Talk:English people

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British

A key point is missing from this article. English people almost to a man and woman are likely to be British, ie UK passport holders. Let's improve this article and reflect this obvious fact. I look forward to comments and discussion. 89.243.217.176 (talk) 20:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Not really. There are over 100000000 English people around the world, only 46000000 are British. 90.196.60.197 (talk) 08:03, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Related peoples

We've had people adding these just now, and on previous occasions. Those added have ranged from Welsh and Scottish to German and Dutch. Given the vagueness of the term "related", the historical mix which helped create different modern "peoples" and the many ways in which different people can be said to be "related" (Culture? Political unit? Genetics?) I guess you can justify each of those at one level, and arguably we could just stick in every European neighbour, but I'm not sure where that's going to get us, especially when you start chucking in questions, for example, about whether the Cornish are entirely separate from, related to or merely a subset of the English. N-HH talk/edits 11:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I hate infoboxes and their ridiculous over-simplifications. They're far more trouble than they're worth and I wish we could just get rid of them altogether. Back to reality..."Related" is such a vague undefined term. Related culturally, linguistically, historically, genetically...? And it just begs to have a list based on 19th century pseudo-science. I support not having that parameter. DeCausa (talk) 12:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree. English people are a mongrel mixture - much better to leave the parameter out of the infobox altogether. Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:11, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

The English are not a "mongrel mixture".The only people in Europe who are a mongrel mixture are countries like France & Italy. No where in England or Scotland are there people who are entirely ethnicaly different to each other as there is as much difference Northern Italy & Southern Italy. People from all regions of Britain cluster with each other, its not like Italy where one half clusters with a totally different people like Southern Italians & Sicilians do with Ashkenazi Jews, while Northern Italians cluster with Spaniards & Portuguese. This does not happen in England, the clustering in ALL regions is consistent which is why parts of England & Scotland are never seperated in genetic studies like Italy is by region. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:c4ea:ca0:f481:792e:4ca7:d22 (talk • contribs) 23:40, 8 July 2013‎

English ethnicity

The whole thing needs re-working. It talks of genetics but ethnicity combines many factors, not just historical/genetic details (the usual acceptance of the nature of these is overly-challenged quoting just one "historian" but that's not the point). Ethnicity is more of a social scientific concept. Very many "mixed-race" people identify themselves as black but they may have 50% Germanic genetic make up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.79.99.42 (talk) 23:50, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

As noted when I reverted your first run of edits, I agree there are problems with this whole section. I also accepted that those edits appeared to be a bid to improve it. The problem, however, is that your changes added claims, for example, about what is "the widely accepted view", as well as claims that such a view is "supported" by Bede, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and the BNP; all primary and probably unreliable sources. It also talked about the assimilation of Normans "particularly in the east and north", which is both unsourced and untrue. It made comments about Germanic linguistics which may well be accurate but which attempt to build an argument based on that, which is original research. It added parenthetical observations/commentary about the use of the word race; again, unsourced, if accurate in one sense, but also overly instructional to the reader. Those are just some of the issues.

Your latest, less wide-ranging edit reinserts the "widely accepted" claim, which needs some support. I'm not sure it's not better to describe it, less definitively, as the "conventional" view, which has come under some challenge. I'm not going to quibble too much over the expansion of Anglo-Saxon to be more detailed, but the term is commonly used as a catch-all description, which the linked page does explain. As to your broader comments, ethnicity is indeed about more than mere genetics; but the conclusion I would probably draw from that is that the section is mis-titled. N-HH talk/edits 09:02, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, looking into this further, I'd argue that a better opening line for this section might be something along the lines of "there is considerable debate about ..". Even a basic Google search throws up, from the off, plenty of serious comment acknowledging exactly that. I know it's a bit woolly, but it seems an accurate description of the state of any academic consensus (or, rather, the lack of it). I'd also suggest that this section be retitled "English origins and identity" or something similar and that the meta-ruminations should be deleted, eg "A popular interest in English identity is evident ..", "In all these cases, the language of race is employed by the journalists" etc. N-HH talk/edits 08:47, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Although, having said that, I guess the point of the section is less to cover the debate about origins and genetics per se (which is, in any event, dealt with in more detail in the narrative historical section) than to focus on the relationship between origin/origin myths and more modern identity. Bearing that in mind, the "conventional view" opening might be better after all; but some of the other changes I suggested are probably worth making. N-HH talk/edits 09:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Point of having ethnic groups on Wikipedia?

I note now that the glorious Battle of Britain on Wikipedia has finally been won against those who would label everyone born or living in England as ethnically English, firmly establishing the ethnic English article as one of those ethnic group articles which only counts the actual blood-descended English.

I notice all across Wikipedia "ethnic group" articles there is a tendency to declare pretty much anyone born in a specific country as being of that country's ethnic group. For example anyone who has Japanese citizenship is called Japanese by the government, but there obviously aren't 127 million Japanese in Japan when we consider immigrants who have become Japanese. In addition to Japanese people the Finnish people, Spanish people and many other ethnic groups have apparently been stripped of what actually makes them an "ethnic group", that is a people related by blood and history and language and culture as a single people. I'm wondering then what the point is of having ethnic group articles when these articles are basically designed to ignore the bloodline component in favor of an all-inclusive designation based on birth country.