If you are Scotch-Irish what is your ethnicity?

Question:I hear many different answers. Some say Scottish, some say Irish, some say both, some say neither. I was wondering what is your opinion?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I hear many different answers. Some say Scottish, some say Irish, some say both, some say neither. I was wondering what is your opinion?

The Scots-Irish were those Scots who migrated from Lowland Scotland to Northern Ireland during the reign of James I of England (and VI of Scotland) and during the Stuart reigns that followed him in search of lower rack rents and longer leases than they could obtain in Scotland, and many subsequently left Northern Ireland for American beginning in about 1715.

Citizens of the United Kingdom know this ethnic and culture group as Ulster Irish; the term "Scots Irish" is usually used only in the United States. Incidentally, "Scotch" is a drink; the adjective referring to those individuals who live in Scotland is "Scots" or "Scottish".

In contrast with the native Roman Catholic Irish, the Scots-Irish who came to the United States from about 1715 to shortly before the American Revolution were Presbyterian Covenanteers who sought relief from the Test Acts imposed against Dissenters, in other words, anyone other than members of the Anglican Church, including both Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. Again, their rents were also being undercut, this time by unscrupulous absentee landlords who were leasing back the land to the Native Irish at excessive rates. The Eastern Seaboard was already occupied by the English, so the Scots-Irish immigrated in family groups to the frontier.

These immigrants from Ulster didn't differentiate themselves as Scots-Irish until Roman Catholic Irish started immigrating to the United States in large numbers during the 1840s to escape the Irish potato famine. Scots-Irish Americans, scattered across the Bible Belt, are today primarily Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian and live primarily in the Southern and Southwestern United States as well as those states bordering the South and California. Prominent Scots-Irish Americans include Jim Webb, the US Senator from Virginia who recently wrote a best seller detailing the history of the Scots-Irish, "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America" (2007)--not to mention Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and John McCain only to mention a few prominent contemporary examples of this ethnic group. Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Woodrow Wilson, Douglas MacArthur, and George Patton are also of Scots-Irish descent. Although some Protestant and Roman Catholic Irish did intermarry, statistics show that it wasn't all that common.

isn't it welsh?

Mostly Scotch, little Irish, & a little Cherokee Native American.

Gaelic

Well, if you know you have ancestors from Ireland and Scotland, then you are both - and any other place you may discover your an ancestor of yours came from. As well as American ethnicity (I assume) and possibly Catholic, Baptist, Jewish ethnicity, maybe even New England Patriot Fan.

The definition of ethnicity is "of or pertaining to a group of people recognized as a class on the basis of certain characteristics such as religion, language, ANCESTRY, culture or national origin."

Pretty broad isn't it? So I guess you can claim to be ethnically a lot of things. Certainly you can claim ethnicity to any country or region of which you have found an ancestor. What does it really mean though?

To me, all it says is that you have ancestors who at some point in time lived in Ireland and Scotland. Of course if you traveled to Ireland or Scotland, you would certainly be able to claim you are ethnically American. Actually, you could do that in the US as well but that's no fun.

Broadly speaking, Gaelic can be used for both Scotland and Ireland, but that is being very broad indeed in the definition. I myself share English/Scottish/Irish/Cornish anestry, but I just use British as the catch-all term for everything when filling in a form. I've no special desire to be associated with one particular ethnic group. I prefer to keep my options open!

your a Celt

British. You can also call yourself Celtic if you like, although technically Celtic refers to a specific culture during a specific time period, it has become a popular term often used by people of Irish, Scottish or Welsh descent to distinguish their ancient roots from the English. I believe most of the English are really Celtic as well, even though they have been ruled by the Anglo Saxons for hundreds of years.

your a celt

Where were you born? that is your ethnicity.

It refers to people from Scotland, who came to North America
by way of Northern Ireland during and after 17th Century.

The Scots-Irish are usually descended from Scottish people who settled in Northern Ireland in the reign of James I (1603-1624). Therefore they usually have Scottish last names, not Irish, although they could have intermarried with the native Irish. Such intermarriage is not likely to have been frequent, however, since the Scots were ususally Protestant (a major reason of James's for sending them there) and the Irish were Catholics. Many of them migrated to North America after only a few generations, but the Protestants of Northern Ireland today are also their descendants.