British American

British Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry stems, either wholly or in part, from one of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom.

British American or American?

Many British Americans have ancestry in America that dates back to colonial times in the 17th and 18th centuries. With their roots being in America for such a long period, many British Americans and a significant number of Irish Americans have begun to think of themselves ancestrally simply as "Americans". This is especially true in the South. Worldwide that line of thinking is often found. For instance, today's southern Italians don't consider themselves Greeks or partially Greek because their ancestors came from Greece, and today's English don't consider themselves to be Germans because their ancestors were Anglo-Saxons from continental Europe. But in American society, hyphenated-Americanism prevails because so much of the population has relatively recent roots elsewhere.

Related Topics:
Colonial times - 17th - 18th centuries - The South - Italians - Greece - Anglo-Saxon - Hyphenated-Americanism

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Many other Americans have forgotten the origins of their distant ancestors, or prefer to identify with the ethnicity of ancestors who arrived more recently, which provide more distinctive folkways than the general American culture. People of English ancestry are especially predominant in much of coastal New England, Upstate New York, and the Tidewater areas of the South from Virginia to Georgia, as well as Utah.

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