IBARW: Don't ask me my nationality.

[kate_nepveu]

This is an American-only post, as I understand that "nationality" has different connotations in different countries. For the general version, which I fully agree with, see karaadora's post, "Where are you from?" "London" "No, where are you FROM?": why this annoys me and other stories. (Also, Supernatural fans, there is a link to a picture of her with Jensen Ackles.)

It is also part of a set with the previous post.

Dear fellow Americans:

Please stop asking me my nationality, or referring to other people of my nationality. Here in the United States, "nationality" refers to your country of citizenship. (See, news discussions about "foreign nationals.")

When you ask me my nationality, or tell me (in a very well-meaning way) that "other people of my nationality" have been having trouble finding glasses that fit because of the way our faces are shaped, you are assuming that I am foreign. That I am not, in fact, American. And since this is a long-standing stereotype about people of Asian descent, that we are foreigners, you are perpetuating a stereotype. You probably don't know that you're doing it, but it pisses me off. And now you know. So don't do it.

What you really want to know is where my ancestors came from far enough back that everyone around them had yellow skin. I'll accept, "what's your ancestry" or "ethnicity", though I have to say, why do you want to know? I don't go up to random people of European descent and ask them what country their ancestors came from.

Oh, and the same goes for showing off your knowledge of some Asian language by greeting me in it. Do I greet you, a perfect stranger, by saying "Ciao"? No. I know you think you're being polite and respectful. But you're not. And now you know. So don't do it.

Sincerely,

An American

(Chad does this nicely when asked, with perfect reason, if we're going to Japan because I have family there: "Kate was born in Korea, but she's from Boston." Which I will try to adapt, except that I would substitute "Massachusetts.")

(I say "try" because, for all that I am ranting here, it's really hard to come out and say this when someone does it in person. I'm working on it, though.)

(Also, on ranting: I'm doing this here, and somewhat in the last one too, because this isn't directed at anyone specifically, and because it does make me angry, and anger has its place—as does being polite. oyceter has a good post on this.)

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

And you would probably say something like, "hey, I'm interested in names and ancestries, would you mind telling me about yours?" Or you wouldn't phrase it exactly that way, but because you are a polite person, and we've interacted, I'd probably answer and ask you why you wanted to know, and then maybe explain that bare-faced questions about my ancestry make me twitch for the reasons I said above. And that would be _fine_.

I was addressing two groups of people in this post. The first, is everyone who uses "nationality" to mean something they don't, because it's seen as a polite euphemism.

The second, and I admit this got conflated a bit so I am glad of this opportunity to clarify further, are the *strangers* who come up to me and either ask me my ancestry, or assume they know it and start speaking to me in tongues. Who don't go and do the same to the white people shopping in the same store. And those people can go bugger off.

Is that clearer?

Anyway, the capsule version of the name and my ancestry:

Adopted from Korea at three months, lived in the U.S. since. The name is French-Canadian (dad's family came from Canada in I think his great-grand-parents' time; his grandmother still spoke French-Canadian but I think she was born here). The "p" is silent, an old variant of a name without the "p." (Why anyone would add a silent "p" in the middle of a word is beyond me.) We apparently have cousins who use the original spelling.

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the clarification.

I'm trying to decide how I might behave if I met a stranger on the street who was wearing a "Kiss me, I'm Slovenian" t-shirt. Would I accost him/her and ask about name and family history? I might.

I suspect that the people you are talking about believe (incorrectly) that you are wearing the equivalent of an ethnically-identifying t-shirt. I'm not making any excuses for their rudeness or bogus assumptions -- the social distinction between one's genes and one's jeans is enormous. I'm just trying to understand the mechanism of it.

As for 'Nepveu', the (intriguing to me, as are most etymologies) question is whether nobody added a silent p, but rather failed to lose the p when it became silent. Modern French neveu is from Latin nepote, ablative of nepos, meaning "sister's son" or "grandson" or generally "male descendant". The transitional forms retained the p from the Latin, or in some cases used a b. (Nièce had a p in Latin also -- neptia became niepce became nièce. Some of the cognates retain the p to this day, e.g. Lithuanian nepta.)

So maybe some regional variant was still using both the p and the v at the time the word became a family name. A quick check didn't find any obvious candidates for when and where, but that kind of question does fascinate me.

[kate_nepveu]

I think the T-shirt analogy is a decent approximation and does a fair job of pointing out the *differences* that lead to the extra rudness.

As for etymology: thanks! I thought it was the other way around--when we were in Quebec City, we found a museum with stuff about family names and it listed Nepveu as the variant, implying that Neveu was more common.

There was a 1600s Nepveu in Quebec City--down at the bottom of the hill, in the old city, there was a plaque next to a basement saying so.

But now I know where the "p" came from, for which I thank you, because it deeply puzzled me.