RateItAll: The Opinion Network

1/2 Irish 1/2 Italian

This is why my brother looks like a leprechaun...

UPDATE: One time we were walking out of a pool hall and two of my friends, one being RIA's Mad Hatter, nearly had to be picked up off of the ground from laughing when I demanded that my brother say, "They're magically delicious!"

Half, if you mean Irish Catholic, and one of my ancestors was pretty prominent in the Fenian movement in the 1800's. More this than anything. I might have some Scotch-Irish and English in there too as my maternal grandmother's from the South, and I don't know much about it, but her family is largely Scottish and one of her ancestors was a Seminole.

I am part Irish. I owe it all to my dad's paternal grandmother (who died before I was ever born).

This is me, the Irish part anyway (there's a small touch of English too)

Although what in hell Icelandic is doing in the same group as Irish is beyond me.

I guess this is the category where I fit in (Irish, German, Scottish). As an adopted child, I was never quite sure what I was in terms of my background. Growing up, most of my friends were Italian and I always envied them their strong sense of roots. My adopted parents were always pretty open and honest with me, but, in an effort to reassure me (I think) I was told I was "English-German" or "Anglo-Saxon". As I was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and had been adopted through a Lutheran agency, this seemed plausible. As I got older, it seemed less so. In adolescence, my hair turned fairly dark, and no one was going to mistake me for the missing illegitimate son of the British Royal Family. In my early 20's, I was given the "non-identifying" information that all adopted people are entitled to. It claimed my birth mother was "Irish, German and Dutch" (Protestant) and my birth-father was "Irish-German" (Catholic). I went through some turmoil during the next few years, as I desperately wanted to "search" for them, but didn't want to intrude into anyone's life and re-open old wounds, and I also didn't want to risk what I felt might be a devestating rejection. Thankfully, my birth-mother was motivated to contact me of her own volition, and the last few years have been wonderful in so many ways for me. In my middle-age, I'm learning things about myself that most people grow up knowing about themselves. Some of the facts contained in the "non-identifying" information were erroneous, and my birth-mother is somewhat perplexed as to how they got in there. For instance, my background on my maternal side is "Irish, German and Scottish", not "Irish, German and Dutch" (I think one of my German forebears lived for a time in Holland). My birth-father died before I could meet him, but I've been able to get a plentiful supply of information on him as well. As my birth mother puts it, "I'm more German than Irish, and your father was more Irish than German." Relatives from both sides have been more than accepting of me, and my adopted parents continue to be very supportive. Most people probably can't relate to it, but it's been a fascinating journey for me to learn, for instance, what parts of Ireland my ancestors came from (Donegal, County Clare). I have relatives still living in Germany and hopefully will be able to meet them someday. Adopted people, I know, are as different as everybody else is. Some aren't interested in searching out their birth-relatives, or investigating their ancestry and background. Speaking for myself, though, this whole experience has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me. The only way I can put it is to say that I always felt I was going through life with some integral part of myself missing, and now I've found that part.