To ask if you have 4 British Grandparents?

[ThornInMySide84]

In conversation with friends last night about the perks of still having an EU passport I discovered I was the only one with all 4 Grandparents being British.

DH also has 1 non British Grandparent and now when I really think about it so do a lot of my other friends. I would say the majority have an Irish Grandparent but also Spanish, Indian, Chinese, Polish, Maltese and Italian amongst my close friends.

I recall reading somewhere that 25% of British people could get an Irish passport so I guess I’m now wondering if having all 4 British Grandparents are not being entitled to any other nationality is actually quite uncommon?

Yes. And 8x British great grandparents.

0 British grandparents- but 3 British Great grandparents.

My Dcs have 1 British grandparent and one dual citizenship Brit/Italian grandparent. The other two (my parents) non-British.

I have no grandparents (or parents either), but when they were alive, they were all UK citizens. Likewise for DH. I had one Irish great-grandparent, apparently, but Ireland wasn't independent at the time.

Nope: 2 were German (never came to the UK), one was Russian, and one had Irish heritage on one side. I am 63 and it was very, very unusual.

DH's were all British although one was half French.

@Sapphire387 I am sorry. It could easily happen to me.

Yes - all British (Scottish)

I've done my family tree back to the late 1700s. A few Irish in there but otherwise all British.

Mine are all dead but one was non british. Unfortunately I am not entitled to the passport of their country because my dad, their son, doesn’t have one. I really wish he did as I looked in to applying as soon as brexit became a reality

Yes, all 4 are/were British. Same for DH.

Feeling better that I’m not alone in 1 passport land! I do totally get that actually having a British passport does make me really ‘lucky’ but boy would I love an Irish Granny sometimes..

4 x Scottish grandparents

Yes I did. Mostly Scottish.

I suspect its the norm really here.

I had 4 british GP (now dead) and my DC are the first in our family who that isn't true for, as their dad isn't British. They have 2 British GP (DC not dual citizens they only have British citizenship) and 2 non European GP.

My grandparents (and great-grandparents) are all British. Unusually all my grandparents went to grammar school and benefitted hugely from that in social mobility terms. My great-grandmother worked in a cotton mill from a ridiculously young age, my grandad ended up as chairman of several large companies in his later life. We’ve lived abroad so I’m multilingual but no ability to escape from Brexit.

Mine are all Scottish. DH is much more exotic with 2 grandparents from another continent (he was born there as well) and his British parent was born in Northern Ireland so DH and the DC are all eligible for an Irish passport.

I think it will vary with the circles you move in, the rural part of Scotland I come from most people have all their grandparents from there (and have farmed the same land for generations) but my friends from my PhD pretty much all our children have at least one grandparent from overseas.

I take you've had a DNA test to confirm your Britishness?

They're all dead now sadly but yes all four were British - Welsh and English. I have done some work on my family tree and got back to 4 x great grandparent on one side and they were all British.

Haven't got as far back on other sides, only to 2 x great grandparent and all British.

While I was pleased to have got back so far in the family tree I was a little disappointed that there werent some other nationalities in there for me to explore.

@ThornInMySide84 My 4 non British grandparents are of no practical use whatsoever. My partner and children are now the proud possessors of the holy grail of passports.....

All British. Grandad from Northern Ireland but he was very much British not Irish.

I have four British grandparents, but one was born in Northern Ireland so I could have an Irish passport.

I did (all long dead) but dh had a GM who was born in Ireland, but moved to the U.K. as a very young woman, and so he’s been able to get an Irish passport, which he’s very smug about. Dds are pissed off that he didn’t do it much sooner, so that they’d be entitled, too. But pre Brexit he had no real reason to - never even thought of it.

I like to irritate him by saying that his Irish forebears weren’t ‘proper’ Irish anyway - they were Protestants, who probably moved there from Scotland (Scottish surnames) way back.😈

Late 30s and yes all 4. Don't think there's anyone non-English for several generations. There's something in my grandad's bloodline I think, there are some very distinguishing features among some members of his family and he had a very unusual surname that no one could trace (it's now extinct) but no idea what.

Same here! Had one English grandparent. The other two were Maltese.

recall reading somewhere that 25% of British people could get an Irish passport so I guess I’m now wondering if having all 4 British Grandparents are not being entitled to any other nationality is actually quite uncommon

To me that statistic sounded unlikely (there are over 10 times more people in the UK than there are in Ireland) so I googled.

According to this, the percentage is more like about 10%

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37246769

As far as I know, I wouldn't qualify - all my grandparents were Yorkshire born and bred I think, same for DP.

DH and I are not British but lived in the uk most of our adult lives. My grandparents were two from Belgium and two from France (thank you for my EU passport) and all DH’s grandparents were all French Canadian.

I did (mine are long dead). Though my grandmother and grandfather were of Irish descent, born to Irish migrants.

Born in Britain, and no.