socio-cultural traits are associated with kinship and descent. In fact, it is highly debated right now as to the origins of the kinship and descent system and as to how it actually developed in terms of distinguishing ethnic identity. The geographic, biological and familial closeness of a group itself is known to lead to certain socio-cultural traits developing within a group and in turn further distinguishing it from others. I do admit however that many believe it could also be developed vice-versa in the sense that the cultural associations of a group in close geographic proximity in turn lead to common descent. It is difficult to say which is more responsible in the formation of groups, but we can say with the utmost conifdence that in either case, descent is an integral part of ethnic identification. Now, obviously someone with very limited English descent who has no ties to English culture would be quite rare in saying the person is "ethnically English", but you still must realize the importance of descent in ethnicity. I need to stress here that biological traits resultant of common descent are obviously part of ethnic identification, but they are not the only traits resulting from common descent. As I have explained earlier, the closeness and isolation of groups also allows for socio-cultural traits to develop and in turn these can also be passed down (socially "inherited") to varying degrees (i.e. depending ones geo-cultural location) ranging from behavioural/personality, cultural, lingustic, religious, and other familial traits and traditions. Obviously many of socio-cultural traits can also be learned from residing in a society without being of that cultures descent, but some (behavioural) can't or at least aren't leanred in such away that often. Therefore, a person living outside of English society with very little or no identified English descent could hardly be described as part of the English ethnic group, but in turn the same could be said about a person living in England who is of no English descent (and therefore has some degree of ethno-cultural traits not shared with ethnic English people). As for the information in the ethnic group box, I think we should leave the numbers and information as is since as you say they are referenced, albeit from different sampling techniques and sources. We could possibly do the same as we did with religion, but I would personally say to leave it as is right now since it is in line with figures for all the other ethnic group articles. Good to be discussing with you again Alun, but I wont be on here regularly for another two weeks or so. Ciao, Epf 17:05, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I wonder why we have Elizabeth Tudor in the picture. Surely her grandad was Henry Tudor, who was Welsh (descended from Owain Tudur). Tudur was a family name for a Welsh noble family. Shouldn't we have people who are more English, and monarchs aren't really representative of ethnically English people, unless we go to before 1066 (so Alfred the Great might be better?). Why not some contemporary English people? And why not representatives from sports? W. G. Grace or even David Beckham spring to mind. Why Newton and Darwin? Do we need two scientists? I'd go for Darwin, but I'm biased as I'm a biologist. There should probably be a Prime Minister there, even the Milk Snatcher would do, and she's very recognisable. Any takers? Alun 17:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
This entire article is troubling. Of the millions of people you designate as "English" in Canada and indeed, around the world, many, if not most, trace their origins to a mix of celtic and anglo/saxon roots. Few would classify themselves as "English" accept as a referent to the language they speak. Most Canadians who would trace their entire ancestral line to the UK would probably find celtic branches and few would find entirely "English" branches as you imply in this article. This article needs to be modified or deleted, because defining "English" as a cultural designation of people outside the UK who trace their ancestral lines back to the UK is not justified. Most of those people are, at the very least, anglosaxoncelts, and they trace their lines back to a mix of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ldjenks ( talk • contribs)
I have a whole lot of books in my home library that state very clearly that the "Celts" are indeed living and well all over the world. The books talk exclulsively about the "celtic" culture as it exists today. My son plays and composes 'celtic' music. You can buy 'celtic' table cloths, art work, etc. all over North America. "Celtic" rock bands are very popular in North America. And yet you say "Celtic i Alun 07:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)s a linguistic classification". I beg to differ, because as an anglosaxoncelt, I only speak English. I'm afraid that English is more the linguistic definition, not "celt", and that is where this whole article is flawed. I am sorry for not signing. I don't know how to do that, but I certainly believe you should go over to google and google up anglosaxoncelt. It's seen increasingly on discussion boards such as BBC, and even more authoritative sources are starting to use it. Ldjenks 19:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
None of the article is troubling, and you are pushing an anglophobic POV. You are suggesting that "celts" are a pure breed, and English people are "mongrels" and are not legitimate which is obviously totally flawed. Actually, you are suggesting English people don't even exist. Just to point out though, that is is disputed how many, if any "celts" made in to Britain. Vinneyt6 21:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, as I said under the deletion discussion board, both anglo/saxon and celtic, exist in modern Websters to denote cultural groups. Remember, Websters is used extensively in North America, which likely has millions more descendents from the UK and Ireland than what currently inhabit the UK and Ireland. I am concerned that most of the discussion here is central to Europe.....Hello....the rest of the world is out there too. In any event, as I stated on another board, we decendants of colonists have truly mixed Celtic names like Mac...Mc... with anglo/saxon names are common in our lineage, perhaps not so common in the UK, but very much so elsewhere in the world. We are neither "English people" or pure Celts, but a mixture of what we in North America call anglo/saxon and celt. And yes, anglo/saxon is a commonly used term throughout North America. That's why it's in Websters folks. So, if "English people" is all that is acceptable for the people of the UK, fine, but it's not the best nor only acceptable term for the rest of us in the world, especially we descendants of colonists. And I can't believe the discussion of 'celts' not being a distinct cultural group, which by your own wikipedia definition, includes 'kinship'. Believe me, Celtic kinship is seeing explosive growth in North America. There are Celtic festivals all over the place, and Celtic rock music is popular. Those who try to dismiss 'celts' as a cultural group are expressing views that seem to be politically motivated. Ldjenks 01:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Ld, you obviously don't have even the semblence of a basic knowledge of the subject you are talking about, you seem to be saying that English people shouldn't have a right to assert their existence because a few uninformed and apparently biased Americans don't think they should exist, give it up. Alun 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Wobble, clearly I have touched a nerve with you and some others. To clarify, perhaps "English" is not necessarily the best term for people outside of the UK. We have an identity that is different from the people within the UK. Furthermore, I have discovered that many people of Australia are identifying themselves as Anglo-celts, a fact that is noted on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-saxon These terms are not available to tick off on census boxes, but to many people of the former colonies, English is our only option for those of mixed celtic/anglo/saxon backgrounds . We can't tick of only Irish, Scottish Or Welsh, which I believe are options, because we also have ancestral lines in the "England" part of the UK. You should know that in Canada we are given the option of ticking off more than one box on the census form if we want to, so when you see the number of people in the Canadian census who say they are English, many are also ticking off another box such as Irish, Scottish, etc, They are not truly saying they are pure English, but a mix. Therefore, the numbers you are reporting for Canadian "English" people on this "English people" page are somewhat unverified.
In North America, the term to identify us has often been anglo/saxon, (sometimes in a derogatory manner by other cultural groups) and the more deragatory 'wasp'. Just as an aside, in Quebec a new sports team's new logo is 'frogs', once a derogatory term to French Canadians, but now embraced by them. In the same way, people descended from the UK are now embracing the terms anglo/saxon, and celt.
You can't imagine how difficult it is to be unable to accurately tell someone, coining a simple universally accepted phrase, of one's ethnicity. African Americans had a difficult time coming up with an acceptable term. We are in the infancy in North America of creating a term acceptable to those of us who trace our ethnicity entirely to the United Kingdom and Ireland. "Anglo/saxon celt" is growing in popularity in North America to the same extent Anglo-Celt is growing in popularity in Australia. (I am even seeing people in the UK use the term "anglo/saxon celt".) A lot of this ethnic identity crisis is the result of massive immigration in North America of groups who have clear ethnicity as well as the recognition of the politically powerful and united "Acadian" nation in Canada. We know we have ethnicity as well; we are just having trouble coining the correct term. And let's not forget that the DNA research has focused extensively on the research of the 'celt' and 'anglo/saxon' genetic markers. Ldjenks 23:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Alun, perhaps The Brits see us exclusively as "Canadian". But you are missing a very important point. And now I have to get political, something I did not want to do. In Quebec, the 'English' population has nearly been wiped out. Despite statistics you may read, there are 'hidden' numbers you never hear about. Like the one that reveals that out of a provincial civil service of nearly 55,000,000 people in Quebec, only about 400 are English. Imagine a place where a boy can never dream of becoming a fireman or a cop, and that place is Quebec. Try as hard as you can and you will have a hard time finding an "English" boy who is a fireman or cop. But here is where the problem lies. Because the people who are having the most trouble in Quebec are not immigrants who may identify as "English" because of their language, but the people of anglo/saxon celt descent, who have all those last names that origin in the British Isles and the UK (and for heavens sake, I'm talking about LAST names, not first names). Now this very same problem is spreading in Canada. Google the the Air Canada page and look at all the executives and you will find that there are very new people whose last names are of British Isle and Irish descent and when you find them, they have one foot out the door to retirement. We're in big trouble in Canada, and as a result of never ending bickering in the UK and Ireland, we have been unable to attain the united face we that we all know we urgently need in Canada. And now you, Alun, want to also transfer the political issues of the United Kingdom and Ireland onto Canada yet again. This is not good for Canada's population which is descended from the UK and Ireland that people like you do this to us. I had an excellent conversation with a recent immigrant from England last year. He said that in the UK the people of the various areas of the UK and Ireland don't really mingle with each other and stay within mainly their Irish, Scottish, etc. social boundaries but he noticed that in Canada we all got along well. He further observed that the fact we are getting along in Canada seems to be necessary for our survival because we are losing a lot of ground. Now you come along, refusing to acknowledge that there are any other people from the UK who exist. Well, we do, and millions of us live in North America and still consider the UK and Ireland to be our mother land.; I'm moving there on an ancestral visa this fall with a dependent child, and we are both anglosaxoncelts, or, if you prefer anglo/saxon celts. Sorry if you don't like it, but stop assuming that UK and Irish tensions, which are permeating this discussion, also exist in Canada or the USA. They don't anymore, and we need unity here because we have issues of our own. Please remember Anglo/saxon is a very popular term in North America.
Wobble, just walk away mate. This is comical, but if he vandalises the page then we can fix it. If he tries to write an article on anglosaxoncelticcanadians then he'll need to source it. Won't happen so no worries. Wiki-Ed 21:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the numbers in Quebec. I meant to say the civil service is 55,000 people. And to you Wiki-Ed, I think your tone is condescending. As an educator, I may have to join the legions of educators who are telling our students that they cannot use wikipedia as a valid reference source. Wikipedia has been in the news lately for this kind of mean spiritedness. It's kind of sad. I'm trying to help find a solution to a growing problem. I see you are also from the UK. I hope you all don't act like spoiled conceited brats when we move there in a couple of weeks. I have seen what the Britts can be like. I have a brilliant son who is moving with me on an ancestral visa and I hope you all can behave better than you are on this page. In any event, wiki-ed, I can send you a file that is circulating Canada, which will likely really shock you, cause you clearly don't know what's happening over here based on your comment to me. Send an email address to lyjinx@hotmail.com and I will send it on. It's a pdf about 900 k. Ldjenks 23:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
One final note on this English people page. You have haphazardly allocated millions of Canadians as being "English people" from Canada. These people sign census boxes denoting more than one ethnic origin on a census box, a fact you stated on the English people page. These people are often not tracing their ancestry to the UK. Many tick of "French" and "English". Others - "Chinese" and "English" and so-on, often to indicate languages spoken. I have a Chinese friend who ticks off "English" and "Chinese" because she is married to a man who immigrated from the UK. She is 100% Chinese from China, but she ticks off the box for political reasons, mainly because the census determines the allocation of funding between English and French in Canada.
Furthermore, TharkunCo11, if you don't know anything about the visa issues of the UK, then I guess you are not nearly as well as informed as you think you are. Many of you people on this forum are shockingly ill-informed. You have virtually NO submissions from academic experts on this or any other issue. In making my submission, I was hoping to get input from such types of people, but I guess that's not forthcoming. Furthermore, topics increasingly are linked to topics inside of wikipedia, with little outside verification. I shall revert to standards such as the Oxford English Dictionary for future reference. Ldjenks 13:03, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
OK Alun I will consider another name for my webpage in Canada other than anglosaxoncelt. But I never did get any meaningful dialogue from this wikipedia site, other than the one link to anglo-celtic, and those people have no point of contact.
In any event, I am attaching an email that made the news in Canada. I received it from a so-called "English" Quebecor, who distributed it in bulk to the citizens of a bilingual community in Quebec. It is suspected that this email was massively distributed throughout Quebec. I have left it untouched. You can probably get copies of it on the Internet. This should tell you how complicated language AND cultural identity in Canada has become, and how politicized it is. Unfortunately, any statistics you take fromm Census Canada are suspect.
I've removed the e-mail. My French is not good enough to understand it all, but I'll assume it's politicised junk mail and has no place here. Just because this is a discussion page does not mean it is a soapbox. If it actually adds value to this discussion then it will need to be translated. Wiki-Ed 09:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This is complete and utter rubbish. There is No evidence of a White Dragon flag. This has aleady been rubbish on: http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/whitedragon/comments
http://crossofstgeorge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9457&highlight=white+dragon
If they cannot provide the evidence then they are lying.
I've added the following sentence to 'Symbols' on the England page:
"A new or indeed old symbol being resurrected is the 'White Dragon Flag' of the English. This particular flag pays homage to the Anglo-Saxons. It is believed that Anglo-Saxons used the White Dragon Flag in battles against the Celtic Britons - who themselves used the Red Dragon flag(now found in the Welsh flag). Evidence of the White Dragon can be found on the Bayeux Tapestry,in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies of Merlin, Stentons's Anglo-Saxon Britain and Barlow's The Godwins. This flag pre-dates any other flags and symbols currently used in England."
The evidence is on the discussion page of England.
Perhaps it should be added here? I'm neutral about the flag, but as there is some historical evidence to support the symbol of English/Anglo-Saxon culture, could it be added here? A cut downn version is fine, it probably needs a mention. Note that English-Nationalists are beginning to support this symbol. White43 22:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Here, incidentally, is a source for the white dragon being a symbol of Mercia, from the Flags of the World website [27]:
"There is a medieval map of the English "heptarchy", a period where there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at war with each other. This map, made I believe in the 12th Century after the heptarchy period is illustrated with banners of the kingdoms. Those shown for Essex, Kent and Sussex appear to be very similar to their "county standards" today, while East Anglia has three crowns on a white background, Mercia appears to have a white dragon of some kind. James Frankcom, 30 July 2001"
We also learn from this, for example, that East Anglia used three crowns, an arrangement identical to the Swedish coat of arms - perhaps not coincidentally, as there are Swedish archaeological remains in East Anglia and its dynasty may have been of Swedish origin!
The point is this - Mercia used both a white dragon and (later) a yellow saltire; Wessex used a gold wyvern but the Godwins, for some reason, appear to have used a white dragon; East Anglia used three crowns; and the other kingdoms used totally different designs. The white dragon is by no means universal, and it may just be a coincidence that Mercia and Wessex used vaguely similar designs. Heraldic beasts such as dragons are very common in European iconography. TharkunColl 11:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
User:The Green Dragon has added this to the Symbols section The Saint George flag replaced the white dragon flag which consisted of a white dragon on a blood red background in the 12th century. citation needed The Flag is still in use today by the English[citation needed] and some wish for it to be re-instated as the national flag. citation needed I have added requests for citations. Should it just be removed? Alun 06:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a link to the website of this party? It looks a bit like an endorsement by Wikipedia. Or are they considered uniquely representative of English people? If so, why did they get 0.7% of the vote at the last by-election held in England? 193.39.172.1 07:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
A think a List of English people within the 'Contribution to humanity' section adds to the article although there will no doubt be a debate about who to put here and who to leave only in the main list. But please see Wikipedia:Embedded lists. Wikipedia Style is to avoid the use of bulleted lists in an article ( except those in articles which are solely lists). Articles should try to describe their subject using prose and where a list is beneficial , use the Serial Comma method. Lumos3 12:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Since when do ethnicities stop forming? When a country such as Belgium or Switzerland, Spain or Russia and Germany is formed of composite former nation-states, do the newfound citizens not produce children that identify ethnically with their new nation? For instance, I am British, French and Irish ancestrally in the USA. I know that paternally, my ancestors came during the reign of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's one king. Then again, there were relatives of the same surname who were there in the old Virginia colony, who fought against their master George III of Hanover's yoke and declared themselves American. These remnants of 1776 still identify ethnically/ancestrally as American, rather than any UK-related fief under the Crown. British, French and Irish Protestants who were there in 1776 identify as American--but the Orange-Nassau/Pennsylvania Dutch and Netherlands/New York Dutch people still proudly claim their Continental roots. I would say that is proof that old roots don't always hold water. I have recently begun to shear off my British cultural allegiance, with an understanding of my own American heritage and am just fine adopting the mantle which better describes me. Although 3rd generation American, I have differences with the modern (Germanophile) UK and disagree with a lot of how it is going. In short, I would NOT want to live there now, in this day and age. If you do not believe me, at least believe the United States Census Bureau. People of the three major racial backgrounds apart from non-French Continental colonials present in 1776, are represented as: "American", "African American", "American Indian" in this map page... Maps of American ancestries I would consider American nation-state status to be more legitimate in the way of providing an ethnicity. Canada and other Commonwealth nations are still tied to the UK and it would be silly to pretend that the English in Canada have no identity, especially when contrasted to the French--even the Scots and Irishmen maintain individualist presences. Éponyme 09:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Right on. I am fully willing to accept what others will not. I cast the hyphen aside and found roots I hadn't known existed and even if they represented British colonial policy, I recognize the American component and am content to serve one master. Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Self-loathing Germanophiles, indeed. All recent culture in the UK has been mystified by Anglo-Teutonistic vs Celticist nonsense, omitting Roman this and that. I can't take it. It is precisely these intellectual hates that inspire me to say "that's fucking/bloody enough". I would be more ashamed to self-identify according to those hyphens indicating ancestry. It is enough for me to know where my colonial ancestors and recent ancestors were from--all the same place. Since they were all involved in my branch of our family's current nation (as well as other Anglosphere countries CA/AU inc. ministers in India), I just focus on my immediate situation and work my way outwards from there. Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
PS: I am desparately working on the American people article, to save it from destruction by anti-American sentiment where Americans are not seen as legitimate people. You guys know more than anybody that is not true and that we have a story that is so very ominous when George Washington is talked about. Imagine somebody saying that Mexicans or Brazilians aren't real people, just composites. Everybody is a composite of something else, but we all assume contemporary identities. I am not Anglo-Saxon, any more than the Anglo-Saxons were Ingvaeones. We Americans broke off from you and built our own Continental nation with our own ethnic group based on a mixture of British fiefs and the subjects of those lands (including Huguenots), minus the Dutch and Palatine Germans. Now, we have other ethnic groups coming here and saying they are just as American or even more American than the Founding Fathers like George Washington. What utter ignorant hatred. They don't understand the difference between a colonial populace which creates a political entity and the subsequent immigrants. Consider the French situation in Paris (Paris was once centre of Frankish potency), or the experiences of Brummies (glorious Mercia) and Londoners (where's old Middlesex?) in their own area. We all get the Political Correctness nonsense and young people thinking they can bring White Man's Burden to "ethnics", against the old order. I'm sick of counterculture's intolerance towards democracy and their insistence that a mobbish minority rule must supplant majority rule, catering entirely to their minority freakdom and bringing in wave after wave of ignoramouses to vote and work for them in our countries. Fuck Karl Marx and his utopia of class struggle. I'm going to have a heart attack one of these days! Éponyme 03:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
In addition to the many studies that have been previously done pointing in the same direction, like the following one published by Oxford University Press, in which surprising genetic similarities can be seen between Britons and Spaniards (Spain is IberiaS) , in a genetic piece of research that takes into account up to 8 genetic loci, including mitocondrial, autosomal and Y-Chromosome DNA. See:
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/7/1361/T03
Now we have another Oxford study whose reference has been just published two days ago in which the origins of most Britons seem to be getting clearer and clearer and astonishingly very different from what it was previously thought (really, who would have thought that they come from the Spanish!.
It is also interesting in relation to the similarities between the Celtic areas of Britain and England.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1621766.ece
I cannot open the entire article from here, but it continues like this:
A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.
The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.
People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."
Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.
Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings. Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman clans.
These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in the British Isles. "Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not the case," Professor Sykes said.
It seems that here we have very interesting new information for the article.
Veritas et Severitas 02:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, it coincides with research that has been done before. In fact, most research seems to be pointing in that direction. The most common Haplotype in the British isles, within Haplogroup R1b, is the so-called Modal Atlantic Haplotype. Make a search for it in google. The two areas where it is most common is again Iberia and The British Isles. I think that there is a lot of information right now pointing in one direction, in any case, much more than in other directions. Veritas et Severitas 13:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
So, I think that this article and others about other British peoples right now are ignoring fundametal findings, which is very poor for Wiki standards and rules. But I am not going to make any changes myself. If anyone wants, they can do it themselves with my support. I personally do not want to engage in exhausting edit conficts. I just prefer to contribute with sources in the discussion page for the moment. Veritas et Severitas 13:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I do not agree. But let just people read it on their own and draw their own conclusions. In any case, do not confuse the links of Western Europe to iberia, with the closer link of the British Isles with Spain. Veritas et Severitas 14:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC) Veritas et Severitas 14:05, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There is a close genetic link that started thousands of years ago. Right now you do a DNA analysis on people from the British Isles and on people in Spain, and the relationship is more than obvious. I am not saying it, I am just a humble messenger, other academics and scientists are saying it. One of the characteristics of the human being is to know, more and more, and especially about their ancestors and origins. Now, in the 21st century, we have the capacity to know things that we did not know before, that is it. In your previous contribution you are lumping together very different concepts like language, culture, nationality and biological ancestry, by the way. Veritas et Severitas 13:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree basically with most of what you say. So what is the point of this discussion. I just said that there is information available about the genetic, biological, racial or whatever you want to call it, origins of the English and the British, which was not available just a few years ago, and the article does not reflect well those new findings. You do not see it like that, fine. Let just other people look at it and think for themselves. Veritas et Severitas 00:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
In any case, you seem to concentrate on the relationship of Western Europe and Iberia through R1b. But within R1b there are subgroups, and these subgroups put together closer the Britons and the Iberians again.
Then, those first migrations probably started 10.000 years ago, but the time frame also points to more recent migrations, 6000 years ago and even more recently.
Only in the British Isles do we find legends that may be a residue in the colletive memory of these migrations:
Ireland
One legend states that the Irish were descended from Míl Espáine, a king from Spain. The character is almost certainly a mere personification of a supposed migration by a group or groups from Hispania to Ireland, but it is supported by the fact that the Celtiberian language is more closely related to insular Celtic than to any other language.
Scottland
The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, following the War of Independence against England, tells how the Scots arrived in Scotland after they had "dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes".
Or comments by the Roman Historian Tacitus, dated less than 2000 years ago, describing the Britons in just a few words: “They are like Spaniards”.
Of course, those legends and comments were traditionally disregarded or almost ignored, probably because of the success of the Nordic Myth in Great Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries (still lingering, by the way), but now genetics seems to give new vigour and light to those legends and comments.
Those legends do not occur in other parts of Europe (that I know of), so the connection between the British Isles and Spain seems to be different than to the rest of Europe.
And do not confuse issues: The genetic relationship proven by science is not from samples collected 6000 years ago, it concerns 21st century Spaniards and Britons that are alive and kicking.
And I am not jumping to the conclusion that Britons and Spaniards are one people. That is obviously absurd, so let us be serious. Veritas et Severitas 01:00, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, Alun, I am not going to repeat things. Just I remind you that this issue is being brought up by English academics, not by me. I think people can read all this stuff and draw their own conclusions.
Just some basic information: The highest concentration of this population group is in Spain, not in England, peaking in the Basque country, although it is also the majority population group in England. This population group is not restricted to the Basque country in Spain. It constitutes the majority population group in all of Spain, from North to South and from East to West. In fact, about 70 percent of the population of Spain, more or less like the population of the British Isles as a whole. Even areas on the Mediterranean, like Catalonia, present percentages of about 75%.
As to the genetic fingerprint of the Britons and the Spaniards, Sykes states that it is almost identical in the population discussed. If you do not agree, send a letter to Brian Sykes, I am just a messenger.
As to the Celtiberian language and Celtic Languages in the British Isles, linguists also agree that they are more closely related than other languages. Again, if you do not agree, tell them, not me.
As to the name of Spain, it is quite old indeed. Its origins is attributed to the Phoenicians, who founded Cadiz, the oldest city in Spain, more that 3000 thousand years ago.
In any case, as I said, there is plenty of information out there for the readers here. They can do their own homework. I respect your view, but it is not the only one and I insist that the article poorly reflects a lot of important information. Veritas et Severitas 11:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I have reverted this edit. I don't think there is any doubt that there are many ethnically English Jewish people, anyone who claims that there aren't clearly knows bugger all about English people and history. I can't imagine anyone claiming that Benjamin Disraeli, Herbert Samuel or Rosalind Franklin are not English, in the case of Franklin how many people actually know she was even Jewish, because up untill recently I didn't. As for English muslims, well there have been quite a few, not least Nasser Hussain and Sajid Mahmood. There's also Monty Panesar, who's not muslim I know, but the same reasoning applies. English ethnicity is not static, as is no other ethnic group, the indigenous English group itself is the product of various different groups merging over the course of several centuries, English people have always had diverse origins and have assimilated various groups over the last millenium or so. People are not excluded due to their religion or skin colour. Excluding these people makes this article look like an advert for the British National Party. Alun 13:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
There's a problem with the infobox that I don't know how to repair. -- Gray Porpoise 00:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I have removed this paragraph. It is far too unequivocal. There is no research team at Oxford, this is in reference to a book written by a someone who runs their own company that will genotype your DNA for you. The data included in this book are not produced by a research team at Oxford as far as I can tell. The sources used to back up this information do not constitute reliable sources. I refer you to the section In science, avoid citing the popular press. This information is more than adequately covered in the article as it is. I see no merit in inflating the importance of this, it's in the article already, we don't really need to repeat it ad nauseum. Alun 05:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
In addition, a research team at Oxford University has found that the majority of Britons are Celts descended from Spanish tribes who began arriving about 6,000/7,000 years ago, making the journey by boat from an area that is located in present-day Northern Spain. The proportion of this population group is 64 per cent in England, 73 in Scottland and 83 per cent in Wales. - Previously it was thought that ancient Britons were Celts who came from central Europe, but the genetic connection to populations in Spain provides a scientific basis for this new theory. Even in England, this population of Iberian origins outnumbers Anglo-Saxons by three to one. This study also identifies other areas of origins for the present English population, like areas in present-day Germany or Scandinavia, with part of the population also having their origins in Ancient Rome, The Middle East and North Africa. 1 2
It is not in the article. It is an update. It is reputable and verifiable. It is an Oxford Team:
See: http://www.bloodoftheisles.net/index.html
It is absolutely unacceptable that people erase this type of verifiable information. No one is erasing the next paragraphs, although the study is disputed by geneticists like Oppenheimer. Do not delete again what complies with all Wiki rules. See: http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817
then your edit will always remain unverified, please pay attention to what I said earlier In science, avoid citing the popular press. It is you who are in breach of wikipedia policies and guidelines. Alun 05:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Here you have another book that speaks of the same subject matter: That the relationships between the British Isles and Spain are multiple. They began with Paleolithic migrations, but there were several waves. It is now believed that Celts also arrived from Spain, much later than the first Paleolithic migrations. See: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.html
I have cut and pasted this part:
And what of the Celts we know – the Irish, Scots and Welsh? Scholars have traditionally placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe, but Oppenheimer’s new data clearly show that the Welsh, Irish and other Atlanticfringe peoples derive from Ice Age refuges in the Basque country and Spain.They came by an Atlantic coastal route many thousands of years ago, though the Celtic languages we know of today were brought in by later migrations, following the same route, during Neolithic times.
If you have reputable and verifiable information that criticizes these books or studies, cite them, but you have no right to erase this information and say that Dr. Brian and his Oxford team are not good enough. I hope that you do not say the same about Oppenheimer. I am sure that people here know him well, but here you have some information, just in case: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/stephen-oppenheimer.html Veritas et Severitas 17:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but do not agree. First you have tried to attack a reputable scientist like Dr. Brian Sykes. Then you mix arguments about language and culture which are not the point here. I do not have to repeat myself. Just add verifiable and reputable comments against those authors and books. I have no problem at all. That is what Wiki is all about in case of controversy. But do not erase key, updated and reputable contributions. I will continue restoring it, of course, not because I am arbitrary, but because it would be highly tendentious trying to hide this information from the article readers. As you will understand this is my last contribution in this discussion page. I think that we have already said it all. Veritas et Severitas 16:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Alun, I do not see such of an interest in you trying to erase other newspaper articles in that very same article. Look well. You have tried to attack Sykes. Read yourself. The point here is the Pre-Anglosaxon section, not other sections related to language and culture. Anyway, let us cool off. I left you a message in your personal page. Veritas et Severitas 17:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Do we really need to list practically every organized religion that exists here ? I find that this along with other elements in this article tend to make the English look like some multi-ethnic, heterogenous population. I am not denying that there are numbers of ethnic English who may be Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, etc., but there numbers are very minimal compared to the majority who are of a Christian denomination (the traditional religion of English culture, particulary protestantism) or who are atheist/agnostic. I mean, you might as well as list aminism, paganism, etc. all here if going by the current list of faiths. I propose changing this section back to including those denominations traditionally associated with the majority of ethnic English people and English culture, not simply the religion of people living in the UK (as is what the current references in the section refer to). Epf 07:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, as agreed, I have bought the book and read it. It is certainly myth shattering and in line with the newspaper articles. The maps and the data in the Scotland paper have been taken from pages 290 and 292 in the book.
The book is full of interesting stuff, I will start just posting some revelant issues:
Page 280.
...the presence of large numbers of Jasmines’s Oceanic clan, says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic see board north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. The number of exact and close matches between the maternal clans of western and northern Iberia and the western half of the Isles is very impressive, much more so than the much poorer matches with continental Europe.
Pages 281-82.
The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or the same time as farming reached the Isles.
The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus………. This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland.
Picts….. They are from the same mixture of Iberian and Euroepean Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles.
Page 283.
Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantic chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea routes of the atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles.
And this is just from the end section of the book, after brief browsing.
As I have been saying much before this book was published, the connections to Iberia are multiple, from the spread of the Paleolithic Populations from Iberia across Western Europe, to more recent migrations to the British Isles. In fact, according to Dr. Sykes, the majority of people in the Isles descend from these later migrants.
By the way, the Author is introduced like this: Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist,... Veritas et Severitas 23:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
So here is again the contribution that we are discussing. I will post it first here before I post it again in the body of the article, waiting for comments:
--- In addition, a research team at Oxford University has found that the majority of Britons are descended from Iberian tribes who began arriving about 6,000/7,000 years ago, making the journey by boat from an area that is located in present-day Northern Spain. The proportion of this population group is 64 per cent in England, 73 in Scottland and 83 per cent in Wales. Previously it was thought that ancient Britons were Celts who came from central Europe, but the genetic connection to populations in Spain provides a scientific basis for this new theory. Even in England, this population of Iberian origins outnumbers Anglo-Saxons by three to one. This study also identifies other areas of origins for the present English population, like areas in present-day Germany or Scandinavia, with part of the population also having their origins in Ancient Rome, The Middle East and North Africa. 1 2. Other population geneticists use the term "Basque" to refer to the population of Iberian origins. 3
Veritas et Severitas 17:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you and Alun about the term Celt. Bryan Sykes explains it. He also explains a lot of other issues. You should read the book. In any case, articles are not supposed to be based on our self-research and conlusions, but on the research and conclusions of authorities in the field. Brian Sykes states many things in the book. It is 306 pages long, where he also deals with the different migration wave theories. In any case I have avoided the term Celt in my contribution now.
I agree with you about Portugal too. In fact, the highest concentration of the Atlantic Modal Haplotype occurs in Portugal. But Sykes mentions Iberia and Spain in his book, not Portugal. Of course Portugal is in Iberia.
In any case Wiki rules are very simple:
We are supposed to add material produced by different authorities, if possible informing about different points of view, if that is the case, not delete different points of view of authorities in the field.
Veritas et Severitas 20:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
great now you can post this book review in all the other british and irish peoples sections. perhaps you could extract some statistical data and facts from the book to give brian sykes words more weight.
Alun, have you really read the book? Sykes explains why he uses the term Celt. You can call him confused, but not me. I am just trascribing statements:
Page: 287.
Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is stubbornly Celtic, if by that we mean descent from people who were here before the romans and who spoke a Celtic language.
But obviusly I do not think that I have to transcribe the entire book. I trust that you can read English well. You continue to cling to the idea that most Britons come from the Mesolithic inhabitans of the Island that arrived there 10.000 years ago (that also originated in Iberia). No, there is a more recent connection to Spain (through the Atlantic Chromosome and other markers) which are not in the rest of Europe in the same way, and not only to the Basque country, very strong also to the rest of western Spain and Portugal, were samples have been taken, far away from the Basque country. But as I said, I think that you can read yourself what I have posted above and the entire book.
So, what is your position now, let me see:
1. Articles are not reliable, we must see the book.
2. Now we see the book but it is not reliable either.
What is reliable for you?
By the way, also transcribing from the back cover of the book:
In a unique first, Bryan Sykes is simultaneoulsy publishing the detailed genetic results that led to his conclusions on the internet at www.bloodoftheisles.net
You know what? this is not new information, but Sykes has written extensively about it in a book. No other contribution has provided more proof than this one in this article. Read the book well, Sykes elaborates well on the ocean going theory, not just by a couple of guys, but for centuries. As you said, Wiki is not the world according to you, me or anyone else. I introduce a theory that is already being known by a lot of people and conclusions drawn by authorities in the field, not by me, you or any user here. The fact that you, me or my brother do not agree with these authorities has not much value here. If you know of other authorities that state that Sykes's research and conclusions on this issue are not good, cite them. You should know better how Wiki works.
Your positions are not acceptable. They go against all Wiki principles. I will post my contribution because it has the same right or even more than all the others. I have already provided more than reasonable and reputable evidence. And do not come again with the Sykes-is-no-good thing, etc. No one can take anyone else seriously anymore down that road. None of us can play the role of the Supreme Censors of the Inquisition Tribunal, deleting and thus hiding points of view of authorities in the field. Veritas et Severitas 18:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
In any case this is my last contribution here and in Wiki. Sorry, but this is not serious enough for me. Goodbye. Veritas et Severitas 21:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Over at Welsh people there's been some dismay expressed on the talk page about the dominance of arguments about what the genetic work actually means. I've been thinking about this a bit and my conclusion is as follows (from talk:Welsh people):
I think this section is impossible to verify to everyones satisfation, so I propose we use an alternative section or sections. I'd suggest we have a section entitled Contributing ethnic groups where we can list the ethnic groups that have contributed to English identity. I think it would be much easier to verify that Anglo-Saxons, Danish-Vikings, Ancient-Britons, Normans etc. all made a contribution to English culture and society, and contributed to the ethnic group we now recognise as English. It could also be argued that more recent groups have also contributed to English identity, for example Pakistani, Indian and West Indian people, but that's another issue.
If we included something like this I think we could also include a section like Derivative ethnic groups, with groups that English people have contributed to, like Australian peple, North American people etc. Just a thought.
Thirdly we could have a set of groups that are associated or similar in some way, call it something like Socially and culturally similar groups, we couls include people like Irish people in this group.
I think that talk of Frisians and Dutch more accurately belong on the Anglo-Saxons page. No one knows the aetiology of the Anglo-Saxons, and any discussion of such belongs on their page, not here. Alun 11:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Look at the article on the Frisian language, and you will see why people here wish to single the Frisians out in this way. English and Frisian are the only two surviving Ingaevonic languages. Here's a perfectly good English sentence: "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Friese." This means the same, and is pronounced the same, in Frisian (in which, however, it is spelt: Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is guod Ingelsk en guod Frysk.).
You keep talking about Germanic Protestantism, but I must inform you that when the Anglo-Saxons came to England they were Pagans - unlike most of the other Germanic tribes who settled in the Roman Empire, who had already been Christianised. This is presumably one of the main reasons why they did not assimilate to the local Roman culture, unlike in the rest of the former empire. Today, England is one of the most secular societies on earth. The distinction between Protestants and Catholics is meaningless in a country where only about 2 percent of the population are practicing Christians. You keep saying things about England that are simply untrue. Have you ever even been here?
By the way, I think Alun's suggestion for the info boxes is a very good one. TharkunColl 08:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I fail to see how any of this is relevant to improving the article. Éponyme, you keep making historical and political allusions, but this article is about ethnicity. One of the reasons for replacing the related ethnic groups section was to dispence with idea of relatedness. You have asked that we provide evidence of the relatedness of Frisian culture to that of English culture, but we don't need to because we are no longer claiming a relatednss. Now we claim that there are similarities between English and Frisian peoples because their languages are similar. We can claim linguistic similarities without claiming relatedness for the people. So Frisians can go in, with a footnote simply stating that Frisian is the continental language that is most similar to English, and for this reason Frisians can be considered ethnically similar. Language is a component of ethnicity, all we are claiming is that some component of Frisian ethnicity (language) is similar to some component of English ethnicity, we are not claiming ethnic relatedness. Alun 10:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
It's presumably a question of time. When did English ethnicity begin? That's a question that's just as impossible to answer as the one you're posing. TharkunColl 11:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's come to some consensus. If English people must stand apart from British people, then I hereby endorse his proposal above. England is usually described of as formed by waves of peoples and being the parent nation of colonial nations or peoples, which is exactly how Alun framed it (pun intended). Personally though, I would tweak the genetic component: ( Romano-British only if including Wales--e.g. England and Wales, because Brittany was founded for a reason,) Anglo-Saxons (includes the Danes), Normans (includes Scandinavians in general), Franks (Angevins). Those latter three are on the Royal Website: Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Angevins. Thereafter, it becomes partisan with Lancastrian/Yorkist/Tudor and future dynasties. I really feel that Angevin is an ethnic component, just as Norman is. After all, England was cut off from France when the Angevins changed their association to be a family business (Plantagenets were a combination of all three heritages, in succession just as English people are today). I would say that the time between Offa and John (30 monarchs) was what defined English people genetically (who among us cannot count non-Norman French {Flemish, Breton, Frankish etc.} ancestors from the Mediaeval period, or a Huguenot ancestor from the Enlightenment period?), the time between Henry III and Elizabeth I (17 monarchs) shaped English people sociopolitically (right, left and centre). Just IMHO. Éponyme 13:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I removed this part; 'However, the United States may actually have the largest number of English people. In the 1980 census, 50.6 million Americans claimed to have English ancestry.' In England Americans calling themselves English would be thought of as a)laughable, b)offensive, or c)displaced Europeans trying to create themselves an ethnicity. Basically, Americans wouldn't be considered English in England, and as this article is about the people in England their views would override American ones. SynthesiseD 11:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm one of those Americans who filled in "English" under ancestry/ethnicity in the 2000 census. (Actually, I filled in a series of several hyphenated terms, but the Census Bureau only tabulates the first word of the answer, so I was counted as "English".) Putting "English" first in the list was at least slightly arbitrary (since my known ancestors seem to have come from all over northern and western Europe), but my father's line is English, as were a significant fraction of my known ancestors, so I did it -- without wishing to make any attempt whatsoever to claim British citizenship, or an intimate knowledge of English culture. AnonMoos 19:32, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Either "American"/"Canadian" are recognised as valid ethnic groups of their own and that should be especially true in the "American" case, or we are a case of Yugoslavia. Please, why don't everybody sit down and come to consensus?! Either the creoles who founded America as an ethnic mixture of all the UK nations, including the Dutch (New Amsterdam) and Swedish (New Stockholm) colonial additions is a legitimate "peoplehood", or we just inherit our Balkanised heritages and live polyglot all about the States. I want a resolution, because this unclarified matter makes me steamed. Since when in history did ethnicities stop forming?!
On the one hand, I am "denied" ethnic American status by immigrants who come and say they are exactly (or even more) American compared to my Jamestown and Plymouth ancestors, on the other I am denied being considered British by my closest relatives outside the bounds of my country. On the one hand, I don't give a crap what immigrants have to judge about my Founding Father heritage and on the other, I would not want to be associated with the post-Stuart government and social atmosphere of the United Kingdom. I don't give a crap for reciprocation from hostile forces, whom have no interest in my feelings or security. The Anglosphere alliance we keep is a sham if you treat us like this and immigration needs to stop if Americans are not afforded proper respect in their own country. I myself consider the American government to be the right one to succeed the British failure. That is my honest opinion and I don't care if it "offends" your Uber-Protestant establishment!
The reason why we have so many Italians and Germans, is because of the Jacobite successors in Sardinia, Modena, Bavaria and now Liechtenstein. Americans have an unofficial connection to that line. As far as I am concerned, our experience is as a dynastically splintered country. You who love to pride on British contributions to our monstrous success ought to not talk down to us or face more lively Independence Day celebrations. Yeah, we got our Thomas Paine and most of the remaining Founder influence from the UK. That doesn't mean we salute an illegal succession and the tyranny of landlords, who conspired towards the most cruel ends of the general UK population, that either left or were evicted from their lands to make their way here. Screw your Clearances and theft of private property in the name of your self-righteous political cliques, your Parliamentary standard! Screw your arrogance to still talk down to our liberty!
Éponyme 15:56, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Points well taken from each and every one of you, but I digress for the sake of one more argument: Jews and their take on ethnicity. If the Jews can get away with it, why cannot I or you? Their nation refuses to recognise actual borders and all that jazz. They anachronistically adhere to the belief that they are citizens of Judea, even though that state disappeared so long ago. There is also a madman who thinks that the Jutes suffered an ethnic cleansing from the Saxons, while there are equally odd folks who think that Jutes still exist as a viably real group. On the whole, what one is called or how one deems himself can't change who they genetically are.
For myself, the Royal Arms of Canada pretty much sums up my most recent European heritage (the UK arms don't have France). Then again, the American arms evoke an earlier era when the Roman eagle stood for a state that combined lots of peoples I count as ancestral in some distant way or another (why list them all, one by one?). Where does one draw the line? I think that Roman (and the previous Greek) identity is pretty much inclusive ethnically for Whites in general, more representative in a racial sense. Then that means we pretty much all hold to the Greco-Roman experience as a combiner of our heritage and what largely and mostly distinguishes us from other races of the Earth. How would one address their Mediaeval and Classical ancestral heritage, that goes all over the map from dynastic connections? For myself, only the four countries represented in the Canadian arms (England, Scotland, Ireland, France) actually stir up sentiment. The American arms are very broad; Roman eagle (for Whites) and Egyptian pyramid (apparently for the Blacks), making it hard to feel relativistic or regional because of the racial component. Perhaps that is why we made arms, tartans, flags, flowers, etc. for each state.
I consider America to be a splinter country from Britain (and which is why we should associate with Brussells through London), but on a superior level more approximate to European Union status. The 13 original states provided their own quasi-ethnic status. In that case, I would be Virginian. That is how we largely deemed ourselves, before the Civil War and massive immigration to our country. Now, we are no longer "13 ethnicities" (Virginians, New Yorkers, Georgians, Pennamites, Rhode Islanders etc) but "Americans" as opposed to the various immigrants with their own diverse origins. The Founding Fathers had a "Continental" government, which meant we were trying to universalize our status in much the same way the Roman institution did (and still does with the Papacy). Could it be possible to say that Americans are a new race, with thirteen ethnicities? It's all about social structure.
For the record, I did try to get some folks to understand that there is such a thing as an American people (we are creoles) distinct from newcomers who've come here since Independence and distinct from their ancestors' homeland. Since the driving force against me was largely from immigrant/hyphenated American Wikipedians who entered via Ellis Island as opposed to Jamestown or Plymouth, I was beaten down completely. They wanted to say that the Indians were more American, which is insulting to both parties. Indians have their sovereign tribal nations and I have America with the capital that is Washington, D.C. I compared our situation as Americans vis a vis Britons with the Roman offshoot of Greece, but they had no clue as to the idea of it all. They called the Founding Fathers ignorant and hyphenated Americans, which is what has prompted me to join the discussion above. There needs to be a settlement and recognition here.
Most hatred for American culture, from those citizen or resident here, come from immigrants and their descendents. That means we have an indigenous culture, not related to the Indians either. Why some can't fathom this, I attribute to the sad state of our identity politics to Marxists and their war on our educational system.
Éponyme 18:30, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
"A man can be born in a stable, and yet not be an animal." - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Epf 05:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen expressed here on Wikipedia. How old are you? My family has been in America since the 1600s and fought in every U.S. war since the Revolutionary War. To say "there is no unified American ethnic group" is beyond comprehension to me. We understand that 4 centuries ago, our ancestors came here from Scotland, England, Ireland, France, etc. but we no more consider ourselves to be "ethnically" Scottish or English than Bantu or Chinese. We don't go around sporting kilts, tossing cabers, drinking wiskey, eating haggis or yearning to frollick in the heather by the loch. We eat hot dogs, watch football (that's the NFL, not soccer), play baseball, fly the stars and stripes, spell "labor" without a "u", wear jeans, chew Skoal, listen to Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen, drive big (American) cars, shun public transportation, embrace capitalism, defeat communism and socialism, cherish our 2nd ammendment right to bear firearms, raise our children to work hard, celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree and Santa Claus, celebrate Easter in church and with the Easter Bunny at home, and watch NASCAR after church on Sundays. We are Americans. You're right, "much of who we are is about where we come from" and I come from Stockton, California, USA; my father came from Stockton, California, USA; my grandfather came from Broken Bow, Oklahoma, USA; my great grandfather came from Cove, Arkansas, USA; my great-great grandfather came from Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. That is who I am. I am an American, ethnically and nationality. I suggest that, before you make comments like that, you grow up a little, turn off your TV and get outside of the insulated big-city and see the "real" America.-- User:WilliamThweatt 03:37, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Americans have diverse origins like every other people in the world, but modern Americans and Canadians share a de facto ethnicity and cultural identity which every foreigner to that country recognizes. North Americans are far more distinct as an ethnic group than Austrians, who are no more a distinct sub-group of Germans than Bavarians or Saxons. Americans are certainly not English though. Yes, this is not the 19th century. The USA has been an independent state since the 18th century. Ethnicities don't come from the tower of babble, they are produced by political, social and other circumstances over time. And yes I have lived in the USA; I went to college there. User:Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 02:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Cheers, Alun 10:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
One more point, the infobox refers to Contributions from and Contributions to. The wording deliberately ommited mention of the term ethnic group. The reason for this is that the Romano-Britons/ Ancient Britons are not universally regarded as a single ethnic group. The same applies to Anglo-Saxons. These are often regarded as collective terms refering to several ethnic groups that have some similarities. The same applies to the Contributions to section, some people clearly see Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders etc. as ethnic entities, granted their ethnicity has a cultural and social foundation, but this is not unique or even new. Other people do not recognise these groups as ethnic groups. So it seems reasonable not to refer to them as such. But I do think that it is clear that these entities represent populations that are greater than the sum of their parts, they are not just a group of unrelated ethnic groups that happen to occupy the same geographical area, this is a gross misrepresentation and seems to be Epf's default position. There is an Australian identity and an American identity, and this is clearly not an artificial construct, or at least no more artificial than any other ethnic identity. Alun 05:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Alun, I think it is a strange case. Why should ex-British polities recognise their parent entity, but have no reciprocal affection? As you well know, international policies are aimed at our Anglosphere's survival. I would say that we tend to stand together, regardless of the divisions which have accumulated over time. It is obviously not the same as having Imperial Troops quartered in every outpost, or colonial viceroys born in London. That was the old way. The British don't want to be seen as the figurehead of any colony that refuses to let them have actual power. The British therefore, are bitter at the thought of colonists nuzzling up to them. They feel insulted to have been attacked for constitutional issues of independence, only to have the colonists try and warm back up with the home country.
Epf, you must know that Americans have been sovereign for all intents and purposes. Canada is a "half-ass" version of America. We Americans have held colonies of our own, so it makes no precise sense to say that we are merely English. In fact, the White and Black races each have pre-eminence in America. Our apartheid system was not so much about denying Blacks a place here, but maintaining separate identities within our inclusive nation. There are two parent nations for this country; UK and Liberia (an anachronistic, but well intentioned point). Liberia is an approximation for all the Africans that arrived here in the Triangular Trade. America is an imperial outfit of its own, the original 13 states having held their own colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains but east of the Mississippi River. America's federal government also held imperial jurisdiction over the Philippines (even a Governor-General) and Cuba, whilst we inherit the former countries of Texas and Hawaii. There is nothing comparable in Canada's case, or indeed for any other former UK offspring.
Éponyme 11:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
These governments obviously assert that there are ethnicities accompanying their countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Canadianethnicities2.png
Éponyme 11:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This web page shows the original seal of the United States, which included symbols for Holland and Germany, in addition to those symbols used presently in Canada's royal arms. Éponyme 14:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah man, but one can be "American" and also something else, you forget that the people in these stats could answer more than once. Most of those who said American or Canadian also said something else. WTF does it matter tho, I mean none of these sources exactly spell out what the heck a "Canadian" or "American" is or if an ethnic group like that even exists. Later, 69.157.105.101 06:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you feel this way. Éponyme 07:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I've corrected the figure of c.60% for the more accurate of c.70% for R1b haplogroup (Paleolithic substrate). 60% is true only in the more "Nordicied" areas of Eastern England. (Source: [33]). -- Sugaar 15:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Please cite that claim! Is it related to the East India Company?
You know, we often focus too much on the Old World people in the Old World and the New World. It would be interesting if somebody included Pocahontas as a New World visitor to the Old World, just for trivia's sake. After all, I don't want to have a blind eye to such things. I don't know what article that would belong to, apart from her and John Rolfe's biographies. Éponyme 18:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What Chinamen are you referring to? Éponyme 19:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
According to its own article, the British East India Company was founded on December 31, 1600 - which is, of course, the 16th century (the very last day of it). This company must have employed Indians in some capacity, even at its London HQ. Therefore, there were Asians in England in the 16th century. TharkunColl 23:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the fault might be with me. This is actually cited, so it seems odd to request a cite. The article cited is Asian and Black History in Britain 1500-1850, which is a UK government site. The article states There were many Asian and Black people living in Britain throughout the period covered by this exhibition (1500-1850). Looking at the article in a bit mare detail it states It seems that between 1500 and 1850 there were not as many people of Indian as of African descent in Britain. So I'll change it to read There has also been a very small Black presence in England since at least the 16th century and an Indian presence since the mid nineteenth.. Is this better? Alun 05:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
This might help!
About 34,000 people in Cornwall and 3,500 people in the rest of the UK wrote on their census forms in 2001 that they considered their ethnic group to be Cornish. This represented nearly 7% of the population of Cornwall and is therefore a significant phenomenon.
The source is from Cornish ethnicity data from the 2001 Census Malcolm Brown Cornwall County: [ [34]]
Bretagne 44 17:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
What is 7% of Cornwall compared to the UK, or England itself? Éponyme 02:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The current citation for Cornish people is pathetic, it has no authority whatsoever. This does not constitute a
reliable source, it appears to be a blog set up by an annonymous person. Didn't we used to have an interview with a proper historian here somewhere? It's good to finally get a published source for the data regarding Cornish response for the 2001 census. The Office for National Statistics did a pathetic job with regard to ethnicity in the last census. Let's hope they allow a tick box for everyone next time. As for considering one's ethnic group to be Cornish, this does not preculde them from also being English. Ethnic identity, especially in Great Britain is rarely exclusive, many people who think of themselves as ethnically Cornish may also think of themselves as ethnically English. One can have a multiplicity of ethnicities, and we all have many identities that we carry arround with us. I'm Welsh and I'm Brtish and I'm European. I think we need to mention this in the Unifying into a people section, here we can note Cornwall's different status, especially that the Cornish language continued to be used long after political and ethnic unification of the rest of England, and that a growing minority of people in Cornwall primarily identify as Cornish and not English. I think we need to be ballanced, we should make it clear that the vast majority of people in Cornwall see themselves as English.
Alun 05:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If anybody knows why Claret is also called Bordeaux and is so popular in England, then perhaps we should include Basques (e.g. Piers Gaveston). Basques entered English society at the same historic time as the Irish. I also find it odd that Normans should get monolithic mention, without Brittany. The Duchy of Brittany was a feudal subdomain of English Kings from the Norman Conquest until the 16th Century, in one capacity or another. Aside from that, we all know the British (Welsh) connection that practically makes them who they are by definition. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon has a flag and coat of arms which match English ethnic cousins on the Continent, because virtually all of New France was founded by those "Frenchmen" once under English yoke (north and west coasts of "France"). England's arms supposedly include Aquitaine and Gascony as well as the well-known Normandy, but omit Brittany just as Ireland was ommitted (Wales still is, of course). Shouldn't these ancient seals of the state have more relevance than the new fusion with the Scots, because the Normans succeeded to an Anglo-Saxon (Mercia-Wessex, in Winchester) state after all and that was it?
IMHO:
All of these domains were of great post-Conquest importance, with added Scotland under Stuarts. The union of the crowns under James (after the Tudor-Habsburg struggle) marked the divergence of a merely English people and it is from there, that a new British people was formed with participation in the Dutch and German dominions. As far as I know and now think, the new "British people" is mostly a network of upper class/parliamentary aristocrats and their personal heritage.
I am proud to sport a 1/8th Aquitainian (although Huguenot) ancestor (one great grandparent, the other "French" one is Norman and Catholic). I don't know further genealogy to find a recent Parisian (non-London) French (what is called France, but has English character) ancestor. You know what side this ancestor would have fought on if Buckingham's war with France got serious. This opens up a window to the past glories of the Angevin Empire for me because although I sport a Scottish colonial American wife, my own specific heritage does not leave the bounds of the three leopards of the Plantagenet dominions.
What some people should look at, is the French Wars of Religion maps. Huguenots are numerous in Aquitaine/Gascony and Toulouse, both former Angevin areas. One wonders if this Protestantism is an Albigensian Crusade relic, an Arian Visigothic vs Catholic Frankish relic or both combined with a culture of English resistance to the Capetians in the Hundred Years' War.
Also, if mentioning the Danes we shouldn't neglect the Norwegians (Manx people). I think the Royal Website summarizes our English ethnic roots by explaining them dynastically and the personal unions that encouraged a compatible mix of people. That is why I believe the "French people" are reasonably well related; to nitpick or split hairs on it is just ridiculous.
One wonders if we should not include these people as the related ethnic group called French, or should not include them as part of the constituent English people themselves.
Éponyme 09:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
stop being so rude please, nobody will take your opinions seriouslt if you abuse users like that.
-- Globe01 12:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok ive noticed someone has added a related ethnic groups page to the english but what is the point in having these related ethnic groups.
The most genetically similar set of peoples to the english are the belgians as it happens, yet they are not mentioned in related ethnic groups.
Cultrally speaking, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Northern Irish could all be considered candidates in terms of cultural similarities to the english.
linguistically, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, People from many of the Carribean Islands all speak very similar to english english as their first language. Dutch is also considered to be very similar to the english language.
As you can see we have a problem.
Ethnicity has many different meanings, involving genetics, culture and self identity and language.
The problem is that some groups of peoples share one type of ethnic link to the english but do not have other type of ethnic links to the english.
Therefore a related ethnic groups sections is pointless
Instead it would be much more appropriate to include:
A related linguistic groups secion
A related cultural groups sections
And if it is really felt essential by others, a related genetic groups section. -- Globe01 15:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
==
No the belgians and the dutch are genetically very similar to the english, I cannot find the url with the evidence now but if i find it at some time i will post it. Dutch is also more similar to english than german and dutch is probably the third most similar language to english so dutch should be included in some kind of related ethnic or linguistic groups section.
-- Globe01 15:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If you can find evidence that an American ethnic group doesn't exist, then this can be included also.
-If you can find one that really says a "Canadian" or American" one does exists, I'd give you money guy. I aint sayin they is a group that sees themseveles as this and are of a certain background, but there is no canadian or american group in those words. How can one person consider himself an ethnic "American", but one person who is a native american (example, a Sioux) and has a culture and background they can follow here for many centuries still make the distinction between them and other Americans ? This is my damn point, like its fuckin ignorant for someone to say they are just "American" or "Canadian" and ignoring the hundreds of diffrent backgroudns and cultures of everyone here who can also be canadians and americans. Only New World countries can call themselves to be actual countries of immigrants and our own (dumbass) President just said wes a "nation of immigrants." [37] I am 1/4 Sioux and I fuckin hate how our land became this with native peoples getting the shaft, but what are ya gonna do.
There is for sure the biology and upbringing one's parents give, but it would be incorrect to assume that the way your parents bring you up is the same way that they were bought up
-it would be incorrect to also say that there aint alot of similarities in the way they is brought up and the way your were brought up. Some peeps pass down more of their aspects of their proud culture and ethnicity to the next generation (eg. native Irish, Greeks, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Asians), some less so (eg. people from the UK in North America) but the core things like behaviour and the biological parts remain. Even for whats learned, alot of what we are is from the childhood upbringing (especially very early childhood).
But Epf has also used descent to mean the common origins of a whole population, these are clearly disstinct deffinitions of descent
-maybe, but when Epf, you or anyone is speakin on these common backgrounds, you are speakin of the common descent part of ethnicity and when a people has this, it includes the different types of thigns that come with it (like behavoiur, like physical appearance and like your "blood"/genetics). Most people know its not just about knowing the descent in ethnicity, its also the things that come with it. This is from William Z. Ripley, even thoug hes talkin on race:
"Race, properly speaking, is reponsible only for those peculiarities, mental or bodily, which are transmitted with constancy along the lines of direct physical descent from father to son. Many mental traits, aptitudes, or proclivities, on the other hand, which reappear persistently in successive populations may be derived from an entirely different source. They may have descented collaterally, along the lines of purly mental suggestion by virture of mere social contact with preceding generations."
As for the source from the List of Canadians by ethnicity site, it says "canadian" was only first asked in 2001 and anyways, only 6,748,135 answered "canadian" as a single answer, IF they understood the question right (I still think these people would make other distinctions, especially if they are native). I think Canada has a population of like 32 million, so this means most of them (26 million) would still identify with their ancestry outside of canada. This is the same in my country (only 20 million answered "American" as a single answer out of like 285 million people). Those who are native peoples of the americas, we are the real deal, we are the real "Americans and "Canadians".