Immigration to the USA throughout history

That's not to say that they have no bearing on identity at all. One of the more interesting things I've read with relation to Roman history is that you get plaques in Spain dedicated by people with names like 'Marcus Pictor, son of Egabalus', where a son has obviously taken a Roman name but his father did not. Most of these people are local politicians trying to worm into the Roman-dominated establishment, and potentially high office in the military or even the Roman senate. 'Marcus' was probably as proudly Spanish as his father, especially when talking to one of the Spaniards who had to vote for him, but he consciously crafted a 'Roman' face to make him acceptable in toga-ed society. It's not even, I think, that he has a 'real' identity and several 'fake' ones - people have a lot of identities which work at different levels in different situations. I really do think that there are cases when you can use given names to point to how strongly people want to express their similarity with or difference from a group of people. The various DeShawns and Shaniquas of Chicago - and the Muhammads of Bradford, or the Llewellyns of Monmouth - provide a good example.
 
I have an Italian surname. Although I do consider myself Italian-American, I also consider myself Irish-American (I acknowledge the rest of my heritage, but not to the same level). So origin of the surname would be partially successful.

On the otherhand, my maternal grandfather (of my mom's birth family since she was adopted) had some Polish name I simply don't know. All I know is it indicated his ancestry sold eggs. When he came to the United States, he changed his last name to "Agger" as a way to Americanize it. In that sense, origin of his surname is a useless metric.
 
LouisXXIV said:
my maternal grandfather (of my mom's birth family since she was adopted) had some Polish name I simply don't know. All I know is it indicated his ancestry sold eggs. When he came to the United States, he changed his last name to "Agger" as a way to Americanize it. In that sense, origin of his surname is a useless metric.

Maybe her surname was simply "Jajko" ("Egg") - map of distribution: http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/jajko.html

Such changes have been quite common. For example von Jastrzembski transformed into von Falkenhorst as a way to Germanize it:

Nikolaus von Falkenhorst (born Nikolaus von Jastrzembski; 17 January 1885 – 18 June 1968) was a German General in the Second World War. He planned and commanded the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940, and was commander of German troops in the Arctic from 1941 to 1944. (...) early in his career he voluntarily changed this Slavic family name to the Kulturkampf-Germanized version of Falkenhorst, meaning "falcon's eyrie", and the change of name was confirmed by a decree of 6 June 1911. He joined the Imperial German army in 1907 (...)

Jastrzembski is a Polish surname - map of its distribution: http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/jastrzembski.html

Jastrząb = Falcon in Polish.
 
Traitorfish said:
Y'know, I've studied migration and ethnic identity in colonial America, and I've never encountered this idea that you can infer ethnic identities from given names. It sounds very much like an idea that one historian played with a quarter-century ago, but was found to have very little mileage. It certainly can't bear the weight Domen wants it to.

It is pretty common in historical research to associate given names with ethnicities. Ask your countryman Pangur Ban if you don't trust me.

It certainly can't bear the weight Domen wants it to.

Nope, Abraham D. Lavender is not my real name.
 
About Irish people:

Spoiler :
Irish is the 2nd most reported European ancestry not only in the USA, but also in Australia.

One might also observe that the Irish tend to be particularly proud of their heritage, and suggest a link.

What was happening in British-occupied Ireland was colonialism in its finest, with elements of slavery, ethnic cleansings, expulsions, etc.

Ireland was treated no better than any of Sub-Saharan African colonies. Since the reign of King James II Irish people were being enslaved and sent as slaves to the New World. By 1650 Irish slaves were 70% of the total population of Antigua and Montserrat. Irish slaves were also numerous early on in North America. In 1855 Frederic Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park, was in Alabama on a pleasure trip and saw bales of cotton being thrown from a considerable height into a cargo ship's hold. The men tossing the bales into the hold were blacks, the men in the hold were Irish. Olmsted inquired about this to a shipworker, he replied - citation:

"Oh", said the worker, "the negroes are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything".

From 1641 to 1652 over 300,000 Irish were sold by the English as slaves. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children - Britain's solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents or from orphanages and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade in total 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). This is because they could just grab them from their island, which was already occupied and ruled by the British - they did not have to pay various African warlords, chiefs and kings for them.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. After the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. Following the 2nd Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 - 1852 (1st was in 1740 - 1741), further millions of Irish people emigrated.

Today both in North America and in Australia Irish ancestry is among the top 3 most frequently reported European ancestries in censuses.

"Irish Diaspora", population of Irish descent in other continents, exceeds entire population of Ireland at least several times. This is unique on European scale. In censuses Irish ancestry is - if anything - seriously underreported, because most of descendants of Irish slaves don't know about their Irish roots.
 
We need to remember that U.S. population was increasing not only thanks to immigration, but also thanks to its high natural growth. I've just made a calculation trying to establish how big share of U.S. population in 1980 was descended from the "old stock" of 1790.

I've found data on Rate of Natural Increase (livebirths minus deaths) per 1000 population per year in this publication:

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056

Here is the data (if I counted it correctly, avg. RNI per 1000 pop. per year in period 1790-1980 was 17,05 - so 1,705 %):

http://www.nber.org/papers/h0056.pdf



The population of the USA by the time of the 1st census - in 1790 - was 3,929,625 including 3,172,444 White people.

So let's apply annual natural growth of 1,705 % to 3,172,444 people in period 1790 - 1980, using this calculator:

http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php

The result is 78,782,861:



So had there been absolutely no immigration in period 1790 - 1980, White people in the USA would have numbered ca. 79 million in 1980.

Of course this is all under the assumption, that those of the "original 1790 stock" had avg. RNI rate of 1,705% annually in period 1790-1980. This assumption doesn't necessarily has to be correct. They could have a slightly different avg. RNI rate just as well.

Now acccording to the same study (wikipedia also confirms), in 1980 the USA had 226,545,805 inhabitants.

Of them only 180,256,103 were "Non-Hispanic Whites" (and 669,799 were "Others", probably including mixed-race Whites):

http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_race.html

Another source says that Non-Hispanic Whites numbered in total 180,603,000 people in 1980 (see Table 1 on page 11):

http://www.prb.org/Source/54.3AmerRacialEthnicMinor.pdf?q=543-minorities

Let's round this number up to 181 million and we can say, that some 78 million of them (ca. 43%) were descendants - mostly (because of course all of them were probably mixed with later immigrants) - of White population of the "original 1790 stock".

But who were those people of "original 1790 stock"?

I've already presented this data on various pages of this thread before, but let's post them again:

I've found two different estimates of ethnic groups:

I. First estimate is from:

"A Century of Population Growth: From the 1st Census of the U.S. to the 12th 1790-1900", 1909:

Black African - 19,27%

Whites - 80,73% - including:

English & Welsh - 66,31%
Scottish - 5,64%
Irish - 1,57%
============
British-Irish total - 73,52%
============
German - 4,47%
Dutch - 2,01%
French - 0,45%
all other whites - 0,29%

Almost identical data in: S. P. Orth, "Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making".

II. Second estimate is from:

"United States Ethnic Groups in 1790: Given Names as Suggestions of Ethnic Identity", 1989:

Black African - 19,0%

Whites - 81,00% - including:

English - 48,00%
Welsh - 3,50%
Scottish & Scotch-Irish - 12,80%
Irish - 4,70%
============
British-Irish total - 69,00%
============
German - 7,20%
Dutch - 2,50%
French - 1,70%
Jewish - 0,25%
Swedish - 0,20%
other whites - 0,15%

Applying a separate count in the calculator for each decade, with RNI for each decade separately, takes much more time but gives a very similar (slightly lower) final result - 78,5 million (instead of 78,8) in 1980. Descendants of the "1790 stock" (increase by natural growth in each decade):

1790 - 3,172,444
1800 - 4,120,417
1810 - 5,370,457
1820 - 6,854,544
1830 - 8,941,018
1840 - 11,297,613
1850 - 14,165,554
1860 - 17,327,074
1870 - 20,637,967
1880 - 24,547,716
1890 - 28,682,886
1900 - 32,566,719
1910 - 36,994,705
1920 - 41,455,652
1930 - 46,855,645
1940 - 50,345,679
1950 - 56,774,529
1960 - 66,110,204
1970 - 73,541,777
1980 - 78,456,469

I made a graph showing hypothetical U.S. population growth until 1980 had there been absolutely no immigration since 1790:

http://s28.postimg.org/m3mus5j3v/USA_Pop_Growth.png



One might also observe that the Irish tend to be particularly proud of their heritage, and suggest a link.

In year 1900 out of the total of 76 million inhabitants of the USA, 1.6 million were Irish-born, another 5 million were born to Irish-born parents (i.e. those were 2nd generation Irish immigrants) and only God knows how many were 3rd and 4th generation Irish immigrants. So I would rather trust the census when it says that 30 million people reported Irish ancestry in 1980 (when the USA had 226 million people), given the high rate of natural increase of American population between 1900 and 1980, as well as the rate of intermarriage of Irishers with others (i.e. the dillution, but also the faster spread, of Irish ancestry).

After year 1845 there was simply a long-lasting mass exodus of Irish population from Ireland to other places, mostly to the USA.
 
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