Half of Brits Have Immigrant Ancestors

Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and many others assume that their ancestors immigrated to the new lands. However, we don't often think about immigrants to the "old country" in Europe or the British Isles. We seem to assume that they were always there. New research now shows that more than half of Britons have immigrant ancestors. In fact, 23 per cent originated from Ireland.

One in five Brits is of French or German descent with more than half able to trace their roots to outside the UK, according to social history website Ancestry.co.uk.

Britain's present-day population originates from the following countries:

1. Ireland 23%
2. France 10%
3. Germany 9%
4. Scandinavia 6.5%
5. Canada 5%

Comments

[Simon Fowler]

I wonder where Ancestry got their evidence from. It seems to me that Scandinavia and Canada are too highly placed. I would have thought that Belgium/Holland and Poland/Russia would have been in the top five.

[Carol]

How did Ancestry obtained this information, perhaps based on their subscribers, which although sizeable is perhaps not a good representation to publish such conclusions.
Anyone who was at school in U.K. (until recent years) would have learned in history lessons what a mixed culture we have always been. I would agree with some of Ancestry's conclusions, however, I would have thought ancestors from the Indian sub-continent would feature, certainly higher than Canadian, partly as the British married into local sub-continent families for over 300 years, as well as the more recent immigration to U.K. I myself have an Anglo-Indian ggggrandmother, as well as French and Flemish Ancestors. Maybe Ancestry's results are because the format for record keeping varies amongst cultures and isn't covered by Ancestry.

Both sides of my maternal grandfather's family were from Ireland (present day north and south), however, I would not consider them immigrants anymore that I would consider Welsh or Scots. I think it is only since the creation of the Irish State in the 1920s that the U.K. has considered the Irish as immigrants, not forgetting that Northern Ireland is part of U.K.and, therefore, immigration does not apply. Americans, however (and my late husband was from Colorado), often mistakingly separate the various regions of the U.K., not understanding the historical unions that created the U.K. The term 'Brits' adds to this. Originating in the U.S. (I think) it generally means the British from the U.K., forgetting that includes Northern Ireland. So unless Ancestry separates Scots, Welsh and English amongst the other U.K. countries then including the Irish in their table is misleading.

re Simon Fowler's comment I think Scandinavia would refer to Viking ancestry.

[Paul Gorry]

This report, whatever it's based on, it totally misleading. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from 1801 till the 1920s and Northern Ireland continues to be so to this day. Migration within the British Isles has been happening for thousands of years. The study refers to the ancestry of "Britons". Does that mean the people of the British Isles, Great Britain or Wales? Whatever the criteria, Irish ancestry is not "foreign" and I would contest that 23% is an under estimate.

[Peter Calver]

Well, of course we're ALL descended from immigrants, because 15,000 years ago there was nobody living in what is now Britain!

As other respondents have pointed out, there's not enough information in Dick's posting to ascertain what Ancestry are really talking about. I eventually found a press release on the Ancestry.co.uk site:

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/about/default.aspx?section=pr-2008-12-18

However this really doesn't tell us much more. This doesn't surprise me, since having just finished reading Ben Goldacre's excellent book "Bad Science" I know that statistics in press releases are there mainly for effect, not to inform people.

What Ancestry appear to have done is take figures for people who have ancestors from various countries, then added the numbers up to reach their "half of Brits" figure. But you can't do this - most people will have ancestors who originated from more than one country.

The press release states that "One in 10 Brits is of French or German descent and half of us can trace our roots outside of the UK. Yet as the world celebrates International Day of Migrants (18 December), the majority of Brits (84 per cent) admit knowing nothing of their immigrant ancestry." I wonder whether the statistics have in fact been culled from DNA tests performed by Ancestry on behalf of their members in Britain, and not from genealogical research?

[Dae Powell]

OK, and the other half? Where would their ancestors originate?

Happy Dae.
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[G. Marie Agnew-Marcelli]

It appears to me that Ancestry has forgotten or ignored the fact that Britons - pre- and post-Roman - were CELTS; i.e. ethnically identical to Cornish, Welsh, Scots (including the Dalriada who were outright Irish)and spoke closely related and mutually understood Celtic "dialects". On this, over time, there were thin overlays of Norse, Anglo-Saxons and Normans; (who were Norse who had been in Normandy for about 4 generations). These romanized, anglicized and slightly normanized Celtic Britons never "vanished" but melded into the landscape continuing to be the basic population.

So where is the surprise? Any of the texts on DNA distributions make this perfectly clear. It should be NO surprise that Great Briton is still so genetically Celtic even today. The only distortion and confusion comes when one trys to separate by artificial, politically generated "nationalities". I have never found Ancestry to be strong on scholarship or accuracy.

[Marissa Warkentin]

While I agree that these statistics are probably not acurate and that Ireland should not be counted as a separate country, I think the point that the article was trying to make is that you shouldn't assume that once you find your ancestors in the records of the British Isles that you now know where they lived and died since the beginning of time.

I took the article as encouragement to look outside the box and realize that just because you found your immigrant ancestor's 'hometown' in England doesn't mean that they were originally from there.

[Peter Calver]

Marie, do you have a reference for your comments about DNA demonstrating that early Britons were of Celtic origin?

There seems to be quite a dispute amongst scholars regarding the Celts in Britain - indeed it seems to have been going on for hundreds years! Perhaps at last it has been resolved....

[Richard Heaton]

I always enjoy reading the Online Genealogy Newsletter but this morning I had to check my calendar - it couldn't be April 1st already - could it ?

I'm sure many if not most individuals in Britain could trace their ancestry to imigrants in the last few hundred years - but 5% from Canada ! Surely not !

[Kathy Read]

I agree with what everyone has said. What about the Romany people and the Spanish and Portuguese. I have come across a lot of families with these cultures in their trees.I am working on one right now.My own father is of Scottish heritage but he looks Spanish so who knows what I will find there when I go back far enough. The Canadian number is puzzling. I do know that some Canadians have moved to the UK and married there and a lot of British people emigrated to Canada and then went back home after a short while, but that does not make them Canadians. To me Ancestry is the same as any media outlet and they are just saying what they think people want to know. I use them for records searches and nothing else.

[Carol]

Cathy, there are lots of links between the Scots and Spanish. There is the general link with the Galicia area of Spain being very Celtic. Also many Spanish on the Armada ships were shipwrecked off the Scottish and Irish coasts and didn't make it back home but settled amongst the locals.

[jacqui]

Very interesting about the Scandinavian - makes me think about the blood type study they did on TV quite a while ago as apparently having blood type A makes it more likely that you are descended from the Vikings who populated most of the top half of Britain a thousand years ago as far down as Nottingham as well as a large part of Ireland. I have A neg. which seems to be intrinsic to a particular line and not the one I would expect! (Hence the interest) It may be that the Scots in the northernmost parts of Scotland have been tracing their origins to Scandinavia? (I can't remember whether A neg is Norwegian or Danish Viking or which lot occupied Ireland)

There is no mention of Asian or West Indian ancestry there though so you do wonder what they based their statistics on - presumably what records they have available in which case the study is pretty skewed isn't it? Perhaps the "Colonies" and "British Domininions" dont count in which case Canada is a bit doubtful along with Ireland.

The French/German descent is fairly likely due to the Huguenot and Palatinate refugees to all parts of the UK in the 17th-19th centuries and of course the Holocaust and World War Two and its aftermath added to the mix from Europe. As Germany as such did not exist as a state until the 1800s maybe this is a broad definition? Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians and Italians made a big impact in the areas they settled in after the war as did the West Indians in the 1950s and the Ugandan Asians, Bangladeshis and other Asians subsequently. Zimbabwe's problems have made a fair few of the Rhodesian settlers return too.

In recent times as the Empire shrank I should think a fair few of its citizens and their families returned "home". (Some of my relatives still have two passports.) Also children were evacuated en masse to Canada via their schools until the City of Benares was sunk in WW2 and there has been a fair bit of research on them recently coinciding with when the incoming passenger lists were put on Ancestry. And how many of those originating in America of Irish descent returned to Ireland to live once they had made enough money to do so? Retiring to Ireland is now quite an attractive prospect for those of us in the UK now that the Troubles are over as it is living in the EEC with its attendant benefits ie pensions but no language problem.

It is worth remembering that your ancestors could move around and often did whether voluntarily or not.

Speaking from the UK perspective I have traced ancestors to all parts of the UK - they have turned up in Wales as well as Scotland England and Ireland, not to mention various parts of India, the West Indies, Gibraltar, Canada and the USA and where families emigrated to is not where they ended up in most cases. (French Huguenots who ended up in Ireland just add to the mix and I have not yet investigated them.) If your ancestor was in the British Army his children could have been born anywhere!

[JohnR]

And some of my ancestors returned to England from America when they found the country revolting.