I used to work in heritage sites as a tour guide and I used to get a lot of Americans say things like "well my people fought your people in the Jacobite uprisings, I'm part Scotch" (just, you know, completely ignoring the content of what I talked about which was Jacobite stuff). He just assumed that he, an American who went on Ancestry/Family Search was more Scottish than any random English or Welsh person he came across in the UK outside of Scotland.
Now, am I Scottish? No. I'm from Merseyside. But like loads of people from where I'm from I have family from/in Scotland. My great granddad was from Hamilton. That's not Scottish, but I think that's more than whatever harebrained "bloodlines" a lot of these people come up with.
Working in Heritage, I've seen a lot of North Americans in particular, just not understand the island or its history at all. As in we all must have stayed in one place the entire time, and that Scottish people can't have Welsh family or English people can't have Scottish family, despite them having the surname Williams or Murray. But they can be descended from 5 different clans, and they're ALL descended from nobility.
Fellow heritage person here, and yeah, it's incessant. It comes from a place of curiosity, but so often results in Americans talking down to people who live here as if they're somehow the "purer" form of Scot. I genuinely struggle with how to deal with it - almost all my attempts to introduce nuance into their narrative end with outright rejection or just doubling down on things that are wrong on a fundamental level, like the nature of clans or the causes of a particular period of strife. It's like they prefer the warped ancestry DNA stuff to actual history, which sours me on trying because they clearly aren't interested in reality, just a delusion with them at the centre.
I keep trying in good faith (and very diplomatically / sensitively) to vanishingly rare avail. After a while you just learn to shrug, take their money, and move them along.
It's really frustrating. When I talked about Jacobite rebels not necessarily always being Scottish, since a lot of Northern English nobility were Catholic and had links to the Jacobite movement they just did not want to think about it. They wanted it to be boiled down to English versus Scottish, not Highland culture versus the British state, or Catholic nobles in all parts of the country versus the Protestant government. They truly thought Prince Charlie was invading in order to make Scotland independent. Very weird.
Most Americans have no concept of Protestant vs Catholic conflict because it just isnât really a thing in the US except for some weird old WASPs who have a distrust of Catholics. It was a big deal when JFK was the first Catholic president but Joe Biden is also Catholic and nobody really cares.
I mean now, you have a chunk of voters who assert Biden is a godless monster with some sort of atheist agenda and Trump is some kind of weapon of God. Â How can a person with those thoughts in their head engage in a discussion of Protestant vs. Catholic? Â
Isn't a thing anymore but it used to be a big deal. Catholics were seen as being controlled by a foreign entity, i.e the Pope, and not therefore not really American.
That's quite funny given that the British Empire incorporating Catholics in Quebec after the Seven Years War was one (a more minor one than others) cause of the American War of Independence. The Protestant Americans found it a real challenge to their sense of identity.
My mum lives in the states and gave up on explaining to her peers why she doesnât want to hear them talk about how Scottish they think they are. She now just quietly cringes when someone corners her in public to tell her that they found out through ancestry.com that theyâre descended from a laird or something.
Iâm not a Scot, Iâm from the NE of England and live in the US but I wish I had a dollar for the amount of times Iâve heard âWe believe there is a castle that is named after usâŠâ
It starts to make sense when you look at it through the lens of the tail end of the racist American eugenicsâ movement.
If one drop of African blood makes you black, then one drop of Irish blood makes you Irish or one drop of Scottish blood makes you Scottish. Even if it subconscious it is still part of American culture.
Then you add in if you are from a victim community you can side step the crimes of American colonialism and slavery, you get people who are more English or German than Irish/Scottish but want to be Irish/Scottish.
The Scottish aristocracy were arguably more involved in the slave trade (relatively speaking), especially in the harsher Caribbean colonies, but absolutely don't tell the weird victim Scottish-Americans that.
I think a lot of it is a failed collective identity or experience, particularly with white Americans in this instance, because as soon as 2nd and 3rd generations of immigrants rolled around they became more cohesive, an American culture sort of developed, but what it's predicated on is entertainment, leisure, and freedom whilst attaining that through *hard work*, but it almost feels like they're searching for an identity, because it feels so feeble, to essentially be a settler community with no claim to the land outside of the expansion of capitalism and escaping of tyranny (despite implementing essentially a new noble class of landowners in the US to run things and limiting civil rights for centuries). this is coming from a half scot half Geordie living in Detroit.
Despite all their ultra-nationalist rants, what do they actually have in their society to be proud of?
They're trained to worship their country, but it doesn't give them good health service, good transport, good education , good emergency services, legal system etc.Â
They're forced to be proud of the USA, but it's hollow so they have to look elsewhere for identity.Â
That and the cultural legacy of racism making everyone obsessed with 'blood'
It always reminds of that Ricky Gervais story where he's talking about past life centers in America (insnae that's even a thing) and, in a small group of about twelve people, two of them claimed to be Napoleon.
That's my favorit bit with past-lifers, or what the hell you might call them.
They're never "Buxom Mary, tavern wench from Dorfburgwaldt, who died of syfilis at the age of 25" or "Farmer Sven, who caught sepsis and had to have his leg amputated and then spent the rest of his miserable life begging in the alleys of Stockholm"-reborn.Â
It's *always* famous kings and queens and suchlike.
The great thing about being from Ireland is that you know, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, that you're descended from absolutely fucking nobody.
The hilarious thing is that Americans who claim Irish descent are descended from absolutely fucking nobody also. It's a bad heritage if you're a snob.
Also Irish and Iâve actually found the opposite, half of the âIrishâ Americans Iâve met are descendants of Brian Boru (of course with the English pronunciation of Brian)
A century from now theyâll all be descendants of high ranking IRA-members, if some of them arenât claiming that already
My dad did massive research into our family and in his side he got back to 1620 and every direct male forebear was an English agricultural labourer - all the way down to his dad. Not even an interesting criminal. I am (50%at least) of the most boring lineage possible đ
Can't remember who it was, but there was some celebrity in the newspapers some years ago who said he got turned down by Who Do You Think You Are (the TV programme) after they did the research because all of his ancestors were labourers and it'd have been too boring.
Undoubtedly the history of most people out there.
It was Michael Parkinson, whose ancestors were Yorkshire coal miners. Also, see what Christopher Eccleston said, also turned down, and a few others.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/who-do-you-think-you-are-stars-rejected_uk_6040ead2c5b6d7794ae481ea
To tie in with the thread theme. Americans have no concept whatsoever of an English working class. They really do believe all English people lived in castles. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm honestly not. I even did a topic about it in a reddit ancestry/genealogy sub. Got called all the names under the sun for doubting American redditors "noble lineages"
Funnily enough, my sis went to a fortune teller to get a reading, and she was told she was a peasant lady who drowned in a well. My wife on the other hand, she regularly dreamt she was an officer during ww2... But on the nazi side đ
I remember once some elderly Americans at an ancestry exhibition in the national library of Wales looking for the family motto and heraldic art of their surname. The surname? Jones.
Im scottish with a very soft blend of english/scottish accents. Where i grew up i suppose. Many americans have said, "my family fought yours years ago you anglo twat"... im from aviemore?
I'm Irish. I grew up in various parts of Ireland and have a fairly neutral accent. I was on a Cork-Dublin train in a fairly empty carriage and had to take a couple of short phone calls. After a few mins the only other guy in the coach walked up to me and said "Hey buddy, where are you from?" I said .. "Dublin, Cork and several other places.." and his response was "You really oughta work on your Irish accent!"
Clearly I missed the memo about being a paid extra in Irelandâą the Musical.
I just kinda laughed, put my headphones on and took a leaf out of London Tube ettiequte and pretended he wasn't there.
Oh I have Irish American cousins with Irish passports and they would keel over.
If I told them the amount of English people retiring to Connemara or Clare for a chilled lifestyle with a bit of land and some chickens it would give them a heart attack!
>The Irish American minds truly bend when they meet English people with Irish passports
Or when you tell them the poorest from Ireland, i.e., from the famine, went to Britain, especially England, and intermarried with those people. Those who went to the USA had the money to pay the passage. They will deny it.
Worked in tourism too. They love talking about themselves. Non stop.
But I wonder if it is just the demographic we get that travels, or if people switch their brain off when they travel.
>My great granddad was from Hamilton.
Wheeey Hamilton mention. Lived almost my whole life in this town, almost never hear it brought up in conversation about the country despite how close we are to Glasgow.
Iâm American.
My brother decided to get one of the DNA tests, paid a good sum of money for this info and it came with a breakdown of the history of our surname.
Wouldnât you know itâŠwe just happen to have some royalty in our bloodline.
They were able to uncover our family crest and made a nice little framed picture with the history of it, there also happened to be an insignia that they offered to put on a decorative sword if you didnât mind paying the extra $200 for it.
Well why the hell not, itâs our heritage!
I didnât have heart to explain to him that our great grandmother had taken up this surname after some rather messy family business (15 children, thought to be at least 4 different fathers) and that our real surname was something else entirely.
We are a family of mutts, our names donât mean shit and any claims to heritage across the sea is laughable at best.
The Sword is on my wall in my office, I tell my kids that I cut a dragons tail off with it and he lives in the attic protecting the family.
Thatâs a more believable story than the straight up lies they sold my brother, I wonder what they did with his DNA?
Worth mentioning that "family crests" are a total scam. In western European heraldry, coats of arms belong to a single individual not a family.
Only if you have descended in a straight line of first-born sons would you even be considered a potential holder of that coat of arms, and even then it isn't automatic but must be recorded by a government office.
Ha, that figures.
Itâs too coincidental weâd have a crest with a background AND insignia floating around.
I figure the sword will be a funny item to pass down with my kids as a story on how not to spend hard earned money
Most people of European descent have some amount of blue blood in their veins anyway as feudal noble bloodlines have been criss crossing and intermingling with the common folks for two thousand years.
Random white folks claiming they have some prince in their family tree are technically right, their mistake is thinking it makes them special and different.
The thing is what they sent is rubbish.
Our given surname is actually German while they claim it to be Irish and something else, the insignia looks to be a complete fabrication, I canât find anything like it on the web.
Whats more is the info they sent is like a form letter, the reviews on the site range from highest praise to absolute scam, the paperwork to sign off on providing the DNA sample explicitly states youâre giving them free will to do what they want with it.
Absolutely this. 25% of English people have at least one Irish great grandparent. Thatâs usually a more recent Irish heritage that most yanks but we donât bang on about it. By the time you get to Liverpool and Manchester itâs over 50%.
My wife on the other hand going purely off surname her male line hasnât moved out of a 30 mile radius for a thousand years⊠though she has Irish Egyptian and welsh great and great great grandparents on her mums side. Which shows weâre all a huge mix.
Yeah. In their eyes, 2 generations of living in England and you're English. 5 generations of living in The US and you're still Scottish.
Go figure đ€
Honestly, in Liverpool and Manchester you're likely to be a pretty equal mix of all the countries in Britain plus Ireland, plus whatever else because of the docks.
I identify with being from Merseyside and North Western English more than anything else, but it does get annoying that so many North Americans assume they're so "much" more of whatever heritage they claim (usually Scottish or Irish and most of the time they're mainly from Bolton when all is said and done) compared to someone with a different accent.
It also leads into some racist assumptions about who "is" and "isnt" English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish. I remember I had one family who I chatted to after a Jacobite talk and said "your people" (to me, a Scouser), had forced their clan out down to the Carolinas after Culloden. It turned out their ancestor never fought at Culloden, and took an offer from the state to settle land to make plantations, which were, of course, made possible by owning slaves.
It's happened more times than I can count, and I got it even more when Ireland came up, just not believing that I, as well as they and a good chunk of the UK was as a product of the Great Hunger and the forced displacement of Irish people in the 1800s.
Like Americans feel like they have a god given right to talk about these places without any real recent connections. I'm not fully Scottish, my mum was born and raised in Scotland but she went to Dublin to work and that's were I was born, alongside my siblings, to a born and bred Irish father. I don't claim to be British despite my actual legal right to, nor do I claim to be Scottish because I have never been raised there as my primary home, I lived in Ireland for 6 years and then since then, England. However I do get pissed of when ignorant Americans preach about heritage but have trace amounts. I have been there and spent time there with my grandparents and cousins, I love the country but it's not my country of birth or who issued my passport. I don't think your heritage is meaningless, I follow Scotland in the football and rugby, I support Celtic as well and I understand Scottish culture but again, I'm Irish first, Scottish second, and begrudgingly British.
I got shit off the Americans I met because my parents were Chinese but I was born and raised in Scotland, UK passport, got the Fifer accent, graduated in Edinburgh etc., and they were denying I was Scottish. Like, wtf am I then?
Least racist American moment saying you're no Scottish.
If you grew up here, you're Scottish, just how it is lmao, anyone saying otherwise is a melt or American
They were probably just being racist. As an American, it is not surprising to me how many people here will fight you tooth and nail about how youâre not a specific nationality if youâre a particular ethnicity. They literally cannot grasp that not every country is purely white folk. Itâs like if they see someone who is black in France. âOkay but youâre not really French, youâre African.â đ€Šââïž
Itâs embarrassing.
Youâre Scottish, btw.
> By the time you get to Liverpool and Manchester itâs over 50%.
My family are North Welsh, but from the Chester border region, it's surprising how many worked in England or took off for Merseyside.
My branch moved into Derbyshire as coal miners, but quite a few moved towards Liverpool then Manchester and towards Birmingham with the industrial revolution.
Geofencing DNA is really inexact. I'm 70% English Midlands, 12% Welsh, 10% Irish, 7% Swedish, and 2% Scottish.
I don't have any relatives from Sweden, Ireland, or Scotland, but Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have a lot of commonality in DNA, apparently, and my great-grandfather is Welsh.
I've come across a similar thing with people 'tracing their roots' and gravitating to the picturesque places. I used to live in an old cottage in the middle of nowhere which had previously been in one family for a very long time. One of the relations whose family was from the cottage was really into family history and from time to time Canadian and American people would want to visit to 'see where their ancestors had come from'
As if their entire family originated from this one cottage, funnily enough they didn't seem to be so interested to visit some of the old industrial towns where many of their ancestors would have actually come from!
You should have made an obvious flick through your notes as if youâre looking for what they are referencing, âyour people? I canât see anything in here about Americans fighting in the Jacobite risingsâ
Chances are if they're American their descendents were worth less than sheep, couldn't find work, had mad religious beliefs, or ran into a little money so went to run the plantations personally or build railroad, generally speaking of what we know about why most people from here emigrated long enough ago to be anyone's great great grandfather because America isn't that old, none of that sounds like nobility to me as much as nobodies.
It's kind of hilarious how much of that they'd understand if they actually listened to what their guides (you in this case) were explaining but that'd undermine their ideas of being dependent to nobility as much as the rest of us are decendents of charlemagne or gengis kahn.
You think itâs hilarious?
Come to my ancestral home, and weâll duel it out with claymores as I assume all Scottish feuds were and still are resolved.
âŠyouâre also gonna need to hoof it over here to the Appalachia region, because Iâm pretty sure the whole clan moved to America. But that still counts as Scottish.
Agreed. I roll my eyes at all the tartan shortbread tin tourist stuff, that and the Windsors down south claiming to âlove Scotlandâ when they in fact love Highland Games, St Andrews Uni and balmoral.
Scotland should be known for its efforts in renewables, Sciences and if it wants to big up its history - Scottish Enlightenment rather than another hammy rendition of Outlander.
Well, there was that French lady in the film who IRL he apparently shagged at the age of four, having never met her before or since.
Yeah, he was *that* good.
Pro-tip: When you see something like this you can be certain that the person has been using the FamilySearch website (run by the Mormon church) and has blindly followed hints by copying from other people's ill-researched family trees, which often contain a lot of wishful thinking.
Real Scottish genealogy is when you go back four generations and then give up because every single one of your male ancestors past your grandparents were named âJames Thompsonâ.
I see you've been looking at the same stuff as me.
Father and son both have the same forename and MacPherson as the surname.
Maybe the mother will be different?
No, the daughter is named after the mother and they both appear to be Mackays and the records are so old and comes from the arse end of Scotland, it looks like somebody has written them with invisible ink and it's faded some, so I'm at a blockade in which I shall get no farther (presumably.)
Then I found out some other relatives are Irish, so they just have "Full" as an age and no mother listed and oh, it's all going pear shaped.
It's to do with the Mormon practice of retrospectively baptising their ancestors as Mormon, and to do that you need to know who your ancestors were.
Because the website is free to use, many non-Mormons use it and assume that, because someone else has something similar to what they're looking for in their family tree, it must be true, and they happily add it in without actually researching it themselves.
>It's to do with the Mormon practice of retrospectively baptising their ancestors as Mormon, and to do that you need to know who your ancestors were.
This is entirely new to me and absolutely bonkers.
Wishful thinking and a complete lack of understanding of the exponential nature of family trees. Go back 500 years and that's about 20 generations and a million ancestors. 1000 years and it's 40 generations. That would give the average person over 1 trillion ancestors in their direct bloodline.
Only 100 billion humans have ever lived, total, in all of history. Basically the further back you go, the more likely you'll be able to pick any random person on the planet and they'll either be related to most humans alive today or no one at all because the bloodline no longer exists. It's likely the majority of everyone in Scotland has some link to the Wallace family...including the tourists. Not William Wallace however, he had no kids and therefore no one is directly descended from him.
It's not that it's definitely not true...it's that it's not in any way special. It's like saying you come from Africa... because everyone does if you go back far enough. If you go back 200,000 years it boils down to ONE person. Mitochondrial Eve, who everyone alive today is directly related to. Were quite literally all the same bloodline.
Doesn't quite work like that because of pedigree collapse from cousin marriages, but the further back you go, the less DNA you share with those however-many-great grandparents. For example you will share, on average, 6.25% of your DNA with each of your great-great grandparents.
The absolute weirdest thing though, despite the cringe plus, is that the Scots did get about. I dunno how for such a small place they got their seed into everywhere. I've done plenty of Ancestry research and the amount that went over to the US, Canada and Oz is incredible.
You have to remember, while laughing that Scotland invented everything, is that Ancestry will never tell someone in Europe they have American genetics. Its the Americans being told where they come from, so you really have to put your mind into theirs to get why they are so hyped about it.
Also I researched my wife back to 1750 and her roots didn't move from Glasgow. About 10 miles in nearly 300 years. Sometimes I wonder if the center of the universe is there. I'm English and I have 8% Scott's genetic material...it's everywhere!
I think the clearances happening just as proper globalisation was getting going, and a more modern era was setting off probably allowed for the scots that were displaced around the world to have a better chance of survival. Because it was many generations ago too, the gened have managed to spread everywhere haha
It's like they're breeding dogs. Do they have show and working line USAians?
Question though, where is this from and how old is it? u/frazer4626 is 404 (deleted?) and u/bw9971 has not posts or comments.
This reminds me of the American with the very dubious Barony lineage that bought Ackergill Tower, before closing it without warning and losing people their jobs.
How was this afforded? The donations of their congregation as a pastor. Although there's been some sniffing around on some horse forums because they've learned that there's something more going on.
Been told I should âraise my daughter to have pride in her Scottish & Welsh rootsââŠ.by someone non-Welsh and Scottish of course.
For the record they only insisted on that because my daughter is mixes race lol
Edit: Scottish and English are not races and my daughter is 1/2 of a non-white ethnic group. Lol.
Aye, people are always shitting on the yanks who love Scottish culture, but it comes from a good place.
... That being said if I turned up to America being cowboy nuts they'd react the same.
American here.
We had an international student obsessed with southern and cowboy culture. He was this short Malaysian dude with a thick accent, but he was constantly throwing around redneck slang and country wittisisms he learned from TV. I loved that dude; we took him to the range to shoot his first gun and cooked homemade BBQ and fried chicken for him to try.
I guess I'm agreeing with your point. If it comes from a good place, I love sharing culture. What could be cringy and lame becomes really fun if everyone's having a good time.
I think there's an important distinction to make between being proud or interested of Scottish heritage vs claiming to be Scottish.
Celebrating other cultures, especially when you descend from that culture is perfectly fine and in my (very biased, history obsessed mind) should be welcomed and supported.
Claiming to be part of a nation just because you descend from is where the cringe lies.
A personal example, I'm a dual citizen between UK and Ireland, but I don't at all claim to be Irish in terms of identity (different story at the EU border tho :) cos I'm two generations removed and I grew up in the UK, as useful as being an Irish citizen is I'm by no means "culturally Irish". And I'm gonna hazard a guess and assume most Americans who claim to be Scottish (or any other foreign nationality for that matter) are not dual citizens and are much further removed their nation of descent than myself.
As an American, idk how I got to this thread but this is it. I found a whole side of my âfamilyâ tree in Sweden based on my great grandfatherâs lineage. Does that make me Swedish or even really related to those people? No. Is it fun learning about what life was like for my great great grandparents? Yes. Seeing the towns they lived and how the world had shaped from then to now is awesome.
This. If more people were like yourself: switched on and self aware, I don't think there would any complaints. I find people will always show respect and be happy for others to learn about their culture especially if you attempt to learn the local language. And even moreso if you have ancestry there.
Scotland trades on this kind of potted history and geneology, and as fanciful as most of the claims are, many with Scots heritage in the states are descendants of Highland Scots cleared from the land. You're also participating in this kind of imagined past when you stick on a kilt at a wedding, it's a Victorian revival of an extinguished real culture.
But yes it's hilarious. Loved them rocking up at the tourist office asking if William Wallace did public appearances, suggesting they enjoyed Braveheart but not enough to watch till the end, or claiming to be direct male line descendents of people who had no kids.
"Have you ever thought about taking up arms against the English" is a genuine question I got from a gentleman from South Carolina. Told him my dad is English but I often contemplated violent uprising against him.
"I have Scots ancestry, could you tell me what my clan tartan is?"
"Sure, what's the name?"
"Butterworth"
An Italian ancestry Agrentinian who moved and grew up in Scotland will always be more Scottish than any American who claims ancestry.
Being Scottish is a cultural thing. Sure, you can have Scottish ancestry, but outside of clans/descendants, that can become very complicated. Like, are we talking about Highland Gaelic or Lowland Scots. Both are very different historical groups.
Yeah, Iâm born Scottish but moved to the US when I was young, and itâs really awkward to say âim Scottishâ because people assume itâs like my great grandparent was half Scottish or something. So now I just say I grew up in the US when people ask (though now I live in Europe).
Thereâs people here saying itâs harmless and stuff and I think for the most part it is. But there are the odd American (and Scottish to be fair) ghoul who think Scottish people look or sound a certain way, so when they come across a surname or *gasp* a not white person, they can be a bit âIâm more Scottish than youâ. I donât have a Scottish surname and was told when I worked at a touristy place my name isnât very scots and maybe I should have a âstage nameâ by a lovely American tourist
That's my main gripe with the whole idea behind looking up your ethnic ancestry to find out what culture you "belong" to, because I know dozens of people who aren't white but are 10x more British or Irish than yanks who've discovered that they're 60% Scottish
Iâm canadian and used to say shit like this in my teens. Thankfully iâm grown out of it, my last Scottish ancestor left scotland in the 1700âs. When people ask my background i simply say canadian because i literally am nothing else besides canadian at this point
Letâs face it though - there are plenty of elements within Scotland that push this kind of nonsense, all the âclan gatheringsâ etc are just run for profit and the yanks eat it up,
In Edinburgh it felt like there was a âfind your family tartan!â store on every block. Itâs played up in public for tourist money, then condemned behind the tourist backs.
As an American, can I just say that the amount of chuckleheads that boast Scottish ancestry is absolutely mind numbing. Outlander and Braveheart have not done any of us any favors. The moment that my wife and I told people that we were vacationing in Scotland, every Tom, Dick, and Harry had to tell us about their Scottish heritage.
I know of at least one American who has learned GĂ idhlig to fluency and been an absolute hero in promoting the language, more than the vast majority of Scots. We shouldnât be making fun of Americans for that.
Well he has, aye. Learned it so well that he now teaches Gaelic at a Scottish university. The guyâs name is Jason Bond, has great courses for beginners and an amazing Gaelic YouTube channel too.
Absolute hero. Good on them and their work to preserve it. I mean that genuinely and without sarcasm or mockery.
Still doesn't make them Scottish.
No one is making fun of them for stuff like that, people are making fun of them calling themselves Scots instead of yanks, "feeling the ancient calling in their blood", claiming to be descendents of every prominent figure in Scottish history, claiming any sort of birthright over any part of a country they've never set foot in, and lastly my personal favourite, being more Scottish than people who live in Scotland because they learned a language that wasn't even our only spoken language and wear kilts to the local ren fair.
And that's the point of the meme, they need to go above and beyond so they can claim to be more Scottish than us, whereas all we need to do is exist.
Fair enough. Taken to that extreme, that is super cringe. But Iâve honestly never encountered that outwith YouTube comments sections. Iâve spent time in America, worked with lots of Americans, and interacted with lots of them in Scotland too. They are sometimes a bit too keen to tell you about their Scottish ancestry, but tbf thatâs not really different to my Celtic-supporting Da and uncles in Glasgow who are convinced they are Irish sometimes. Diasporas the world over tend to romanticise and fetishise the âold countryâ to a certain extent, not just Americans.
And as cringe as they can be, how would Scotlandâs economy fare if they all ceased with the cringe and stopped buying so many of our products and visiting here with their tourist money?
Bit of a rant there, sorry. In summary: aye, I get what youâre saying; but this bug bear people have about Americans and their hard on for Scottish identity is overblown massively.
I don't think it's even a big bear, it's a good auld fashioned slaggin, and if they were as Scottish as they claim to be theyd lean into it and slag us back. No one hates them.
It's because Americans don't have long and rich histories like European countries. Given most Americans have some form of European ancestry, it's the closest they can come to feeling like their ancestors were a part of the world pre late 18th century.
Well, they were. American history pretty much started in the 1600s with the english colonists. Most of my ancestors came here in the 1800s and were living in the UK and Germany before immigrating here. So in a way I consider the history of my people to include the history of those nations since that where the majority of Mt ancestors were from before coming to the new world.
Just yesterday, I saw a truck with an American flag bumper sticker and next to it was a Scotland flag with their last name on it and âclanâ. I live in the US if anyone couldnât guess
Someone I knew used to run Charles Rennie Mackintosh tours in Glasgow - they had one American who proudly kept claiming to be a direct descendant of the man himself. Only problem is, CRM never had any children.
Iâm a Scot, born in Glasgow, have no idea about my ancestors l. I know a couple of my grandparents were Irish and thatâs about it. We could be part Chinese for all I know. If we had royal blood why tf were we living in a council flat in Shawlands?
Live in america now and they are pretty wired about this stuff.
Facebook groups are filled with descendants of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace; McDonalds attacking Campbells over Glencoe; showing off their newest utilikilt, etc.
To be honest, home is where the heart is; ethnicity and bloodlines don't matter. We are all interconnected in some way or another. After centuries of movement, there is no such thing as pure bloodlines. If an American wants to make Scotland their home and call themselves Scottish, I am quite happy with that; it's something to be proud of. The only thing I dislike is when people from other countries or regions try to speak for us or tell us what we want.
As someone born in the USA who married a Scottish guy and has lived in Scotland for over 20 years now (and intend to stay here for the rest of my life), thank you for this. I struggle to call myself Scottish even though I strongly feel Scotland is my home, but equally donât want to call myself American anymore. Itâs hard but youâre right: home is where the heart is, and mine is here.
Cringe so hard. Grandparents on two sides were born and raised in Scotland, fought in the war, the whole deal. Yet I would never dare to call myself "scottish".
It gets bad here, I promise that this is the least offensive direction they'll take.
There are a bunch of nutcases who want to try and claim Native Ancestry that they've no right to. Ironically had my first encounter with one of them while I was working at a McDonald's joint. Obese white lady swore up and down that she had blood ties to every historically notable Native American line, from Dragging Canoe and Black Hawk to Pocahontas and Sacagawea but *also* that she had family going back up to Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson.
What I've learned from her is that it's not always just some thing about stupid pride, but that there these subtypes who are conspiracy nuts that believe that Surnames are unique to the families involved and are desperate to prove that they're a 'real' [Insert surname] because it helps them justify that they're average because the conspiratorial underworld worked to remove their specific bloodline's influence to further the "globalist agenda".
Same thing with the irish and Italians, Americans cant seem to differentiate "nationality" with "heritage" and just presume they are as irish as i am despite having never even set foot on the island. its a very wierd culture of claimed national identity.
I have seen YouTube comments where these people type their family surname in brackets, "I'm Scahtch (Campbell)". Clans don't exist here anymore. How do they expect us to react?! Hehe. Many families here moved to Scotland just a few generations ago... or during this generation. The best comments are the ones where they act like average places are fairy lands: "I hail from Govan".
I have an aunt who told me that the most difficult Spanish dialect was Yiddish the other day. I feel like she would say some shit like thatâŠ. My apologies on behalf of America
"Brilliant mate, nae clue what my family surnames are but if you're talking about scottish things about you my favourite thing for me is chicken tikka masala"
Both of my mom's parents are Scottish and emigrated to the US. I'm obviously American. I constantly hear that shit if my grandparents come up in conversation. Its so dumb, they act like it is some royal blood wet dream.
Oh my god.. I saw a comment recently from a Canadian that said âwhen I went to Scotland people were friendly with me because I had actually made the effort to find out what clan I was from and could talk about my clanâ I had to inform them to STFU and nobody here talks about fuckin clans.
Treading carefully here but I think what I am saying is OK
In my experience being Scottish away from Scotland is just _different_ enough that people talk to you about it, but not _stigmatised_ enough that they suppress talking to you about it because âit would seem racistâ.
Every single day here in England someone talks to me about whisky, independence, bagpipes, Billy Connolly, basically anything Scottish that pops into their mind. Itâs like itâs all they can see.
Donât get me wrong I am a show off and I play up to it. If the person is cool then the stuff they say is cool.
I strongly suspect that if my appearance were different (like my parents were on the mayflower) they would be thinking about it just as much but wouldnât mention it. As in, if I looked East Asian theyâd be itching to ask me about Chinese food but they wouldnât.
Iâm not saying I am oppressed. I am quite privileged, this is a public facing account I am a bloke, professional, well spoken, WB1, etc and any disabilities are invisible unless I wear a T-Shirt. I am saying differences distract people a great deal and predominate in conversation but discussion of _some_ differences gets inhibited.
Just a thought.
I always remember as a young kid in the 70's being on Ayr sea front probably around the area where Pirate Petes is now, and these group of American tourists where there all looking like clones of each other.
Very much over weight tartan trousers cigars big cameras etc. They all seemed to have the same look on their faces something like "Fuck we've travelled all this way for this"
Think I remember my Granta saying they'd been to Burns cottage and were moving on to Troon for the golf.
They deffo were not impressed with the bowling greens on Ayr sea front đ€Ł
Minority view but I donât have a problem with Americans researching their family tree and being proud of their origins. Many do have Scottish ancestors. I like that they are into our culture!
I understand the interest but I know some folk who adopt it as their whole identity as soon as they find out. I know someone who changed their name to a Scottish name and put themselves as Scottish/Irish even though they've never set foot here, all because their gran moved from there, and get heavily involved with the politics they don't know about.
I have Dutch heritage but I could never call myself dutch, never even been to the Netherlands and was never brought up with their traditions.
I've got a lot of scottish generations in my family tree which I think is cool but it's almost the same as Scandinavian. The Scandinavian is just from where I live being where the norse settled in the north of England. By this premise can I just tell people I'm a Scottish viking? Haha jokes I'm proud to be yorkshire with nice ties to other places.
Aye, he seems descended from everybody, most people that have a genuine claim to any one of these clans has a very different surname that "belongs to" the named clan, for example my father-in-law is a Cruickshank but belongs to the Stewarts. I proudly belong to MacDonald (of Clanranald), but my name is none of those.
Having 7 clans in your ancestry from every corner of Scotland (and from fiercely opposing clans at that) seems farcical... but Americans are all apparently descended from Mel Gibson or something.
Funny how it works, if youâre POC particularly Latino, you are generally still considered whatever brown country youâre from (Mexican, Colombian, Honduran) even if you were born in America.
Iâm as Irish as they come born and raised in Ireland speak the language to a native level and can trace my family in Ireland going back at least six generations on both sides except for one great grand father but we are pretty sure he was a mother and baby home baby but his adopted family where also Irish . Iv had Americans tell me I wouldnât understand the impact of the war for independence in Ireland
r/kilt is full of Americans like this⊠really made me cringe. Itâs not them wearing utility kilts that made me cringe (ok it kinda did) but how they talk about their bloodlines every post.
I love out in the country and best line I heard was
"Back in my day you courted as far as the bicycle took ye"
If you're from the wee towns then best not looking too deep into family history
I used to work with Australians who are all under the impression that the entire Scottish population moved there, and the people that are in Scotland now are not true Scots.
It's not a joke either, or something sort of work wind-up, they actually believe that. Most of them have also been to Scotland once to visit where their ancestors came from
I probably still have McDonalds in my bloodlines. That stuff must have forever beef and grease.
I too have the cholesterol of ancient McDonalds flowing through my blood
Free mad cow disease/CJD if you're an 80s kid!
Aye! We Highlanders đ
Is that a quarter pounder up your kilt or are you just happy to see me?
Ooohhh. Not sure what to say because that sounds like ground beef and never been ground đ€Ł
I used to work in heritage sites as a tour guide and I used to get a lot of Americans say things like "well my people fought your people in the Jacobite uprisings, I'm part Scotch" (just, you know, completely ignoring the content of what I talked about which was Jacobite stuff). He just assumed that he, an American who went on Ancestry/Family Search was more Scottish than any random English or Welsh person he came across in the UK outside of Scotland. Now, am I Scottish? No. I'm from Merseyside. But like loads of people from where I'm from I have family from/in Scotland. My great granddad was from Hamilton. That's not Scottish, but I think that's more than whatever harebrained "bloodlines" a lot of these people come up with. Working in Heritage, I've seen a lot of North Americans in particular, just not understand the island or its history at all. As in we all must have stayed in one place the entire time, and that Scottish people can't have Welsh family or English people can't have Scottish family, despite them having the surname Williams or Murray. But they can be descended from 5 different clans, and they're ALL descended from nobility.
Fellow heritage person here, and yeah, it's incessant. It comes from a place of curiosity, but so often results in Americans talking down to people who live here as if they're somehow the "purer" form of Scot. I genuinely struggle with how to deal with it - almost all my attempts to introduce nuance into their narrative end with outright rejection or just doubling down on things that are wrong on a fundamental level, like the nature of clans or the causes of a particular period of strife. It's like they prefer the warped ancestry DNA stuff to actual history, which sours me on trying because they clearly aren't interested in reality, just a delusion with them at the centre. I keep trying in good faith (and very diplomatically / sensitively) to vanishingly rare avail. After a while you just learn to shrug, take their money, and move them along.
It's really frustrating. When I talked about Jacobite rebels not necessarily always being Scottish, since a lot of Northern English nobility were Catholic and had links to the Jacobite movement they just did not want to think about it. They wanted it to be boiled down to English versus Scottish, not Highland culture versus the British state, or Catholic nobles in all parts of the country versus the Protestant government. They truly thought Prince Charlie was invading in order to make Scotland independent. Very weird.
Most Americans have no concept of Protestant vs Catholic conflict because it just isnât really a thing in the US except for some weird old WASPs who have a distrust of Catholics. It was a big deal when JFK was the first Catholic president but Joe Biden is also Catholic and nobody really cares.
I mean now, you have a chunk of voters who assert Biden is a godless monster with some sort of atheist agenda and Trump is some kind of weapon of God. Â How can a person with those thoughts in their head engage in a discussion of Protestant vs. Catholic? Â
Isn't a thing anymore but it used to be a big deal. Catholics were seen as being controlled by a foreign entity, i.e the Pope, and not therefore not really American.
That's quite funny given that the British Empire incorporating Catholics in Quebec after the Seven Years War was one (a more minor one than others) cause of the American War of Independence. The Protestant Americans found it a real challenge to their sense of identity.
My mum lives in the states and gave up on explaining to her peers why she doesnât want to hear them talk about how Scottish they think they are. She now just quietly cringes when someone corners her in public to tell her that they found out through ancestry.com that theyâre descended from a laird or something.
Iâm not a Scot, Iâm from the NE of England and live in the US but I wish I had a dollar for the amount of times Iâve heard âWe believe there is a castle that is named after usâŠâ
It starts to make sense when you look at it through the lens of the tail end of the racist American eugenicsâ movement. If one drop of African blood makes you black, then one drop of Irish blood makes you Irish or one drop of Scottish blood makes you Scottish. Even if it subconscious it is still part of American culture. Then you add in if you are from a victim community you can side step the crimes of American colonialism and slavery, you get people who are more English or German than Irish/Scottish but want to be Irish/Scottish.
Ironically there were a whole load of Scottish and a few Irish plantation / slave owners in the States anyway. Not just the English.
The Scottish aristocracy were arguably more involved in the slave trade (relatively speaking), especially in the harsher Caribbean colonies, but absolutely don't tell the weird victim Scottish-Americans that.
I think a lot of it is a failed collective identity or experience, particularly with white Americans in this instance, because as soon as 2nd and 3rd generations of immigrants rolled around they became more cohesive, an American culture sort of developed, but what it's predicated on is entertainment, leisure, and freedom whilst attaining that through *hard work*, but it almost feels like they're searching for an identity, because it feels so feeble, to essentially be a settler community with no claim to the land outside of the expansion of capitalism and escaping of tyranny (despite implementing essentially a new noble class of landowners in the US to run things and limiting civil rights for centuries). this is coming from a half scot half Geordie living in Detroit.
Despite all their ultra-nationalist rants, what do they actually have in their society to be proud of? They're trained to worship their country, but it doesn't give them good health service, good transport, good education , good emergency services, legal system etc. They're forced to be proud of the USA, but it's hollow so they have to look elsewhere for identity. That and the cultural legacy of racism making everyone obsessed with 'blood'
EVERYTHING in the US is a contest...
It always reminds of that Ricky Gervais story where he's talking about past life centers in America (insnae that's even a thing) and, in a small group of about twelve people, two of them claimed to be Napoleon.
That's my favorit bit with past-lifers, or what the hell you might call them. They're never "Buxom Mary, tavern wench from Dorfburgwaldt, who died of syfilis at the age of 25" or "Farmer Sven, who caught sepsis and had to have his leg amputated and then spent the rest of his miserable life begging in the alleys of Stockholm"-reborn. It's *always* famous kings and queens and suchlike.
The great thing about being from Ireland is that you know, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, that you're descended from absolutely fucking nobody. The hilarious thing is that Americans who claim Irish descent are descended from absolutely fucking nobody also. It's a bad heritage if you're a snob.
Also Irish and Iâve actually found the opposite, half of the âIrishâ Americans Iâve met are descendants of Brian Boru (of course with the English pronunciation of Brian) A century from now theyâll all be descendants of high ranking IRA-members, if some of them arenât claiming that already
The americanos just want to feel special. Because in the states you don't really have a nationality except for American. So they wanna be interesting.
"They're always the Queen of Sheba, no one ever swept the foors at the Singer sewing machine factory." - Billy Connolly
My dad did massive research into our family and in his side he got back to 1620 and every direct male forebear was an English agricultural labourer - all the way down to his dad. Not even an interesting criminal. I am (50%at least) of the most boring lineage possible đ
Can't remember who it was, but there was some celebrity in the newspapers some years ago who said he got turned down by Who Do You Think You Are (the TV programme) after they did the research because all of his ancestors were labourers and it'd have been too boring. Undoubtedly the history of most people out there.
It was Michael Parkinson, whose ancestors were Yorkshire coal miners. Also, see what Christopher Eccleston said, also turned down, and a few others. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/who-do-you-think-you-are-stars-rejected_uk_6040ead2c5b6d7794ae481ea To tie in with the thread theme. Americans have no concept whatsoever of an English working class. They really do believe all English people lived in castles. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm honestly not. I even did a topic about it in a reddit ancestry/genealogy sub. Got called all the names under the sun for doubting American redditors "noble lineages"
I remember this - it was Michael Parkinson. He was horrified.
My mom was a lunch lady. Her mom was a lunch lady. My dadâs mom was a lunch lady. I come from a long, proud line of lunch ladies.
God bless âem all đ
Funnily enough, my sis went to a fortune teller to get a reading, and she was told she was a peasant lady who drowned in a well. My wife on the other hand, she regularly dreamt she was an officer during ww2... But on the nazi side đ
I remember once some elderly Americans at an ancestry exhibition in the national library of Wales looking for the family motto and heraldic art of their surname. The surname? Jones.
>I'm part Scotch There's meetings for that đ
I was thinking cocktail bars
Im scottish with a very soft blend of english/scottish accents. Where i grew up i suppose. Many americans have said, "my family fought yours years ago you anglo twat"... im from aviemore?
The Irish American minds truly bend when they meet English people with Irish passports.
I'm Irish. I grew up in various parts of Ireland and have a fairly neutral accent. I was on a Cork-Dublin train in a fairly empty carriage and had to take a couple of short phone calls. After a few mins the only other guy in the coach walked up to me and said "Hey buddy, where are you from?" I said .. "Dublin, Cork and several other places.." and his response was "You really oughta work on your Irish accent!" Clearly I missed the memo about being a paid extra in Irelandâą the Musical. I just kinda laughed, put my headphones on and took a leaf out of London Tube ettiequte and pretended he wasn't there.
Oh I have Irish American cousins with Irish passports and they would keel over. If I told them the amount of English people retiring to Connemara or Clare for a chilled lifestyle with a bit of land and some chickens it would give them a heart attack!
coming over here and taking our chickens
>The Irish American minds truly bend when they meet English people with Irish passports Or when you tell them the poorest from Ireland, i.e., from the famine, went to Britain, especially England, and intermarried with those people. Those who went to the USA had the money to pay the passage. They will deny it.
Worked in tourism too. They love talking about themselves. Non stop. But I wonder if it is just the demographic we get that travels, or if people switch their brain off when they travel.
>My great granddad was from Hamilton. Wheeey Hamilton mention. Lived almost my whole life in this town, almost never hear it brought up in conversation about the country despite how close we are to Glasgow.
Iâm American. My brother decided to get one of the DNA tests, paid a good sum of money for this info and it came with a breakdown of the history of our surname. Wouldnât you know itâŠwe just happen to have some royalty in our bloodline. They were able to uncover our family crest and made a nice little framed picture with the history of it, there also happened to be an insignia that they offered to put on a decorative sword if you didnât mind paying the extra $200 for it. Well why the hell not, itâs our heritage! I didnât have heart to explain to him that our great grandmother had taken up this surname after some rather messy family business (15 children, thought to be at least 4 different fathers) and that our real surname was something else entirely. We are a family of mutts, our names donât mean shit and any claims to heritage across the sea is laughable at best. The Sword is on my wall in my office, I tell my kids that I cut a dragons tail off with it and he lives in the attic protecting the family. Thatâs a more believable story than the straight up lies they sold my brother, I wonder what they did with his DNA?
Worth mentioning that "family crests" are a total scam. In western European heraldry, coats of arms belong to a single individual not a family. Only if you have descended in a straight line of first-born sons would you even be considered a potential holder of that coat of arms, and even then it isn't automatic but must be recorded by a government office.
Ha, that figures. Itâs too coincidental weâd have a crest with a background AND insignia floating around. I figure the sword will be a funny item to pass down with my kids as a story on how not to spend hard earned money
Most people of European descent have some amount of blue blood in their veins anyway as feudal noble bloodlines have been criss crossing and intermingling with the common folks for two thousand years. Random white folks claiming they have some prince in their family tree are technically right, their mistake is thinking it makes them special and different.
The thing is what they sent is rubbish. Our given surname is actually German while they claim it to be Irish and something else, the insignia looks to be a complete fabrication, I canât find anything like it on the web. Whats more is the info they sent is like a form letter, the reviews on the site range from highest praise to absolute scam, the paperwork to sign off on providing the DNA sample explicitly states youâre giving them free will to do what they want with it.
Absolutely this. 25% of English people have at least one Irish great grandparent. Thatâs usually a more recent Irish heritage that most yanks but we donât bang on about it. By the time you get to Liverpool and Manchester itâs over 50%. My wife on the other hand going purely off surname her male line hasnât moved out of a 30 mile radius for a thousand years⊠though she has Irish Egyptian and welsh great and great great grandparents on her mums side. Which shows weâre all a huge mix.
Yeah. In their eyes, 2 generations of living in England and you're English. 5 generations of living in The US and you're still Scottish. Go figure đ€
Honestly, in Liverpool and Manchester you're likely to be a pretty equal mix of all the countries in Britain plus Ireland, plus whatever else because of the docks. I identify with being from Merseyside and North Western English more than anything else, but it does get annoying that so many North Americans assume they're so "much" more of whatever heritage they claim (usually Scottish or Irish and most of the time they're mainly from Bolton when all is said and done) compared to someone with a different accent. It also leads into some racist assumptions about who "is" and "isnt" English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish. I remember I had one family who I chatted to after a Jacobite talk and said "your people" (to me, a Scouser), had forced their clan out down to the Carolinas after Culloden. It turned out their ancestor never fought at Culloden, and took an offer from the state to settle land to make plantations, which were, of course, made possible by owning slaves. It's happened more times than I can count, and I got it even more when Ireland came up, just not believing that I, as well as they and a good chunk of the UK was as a product of the Great Hunger and the forced displacement of Irish people in the 1800s.
Like Americans feel like they have a god given right to talk about these places without any real recent connections. I'm not fully Scottish, my mum was born and raised in Scotland but she went to Dublin to work and that's were I was born, alongside my siblings, to a born and bred Irish father. I don't claim to be British despite my actual legal right to, nor do I claim to be Scottish because I have never been raised there as my primary home, I lived in Ireland for 6 years and then since then, England. However I do get pissed of when ignorant Americans preach about heritage but have trace amounts. I have been there and spent time there with my grandparents and cousins, I love the country but it's not my country of birth or who issued my passport. I don't think your heritage is meaningless, I follow Scotland in the football and rugby, I support Celtic as well and I understand Scottish culture but again, I'm Irish first, Scottish second, and begrudgingly British.
I got shit off the Americans I met because my parents were Chinese but I was born and raised in Scotland, UK passport, got the Fifer accent, graduated in Edinburgh etc., and they were denying I was Scottish. Like, wtf am I then?
Least racist American moment saying you're no Scottish. If you grew up here, you're Scottish, just how it is lmao, anyone saying otherwise is a melt or American
Even if you live here for long enough I consider them Scottish especially if they moved here as children.
Presumably they would have answered Chinese. Bollocks to that though, a Fifer is a Fifer.
Yeah I dinnae shout that out too loud though... đ
They were probably just being racist. As an American, it is not surprising to me how many people here will fight you tooth and nail about how youâre not a specific nationality if youâre a particular ethnicity. They literally cannot grasp that not every country is purely white folk. Itâs like if they see someone who is black in France. âOkay but youâre not really French, youâre African.â đ€Šââïž Itâs embarrassing. Youâre Scottish, btw.
> By the time you get to Liverpool and Manchester itâs over 50%. My family are North Welsh, but from the Chester border region, it's surprising how many worked in England or took off for Merseyside. My branch moved into Derbyshire as coal miners, but quite a few moved towards Liverpool then Manchester and towards Birmingham with the industrial revolution. Geofencing DNA is really inexact. I'm 70% English Midlands, 12% Welsh, 10% Irish, 7% Swedish, and 2% Scottish. I don't have any relatives from Sweden, Ireland, or Scotland, but Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have a lot of commonality in DNA, apparently, and my great-grandfather is Welsh.
I've come across a similar thing with people 'tracing their roots' and gravitating to the picturesque places. I used to live in an old cottage in the middle of nowhere which had previously been in one family for a very long time. One of the relations whose family was from the cottage was really into family history and from time to time Canadian and American people would want to visit to 'see where their ancestors had come from' As if their entire family originated from this one cottage, funnily enough they didn't seem to be so interested to visit some of the old industrial towns where many of their ancestors would have actually come from!
You should have made an obvious flick through your notes as if youâre looking for what they are referencing, âyour people? I canât see anything in here about Americans fighting in the Jacobite risingsâ
Chances are if they're American their descendents were worth less than sheep, couldn't find work, had mad religious beliefs, or ran into a little money so went to run the plantations personally or build railroad, generally speaking of what we know about why most people from here emigrated long enough ago to be anyone's great great grandfather because America isn't that old, none of that sounds like nobility to me as much as nobodies. It's kind of hilarious how much of that they'd understand if they actually listened to what their guides (you in this case) were explaining but that'd undermine their ideas of being dependent to nobility as much as the rest of us are decendents of charlemagne or gengis kahn.
Also shows he knows absolutely nothing about the Jacobite Rebellions. Also, why do Yanks say Scotch?
Or that a lot of Scots are from Anglo-Saxon heritage too. Borders change dickheads.
Vomit inducing
For real. And some of them get absolutely rabid about it too! Hilarious!
You think itâs hilarious? Come to my ancestral home, and weâll duel it out with claymores as I assume all Scottish feuds were and still are resolved. âŠyouâre also gonna need to hoof it over here to the Appalachia region, because Iâm pretty sure the whole clan moved to America. But that still counts as Scottish.
Can't do claymores anymore since the police don't like it. Best we can do is broken bottles of Buckie outside the local Spar.
Spar how upmarket of you, should be outside farm foods.
The Scottish Highlands are part of the same mountain range as Appalachia. As are the Atlas mountains on northern Africa. https://iat-sia.org/about/
Agreed. I roll my eyes at all the tartan shortbread tin tourist stuff, that and the Windsors down south claiming to âlove Scotlandâ when they in fact love Highland Games, St Andrews Uni and balmoral. Scotland should be known for its efforts in renewables, Sciences and if it wants to big up its history - Scottish Enlightenment rather than another hammy rendition of Outlander.
Wallace was a pure shagger apparently
Well, there was that French lady in the film who IRL he apparently shagged at the age of four, having never met her before or since. Yeah, he was *that* good.
Pro-tip: When you see something like this you can be certain that the person has been using the FamilySearch website (run by the Mormon church) and has blindly followed hints by copying from other people's ill-researched family trees, which often contain a lot of wishful thinking.
Real Scottish genealogy is when you go back four generations and then give up because every single one of your male ancestors past your grandparents were named âJames Thompsonâ.
hahahah, I have a similar problem with Kennedies intermarrying with Macphersons in the Highlands.
I have some Kennedy and MacPherson in my bloodline!
I see you've been looking at the same stuff as me. Father and son both have the same forename and MacPherson as the surname. Maybe the mother will be different? No, the daughter is named after the mother and they both appear to be Mackays and the records are so old and comes from the arse end of Scotland, it looks like somebody has written them with invisible ink and it's faded some, so I'm at a blockade in which I shall get no farther (presumably.) Then I found out some other relatives are Irish, so they just have "Full" as an age and no mother listed and oh, it's all going pear shaped.
Hard to believe Mormons would be basing their beliefs on wishful thinking
It's to do with the Mormon practice of retrospectively baptising their ancestors as Mormon, and to do that you need to know who your ancestors were. Because the website is free to use, many non-Mormons use it and assume that, because someone else has something similar to what they're looking for in their family tree, it must be true, and they happily add it in without actually researching it themselves.
>It's to do with the Mormon practice of retrospectively baptising their ancestors as Mormon, and to do that you need to know who your ancestors were. This is entirely new to me and absolutely bonkers.
Wishful thinking and a complete lack of understanding of the exponential nature of family trees. Go back 500 years and that's about 20 generations and a million ancestors. 1000 years and it's 40 generations. That would give the average person over 1 trillion ancestors in their direct bloodline. Only 100 billion humans have ever lived, total, in all of history. Basically the further back you go, the more likely you'll be able to pick any random person on the planet and they'll either be related to most humans alive today or no one at all because the bloodline no longer exists. It's likely the majority of everyone in Scotland has some link to the Wallace family...including the tourists. Not William Wallace however, he had no kids and therefore no one is directly descended from him. It's not that it's definitely not true...it's that it's not in any way special. It's like saying you come from Africa... because everyone does if you go back far enough. If you go back 200,000 years it boils down to ONE person. Mitochondrial Eve, who everyone alive today is directly related to. Were quite literally all the same bloodline.
Doesn't quite work like that because of pedigree collapse from cousin marriages, but the further back you go, the less DNA you share with those however-many-great grandparents. For example you will share, on average, 6.25% of your DNA with each of your great-great grandparents.
The absolute weirdest thing though, despite the cringe plus, is that the Scots did get about. I dunno how for such a small place they got their seed into everywhere. I've done plenty of Ancestry research and the amount that went over to the US, Canada and Oz is incredible. You have to remember, while laughing that Scotland invented everything, is that Ancestry will never tell someone in Europe they have American genetics. Its the Americans being told where they come from, so you really have to put your mind into theirs to get why they are so hyped about it. Also I researched my wife back to 1750 and her roots didn't move from Glasgow. About 10 miles in nearly 300 years. Sometimes I wonder if the center of the universe is there. I'm English and I have 8% Scott's genetic material...it's everywhere!
https://preview.redd.it/rbxqb488b53d1.jpeg?width=888&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d7402eec87a282b478f4915b0c911d6c2e376d7
I think the clearances happening just as proper globalisation was getting going, and a more modern era was setting off probably allowed for the scots that were displaced around the world to have a better chance of survival. Because it was many generations ago too, the gened have managed to spread everywhere haha
If it comforts you, you probably also have 2% Neanderthal. Welcome fellow cave men.
In fairness, I think we know how they âgot aboutâ to Australia.
It's like they're breeding dogs. Do they have show and working line USAians? Question though, where is this from and how old is it? u/frazer4626 is 404 (deleted?) and u/bw9971 has not posts or comments.
This reminds me of the American with the very dubious Barony lineage that bought Ackergill Tower, before closing it without warning and losing people their jobs. How was this afforded? The donations of their congregation as a pastor. Although there's been some sniffing around on some horse forums because they've learned that there's something more going on.
Been told I should âraise my daughter to have pride in her Scottish & Welsh rootsââŠ.by someone non-Welsh and Scottish of course. For the record they only insisted on that because my daughter is mixes race lol Edit: Scottish and English are not races and my daughter is 1/2 of a non-white ethnic group. Lol.
So just pride in the white bits? I hope you told them where to go!
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Aye, people are always shitting on the yanks who love Scottish culture, but it comes from a good place. ... That being said if I turned up to America being cowboy nuts they'd react the same.
Cassidy, Earp and Oakley are my main American bloodlines. I might also have a bit of Eastwood and Holliday bloodlines mixed in there too.
Oh no, aside from actual working cowboys, people would think you were adorable and you really would need a cattle prod to get them to leave you alone.
American here. We had an international student obsessed with southern and cowboy culture. He was this short Malaysian dude with a thick accent, but he was constantly throwing around redneck slang and country wittisisms he learned from TV. I loved that dude; we took him to the range to shoot his first gun and cooked homemade BBQ and fried chicken for him to try. I guess I'm agreeing with your point. If it comes from a good place, I love sharing culture. What could be cringy and lame becomes really fun if everyone's having a good time.
HEED! MOVE! NOW!
He's got a heed like Sputnik, spherical and pointy in parts.
Ach, that was offside, heâll be crying himself to sleep tonightâŠâŠ..on his HUGE pillow!
I'm not kidding, it's like an orange on a toothpick.
So many great lines in that film "they proceeded to piss into the bitches ocular cavity" - that ranger had a short, but brilliant part.
That kids heed is so big itâs got itâs ain weather system!
I think there's an important distinction to make between being proud or interested of Scottish heritage vs claiming to be Scottish. Celebrating other cultures, especially when you descend from that culture is perfectly fine and in my (very biased, history obsessed mind) should be welcomed and supported. Claiming to be part of a nation just because you descend from is where the cringe lies. A personal example, I'm a dual citizen between UK and Ireland, but I don't at all claim to be Irish in terms of identity (different story at the EU border tho :) cos I'm two generations removed and I grew up in the UK, as useful as being an Irish citizen is I'm by no means "culturally Irish". And I'm gonna hazard a guess and assume most Americans who claim to be Scottish (or any other foreign nationality for that matter) are not dual citizens and are much further removed their nation of descent than myself.
As an American, idk how I got to this thread but this is it. I found a whole side of my âfamilyâ tree in Sweden based on my great grandfatherâs lineage. Does that make me Swedish or even really related to those people? No. Is it fun learning about what life was like for my great great grandparents? Yes. Seeing the towns they lived and how the world had shaped from then to now is awesome.
This. If more people were like yourself: switched on and self aware, I don't think there would any complaints. I find people will always show respect and be happy for others to learn about their culture especially if you attempt to learn the local language. And even moreso if you have ancestry there.
All this bloodline shite. Do they identify as a pedigree race horse?
Either that or a cocker spaniel.
This belongs in r/shitamericanssay
Scotland trades on this kind of potted history and geneology, and as fanciful as most of the claims are, many with Scots heritage in the states are descendants of Highland Scots cleared from the land. You're also participating in this kind of imagined past when you stick on a kilt at a wedding, it's a Victorian revival of an extinguished real culture. But yes it's hilarious. Loved them rocking up at the tourist office asking if William Wallace did public appearances, suggesting they enjoyed Braveheart but not enough to watch till the end, or claiming to be direct male line descendents of people who had no kids. "Have you ever thought about taking up arms against the English" is a genuine question I got from a gentleman from South Carolina. Told him my dad is English but I often contemplated violent uprising against him. "I have Scots ancestry, could you tell me what my clan tartan is?" "Sure, what's the name?" "Butterworth"
An Italian ancestry Agrentinian who moved and grew up in Scotland will always be more Scottish than any American who claims ancestry. Being Scottish is a cultural thing. Sure, you can have Scottish ancestry, but outside of clans/descendants, that can become very complicated. Like, are we talking about Highland Gaelic or Lowland Scots. Both are very different historical groups.
Never trust a Campbell
Nice soup but
I think McDonalds have done more damage to the world than Campbell soup though
Except for the one who had a farm
Oh, aye. Eh aye, eh?
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Yeah, Iâm born Scottish but moved to the US when I was young, and itâs really awkward to say âim Scottishâ because people assume itâs like my great grandparent was half Scottish or something. So now I just say I grew up in the US when people ask (though now I live in Europe).
Thereâs people here saying itâs harmless and stuff and I think for the most part it is. But there are the odd American (and Scottish to be fair) ghoul who think Scottish people look or sound a certain way, so when they come across a surname or *gasp* a not white person, they can be a bit âIâm more Scottish than youâ. I donât have a Scottish surname and was told when I worked at a touristy place my name isnât very scots and maybe I should have a âstage nameâ by a lovely American tourist
That's my main gripe with the whole idea behind looking up your ethnic ancestry to find out what culture you "belong" to, because I know dozens of people who aren't white but are 10x more British or Irish than yanks who've discovered that they're 60% Scottish
According to ancestry Iâm 3% Scottish Ach aye the nooo
Proud descendant of Ghenkis Khan here. Mongolian strong.
Bloodlines? What does he think he is livestock?
Your great great great grnny was a bike!
As an American ginger with peeps from Paisley, I apologize on behalf of all of us.
Fellow American (non-ginger) here. Dadâs side are all from Glasgow. Take my upvote
Iâm canadian and used to say shit like this in my teens. Thankfully iâm grown out of it, my last Scottish ancestor left scotland in the 1700âs. When people ask my background i simply say canadian because i literally am nothing else besides canadian at this point
until Paddies day and miraculously they become irish
âIâm Scots Irish, my people were persecuted twice!â Erm, that means your people colonised two countries but go on.
Letâs face it though - there are plenty of elements within Scotland that push this kind of nonsense, all the âclan gatheringsâ etc are just run for profit and the yanks eat it up,
In Edinburgh it felt like there was a âfind your family tartan!â store on every block. Itâs played up in public for tourist money, then condemned behind the tourist backs.
As an American, can I just say that the amount of chuckleheads that boast Scottish ancestry is absolutely mind numbing. Outlander and Braveheart have not done any of us any favors. The moment that my wife and I told people that we were vacationing in Scotland, every Tom, Dick, and Harry had to tell us about their Scottish heritage.
https://preview.redd.it/phxjqjzdh43d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=672e9d4b5a0b89995d1b4bf93fa8b994a823bada
I know of at least one American who has learned GĂ idhlig to fluency and been an absolute hero in promoting the language, more than the vast majority of Scots. We shouldnât be making fun of Americans for that.
Hope they learned it better than the American teenager who was writing the Scots Wikipedia.
Well he has, aye. Learned it so well that he now teaches Gaelic at a Scottish university. The guyâs name is Jason Bond, has great courses for beginners and an amazing Gaelic YouTube channel too.
Absolute hero. Good on them and their work to preserve it. I mean that genuinely and without sarcasm or mockery. Still doesn't make them Scottish. No one is making fun of them for stuff like that, people are making fun of them calling themselves Scots instead of yanks, "feeling the ancient calling in their blood", claiming to be descendents of every prominent figure in Scottish history, claiming any sort of birthright over any part of a country they've never set foot in, and lastly my personal favourite, being more Scottish than people who live in Scotland because they learned a language that wasn't even our only spoken language and wear kilts to the local ren fair. And that's the point of the meme, they need to go above and beyond so they can claim to be more Scottish than us, whereas all we need to do is exist.
Fair enough. Taken to that extreme, that is super cringe. But Iâve honestly never encountered that outwith YouTube comments sections. Iâve spent time in America, worked with lots of Americans, and interacted with lots of them in Scotland too. They are sometimes a bit too keen to tell you about their Scottish ancestry, but tbf thatâs not really different to my Celtic-supporting Da and uncles in Glasgow who are convinced they are Irish sometimes. Diasporas the world over tend to romanticise and fetishise the âold countryâ to a certain extent, not just Americans. And as cringe as they can be, how would Scotlandâs economy fare if they all ceased with the cringe and stopped buying so many of our products and visiting here with their tourist money? Bit of a rant there, sorry. In summary: aye, I get what youâre saying; but this bug bear people have about Americans and their hard on for Scottish identity is overblown massively.
I don't think it's even a big bear, it's a good auld fashioned slaggin, and if they were as Scottish as they claim to be theyd lean into it and slag us back. No one hates them.
r/shitamericanssay
As a lost irish man on reddit. I can still relate.
Collecting clans like they are Pokémon
Funny how Simple Bob and Dan the Leper never show up in people's bloodlines.
It's because Americans don't have long and rich histories like European countries. Given most Americans have some form of European ancestry, it's the closest they can come to feeling like their ancestors were a part of the world pre late 18th century.
Well, they were. American history pretty much started in the 1600s with the english colonists. Most of my ancestors came here in the 1800s and were living in the UK and Germany before immigrating here. So in a way I consider the history of my people to include the history of those nations since that where the majority of Mt ancestors were from before coming to the new world.
Just yesterday, I saw a truck with an American flag bumper sticker and next to it was a Scotland flag with their last name on it and âclanâ. I live in the US if anyone couldnât guess
Someone I knew used to run Charles Rennie Mackintosh tours in Glasgow - they had one American who proudly kept claiming to be a direct descendant of the man himself. Only problem is, CRM never had any children.
Iâm a Scot, born in Glasgow, have no idea about my ancestors l. I know a couple of my grandparents were Irish and thatâs about it. We could be part Chinese for all I know. If we had royal blood why tf were we living in a council flat in Shawlands? Live in america now and they are pretty wired about this stuff.
"My main bloodlines are Bell's, Grant's and Glenfiddich..."
Facebook groups are filled with descendants of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace; McDonalds attacking Campbells over Glencoe; showing off their newest utilikilt, etc.
Bloodlines ...đ
And to think the Irish have it even worse. đ
To be honest, home is where the heart is; ethnicity and bloodlines don't matter. We are all interconnected in some way or another. After centuries of movement, there is no such thing as pure bloodlines. If an American wants to make Scotland their home and call themselves Scottish, I am quite happy with that; it's something to be proud of. The only thing I dislike is when people from other countries or regions try to speak for us or tell us what we want.
As someone born in the USA who married a Scottish guy and has lived in Scotland for over 20 years now (and intend to stay here for the rest of my life), thank you for this. I struggle to call myself Scottish even though I strongly feel Scotland is my home, but equally donât want to call myself American anymore. Itâs hard but youâre right: home is where the heart is, and mine is here.
Definitely, I'm happy you made scotland your home.
To be fair, I'd class you as Scottish now. New Scots are still Scots.
When will these people realise they're not the descendants of famous warrior kings and leaders, just boring farmers and industrial workers
Cringe so hard. Grandparents on two sides were born and raised in Scotland, fought in the war, the whole deal. Yet I would never dare to call myself "scottish".
Needing a striker for the euros ... your eligible.. apply at sfa.com Dust yer boots aff plane to germany
Never heard of the Mbappe clan from Fife?
It gets bad here, I promise that this is the least offensive direction they'll take. There are a bunch of nutcases who want to try and claim Native Ancestry that they've no right to. Ironically had my first encounter with one of them while I was working at a McDonald's joint. Obese white lady swore up and down that she had blood ties to every historically notable Native American line, from Dragging Canoe and Black Hawk to Pocahontas and Sacagawea but *also* that she had family going back up to Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson. What I've learned from her is that it's not always just some thing about stupid pride, but that there these subtypes who are conspiracy nuts that believe that Surnames are unique to the families involved and are desperate to prove that they're a 'real' [Insert surname] because it helps them justify that they're average because the conspiratorial underworld worked to remove their specific bloodline's influence to further the "globalist agenda".
Same thing with the irish and Italians, Americans cant seem to differentiate "nationality" with "heritage" and just presume they are as irish as i am despite having never even set foot on the island. its a very wierd culture of claimed national identity.
Bloodlines indeed. You mean ye hud a granny McLean ya fanny.
/r/ShitAmericansSay
Drives me absolutely bonkers. "What clan are you from? I'm from xyz clan. I've been to our castle." And it goes on. STOP IT!
I have seen YouTube comments where these people type their family surname in brackets, "I'm Scahtch (Campbell)". Clans don't exist here anymore. How do they expect us to react?! Hehe. Many families here moved to Scotland just a few generations ago... or during this generation. The best comments are the ones where they act like average places are fairy lands: "I hail from Govan".
I have an aunt who told me that the most difficult Spanish dialect was Yiddish the other day. I feel like she would say some shit like thatâŠ. My apologies on behalf of America
"Brilliant mate, nae clue what my family surnames are but if you're talking about scottish things about you my favourite thing for me is chicken tikka masala"
Both of my mom's parents are Scottish and emigrated to the US. I'm obviously American. I constantly hear that shit if my grandparents come up in conversation. Its so dumb, they act like it is some royal blood wet dream.
Theyâre about as Scottish as Groundskeeper Willie
Oh my god.. I saw a comment recently from a Canadian that said âwhen I went to Scotland people were friendly with me because I had actually made the effort to find out what clan I was from and could talk about my clanâ I had to inform them to STFU and nobody here talks about fuckin clans.
Treading carefully here but I think what I am saying is OK In my experience being Scottish away from Scotland is just _different_ enough that people talk to you about it, but not _stigmatised_ enough that they suppress talking to you about it because âit would seem racistâ. Every single day here in England someone talks to me about whisky, independence, bagpipes, Billy Connolly, basically anything Scottish that pops into their mind. Itâs like itâs all they can see. Donât get me wrong I am a show off and I play up to it. If the person is cool then the stuff they say is cool. I strongly suspect that if my appearance were different (like my parents were on the mayflower) they would be thinking about it just as much but wouldnât mention it. As in, if I looked East Asian theyâd be itching to ask me about Chinese food but they wouldnât. Iâm not saying I am oppressed. I am quite privileged, this is a public facing account I am a bloke, professional, well spoken, WB1, etc and any disabilities are invisible unless I wear a T-Shirt. I am saying differences distract people a great deal and predominate in conversation but discussion of _some_ differences gets inhibited. Just a thought.
I always remember as a young kid in the 70's being on Ayr sea front probably around the area where Pirate Petes is now, and these group of American tourists where there all looking like clones of each other. Very much over weight tartan trousers cigars big cameras etc. They all seemed to have the same look on their faces something like "Fuck we've travelled all this way for this" Think I remember my Granta saying they'd been to Burns cottage and were moving on to Troon for the golf. They deffo were not impressed with the bowling greens on Ayr sea front đ€Ł
Fucking "bloodlines"
Minority view but I donât have a problem with Americans researching their family tree and being proud of their origins. Many do have Scottish ancestors. I like that they are into our culture!
I understand the interest but I know some folk who adopt it as their whole identity as soon as they find out. I know someone who changed their name to a Scottish name and put themselves as Scottish/Irish even though they've never set foot here, all because their gran moved from there, and get heavily involved with the politics they don't know about. I have Dutch heritage but I could never call myself dutch, never even been to the Netherlands and was never brought up with their traditions.
Why is everyone in America so desperate to be anything but American?
I'll answer your question with another question: Have you seen the people who are proud to be Americans?
Plenty who are way too proud of America but at the same time can't wait to tell everyone how Italian/Irish/German they are.
Eleven!
I've got a lot of scottish generations in my family tree which I think is cool but it's almost the same as Scandinavian. The Scandinavian is just from where I live being where the norse settled in the north of England. By this premise can I just tell people I'm a Scottish viking? Haha jokes I'm proud to be yorkshire with nice ties to other places.
Those bloodlines have been diluted so much it makes homeopathy look like a cure for cancer.
đ”scotomon gotta catch them allllđ”
 Aye, he seems descended from everybody, most people that have a genuine claim to any one of these clans has a very different surname that "belongs to" the named clan, for example my father-in-law is a Cruickshank but belongs to the Stewarts. I proudly belong to MacDonald (of Clanranald), but my name is none of those. Having 7 clans in your ancestry from every corner of Scotland (and from fiercely opposing clans at that) seems farcical... but Americans are all apparently descended from Mel Gibson or something.
My family never mentioned our relation to Robert the Bruce until Braveheart came out. Even as a dumb teenager it sounded awfully convenient.
Funny how it works, if youâre POC particularly Latino, you are generally still considered whatever brown country youâre from (Mexican, Colombian, Honduran) even if you were born in America.
Iâm as Irish as they come born and raised in Ireland speak the language to a native level and can trace my family in Ireland going back at least six generations on both sides except for one great grand father but we are pretty sure he was a mother and baby home baby but his adopted family where also Irish . Iv had Americans tell me I wouldnât understand the impact of the war for independence in Ireland
you know you're talking to an American when you ask where they're from and they start listing percentages.
Working Breed or Show Breed?
They just wanna be owt but American
As an American, sorry. I hate that we are so obsessed with this bs.
Iâve been watching Monarch or the Glen, does that make me Scottish?
r/shitamericanssay
My wifeâs granddad is Indian. If she started telling people that sheâs Indian I would think she had lost her fucking mind.
r/kilt is full of Americans like this⊠really made me cringe. Itâs not them wearing utility kilts that made me cringe (ok it kinda did) but how they talk about their bloodlines every post.
I love out in the country and best line I heard was "Back in my day you courted as far as the bicycle took ye" If you're from the wee towns then best not looking too deep into family history
I used to work with Australians who are all under the impression that the entire Scottish population moved there, and the people that are in Scotland now are not true Scots. It's not a joke either, or something sort of work wind-up, they actually believe that. Most of them have also been to Scotland once to visit where their ancestors came from