Re: CHAT: geographical nomenclature [was Re: Language of Tetril]

John Cowan wrote:
>Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
> > Relatedly, on the US Census returns, I've always wondered what
> > motivated people to put "American" for their ancestry. (Certainly
> > some people just don't know;  but isn't there a "don't know"
> > box?)
>
>Why not?  My friend Gordon, who was born in California, can trace
>his ancestry as far back as Kansas City.  If your traceable ancestors
>all lived in the U.S., surely that is simply the correct reply.
>I write "Irish and German", but surely my Irish ancestors, being as
>how Ireland is an island, must have come from somewhere (and I don't
>mean out of the bogs, Padraic!)
By that logic, you should presumeably all write "African-American" - it does
seem we're ultimately from Africa (altho' I'm open to the possibility that
Danes and Scanians simply grew out of the ground). But wait, way stop with
the first humans? Since, IIRC, the earliest (known) primates lived in what's
now North America, you should clearly all write just "American" ... er ...
or seeing that the earliest (AFAIK) traces of life are from Greenland,
you're ultimately all Danes, who, as it turns out, really did grow out of
the ground. :-)

                                               Andreas


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