What nationality?

Question:

What nationality?

I want to find out what nationality i am, is there a website were i can find out

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Ozzy, if you are searching your roots, you are embarking on a long quest. I work in a Canadian public library with a large genealogy collection and I have seen people who spend months, even years, searching the books for branches of their family trees. Church records, passenger lists, directories of government agencies, city directories, phonebooks, census records. CyndiList, www.familysearch.org ... All absorbing.

The people above my answer gave you the best advice: talk to your relations first. As to your nationality - it's usually the country where you were born. If you were born on a plane or a ship in international waters, I believe your parents' nationality would become yours. If you were adopted out of your birth country, your adoptive parents filed nationalization papers for you to become an American or Canadian citizen.

Ethnically, you may find through asking questions and researching your family history that you have ancestors of several nationalities. My cousin has French, German, Dutch, Scots and French- and Scottish-Canadian ancestors. And then there is the quirks of history. Our common great-grandparents were born in Ukraine, yet they were not citizens because they were of German descent and not members of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the 19th century, blood counted -- as it did in Nazi Germany, and we know how that affected people's lives.

If your library has the book below - I doubt you'll get it on interloan because it's three huge volumes of a reference book - I think it's a good source for the origins of many family names and how common they are in the U.S. {The compiler was a little astray with mine, since I know none of my ancestors were English., though my family name was not anglicized by an immigration officer.} If it was anglicized, the book may have possible names it could have been in 'the old country'. If you can't get the book, try the subject heading "Names, Personal -- United States" or whatever country you believe your surname to have come from.