What constitutes to someone being Irish?

[Cybercubed]

Born there? Parents from there? Grandparents from there?

I'm born and raised in England, my parents are both Irish (mum from Belfast Dad from the ROI). In England whilst growing up people routinely called me Irish and so that's how I saw myself. Then I moved to Northern Ireland as teenager and had a reality check, because then everyone started calling me English. I still have an English accent so everyone still refers me to as an English person here. I've always understandably have a bit of an identity crisis therefore, compounded by the fact that the "British vs Irish" issue is right of the forefront of Northern Ireland politics as well I don't feel I fit in with either community here.

We've all heard of the term 'plastic paddy' which usually gets thrown at anyone with a non Irish accent calling themselves Irish. I personally don't really identify as anything more and feel kinda stateless but do you think calling yourself Irish should be reserved for those who are born and/or raised there only?

My husband has two Chinese parents. They were born and raised in HK. He was born in England. But he is still Chinese. (BBC- British born chinese....if you want to label it.....)....He isn't just British. You can see by looking at him. By that reckoning you are most definitely Irish.

But it's more than just birth it's the culture you are raised in. If you had an Irish family you will most likely have Irish traditions and ways of doing things.

I'd consider you Irish if parents born there.

@Quaversplease

I have an American friend who had one set of great grandparents from Mayo. Her others were Italian. This makes her Irish/Italian apparently. When I queried it and said that surely she was just American she was offended. I really don't understand it. My maternal great grandparents were Polish but I am British. It wouldn't even occur to me to say I was Polish.

Americans are nuts about stuff like this . I guess it's because they have no history

When you think about it, it doesn't matter much, and I'm surprised it matters to some people you have met.

Your dilemma applies to pretty much everyone who moved between countries as a child, especially those with parents from more than one country.

The only answer is to move to another country entirely, then you can answer "where are you from" however you want and not be disbelieved/ viewed as an imposter!

I got "yer not from round ere" all my childhood because my parents moved a lot, then settled when I was 9 and sent me to an out of area school. I wasn't from anywhere in particular.

I used to teach at an Irish university that got a lot of American visiting students. Every year I would end up dealing with desperately upset nineteen-year-olds from Milwaukee or Maine who were baffled that the Irish students regarded them as foreigners when they’d always identified as Irish, despite the fact they’d never previously visited and the connection was their great-granny, who’d left Belturbet in the 1870s.

The heritage nationality thing results in Americans telling you they're Irish because they have one Irish great great grandparent amount the multiple Dutch, German, Spanish, English, Scottish and Welsh ones (ignoring the fact that that actually means they are 1/32nd Irish)

Both my husband and I don’t have any English parents (Welsh for him & Scottish/Irish me) But we both raised in England. He never refers to himself as welsh will say he’s English & as others said I see my self as British - I have traditions that come from my Irish & Scottish side. We spend a lot of time visiting Scotland to visit family.

Interestingly both our daughters apparently look Irish - people have assumed either me or husband are Irish. When asked my daughter where she from she said she a mix of all the celts :) with an English accent.

You were born and raised in England, so you are English. You have Irish heritage through your parents, but I don't know any Northern Irish person that would call you Irish ( I am from NI).

An English friend of mine married an American, had a baby in England and moved to a non English speaking EU country for work when their baby was under 1. When their child was 6 they moved back to England and her daughter was told by other children to "go back where you come from" on her first day of school. Where did that little girl come from?

Where you're from, or certainly nationality, is not about accent. Nationality is a legal construct. Where you're "from" can be more complicated. People who have never moved jealously guarding the "identity" of being from an area and cold shouldering "outsiders" is a human instinct, but an unpleasant one at root. Yet claiming an identity which you find romantic (as lots of Americans find Irish or Italian identity) when you appear to clearly "be" something else obviously seems ridiculous to people who only have that nationality/ background rather than just a tenuous link.

You're the nationality/ nationalities on your passport/s IMO.

I'm similar. Parents both Irish, born in Ireland but moved to England when young. I was born and raised in England. So I'm an Irish and UK citizen. If someone generally asked me I'd say I'm British as that's where I'm actually from but I do tick white Irish on forms as that's my background.

Gosh I actually don’t know.
Probably irish?
Altho when I think about it, we have relatives who have English parents but live in America, have the accent etc, and they’re definitely American. So by that logic, you’re English. I don’t know 😂

Quaversplease
That makes you half Polish. You can be English and Polish.

There are lot’s of people who are British (due to being born in the U.K.) but are not English.

With regards to Northern Ireland, part of the reason why it makes it more confusing here is because I technically come from a nationalist background, or at least that's the politics of my parents (albeit they're moderate nationalists), and I would've been brought up to have sympathies towards it too.

The concept of 'Britishness' in Northern Ireland obviously revolves around unionism, protestantism, orange culture, etc and what unites the protestant community in Northern Ireland also is shared heritage of being from Scottish/English descent, i.e. planter backgrounds, which obviously they're fiercely proud of and so they should be. That's not my background however, so that concept of Britishness feels alien to me. I've only ever voted SDLP/Alliance here, I probably would vote for a genuine moderate unionist (e.g. Sylvia Hermon) over Sinn Fein, but I don't think I could ever vote for the DUP/UUP/TUV.

Again the political divide here is what reinforces the confusion over my national identity, I know in many ways I'm not Irish since I didn't grow up with GAA or learned Irish like all my cousins did. I honestly feel like a kid who's from a mixed marriage in NI. I own both British/Irish passports but know truly I don't fully belong to either ultimately.

I am Irish. I was born there, spent 25 years there before I met my now DH who is English, my parent still live there. I now live in England. My DDs have irish passports, but I dont expect that they will see themselves as irish. I dont see them as irish. I see them as english with an irish mother. They wont have the irish attitudes or family life or traditions. They will have an english accent. They will go to an english school which is very different to an irish school. They will have English attitudes to cultural things like death, work, education.

To me, being irish is born and raised in ireland. It cant really be replicated. You can be irish officially by a passport, but not irish in your ways or experiences. I think that's the same for every country.

I think it's a combination of what you feel and obviously the legal definition (e.g. would you qualify for citizenship/a passport).

You could be born in Norway to 2 Irish parents and be Norwegian and Irish
You could be born in Norway to 1 Irish and 1 Norwegian parent and be Norwegian and Irish
You could be born in Ireland to 2 Norwegian parents and be Norwegian and Irish
You could by born in Norway to 2 Norwegian parents, move to Ireland when you were small and live your life there, and be Norwegian and Irish
You could be born in Ireland to 2 Irish parents, move to Norway as an adult, get married and raise a family, feel a close affinity with Norway, its culture and land and be Norwegian and Irish

In any of these scenarios, you may feel more one than another depending on lots of factors, and you may be perceived as more one than another, usually based on accent.

I think it gets a little trickier when the link is more distant, but who am I to deny how people feel about nationality? If an American gets pleasure out of their distant heritage it's not doing anyone any harm.

Likewise, if an Irish person has never visited Norway but feels the call of the fjords and that some part of them is Viking (or has had one of those Ancestry tests and come up with whatever percent blood or something) and wants to claim Norwegian descent, have at it.

I'd say you were British.

I consider myself English as my closest non English anseator is great grandparents.

My dh has an Irish grandparent and a Welsh parent. So I'd consider him British.

I think it is slightly different to other ansestory, as in Britain we are free to move around the four countries and we are very close together with a common language. Most people have an anseator from a different part of Britain to themselves. As an example, having a Scottish nan doesn't make you Scottish, but I can see why you'd want to acknowledge that you're not soley English or wherever it is you live in the UK. So it's less complicated to just identify as British.

I mean you're both. You're Irish and English. In the same way a Pakistani-Brit raised in England is both Pakistani (heritage, genes, parents) and British/English (home country, raised there)

I'm Irish, and I think I would consider you English/British. My DP is English but one of his grandparents was Irish and that side of his family (all born and raised in England) consider themselves Irish and I find it really bizarre as culturally they seem very English to me.

Equally all of my UK/USA friends in Australia consider their children Australian, they don't see their kids as Scottish / Irish / English / American (and neither do the kids).

I think a lot of your identity and cultural reference points are ingrained in your childhood so where you are raised, for me, seems like the most influential factor.

I'm Irish descent on both sides. However we have been in Australia since the 1850's with the occasional Irish person joining the family. Still consider ourselves Irish.

I’d say you were definitely Irish but born in England.

I have 57% Irish DNA, according to Ancestry, from my paternal great grandparents which was a big surprise as I thought they were Scottish. I have 43% English DNA from my maternal side. I now consider myself Irish and it explains a lot!

Mimishimi

Surely you if your family has been in Australia since the 1850s you'd identify as Australian by now?

Having or being entitled to Irish citizenship works as a definition for me.

I don't care how people identify though. If you want to insist you're Irish because you had Irish grandparents, have at it; a lot of people will think you're a tool but then a lot of other people will enthusiastically agree that you do have an Irish identity. I don't care. Whatever floats your boat.