Talk:List of English Americans

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[edit] Unmanageable?

According to the United States Census there are more German Americans, Irish Americans and African Americans than English descended Americans. All of those groups have lists and none need a generational limit. So I'm boldly removing the generational limitation on this list. Durova 15:58, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

People classify themselves as Irish or German with less ancestry then they would English. I think if similar standards were applied English Americans would get enormous. Be that as it may if this is limited to those with substantial English ancestry though it might not be unmanageable.--T. Anthony 15:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. JackO'Lantern 20:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. If one applied the same criteria to English-America that are applied to some other groups the numbers would overwhelmingly dwarf those groups. But Wiki should be consistent: the list of Irish-Americans is huge (apparently Judy Garland is "identified with the culture" and Eddie Murphy must be Irish - look at his surname!), whereas this list is very short. Where are the founding fathers for a start? If they are not English-American in the most part, who is?

[edit] Category:English Americans

Why does the page "Category:English Americans" contain dozens of names not included on this list? 86.17.208.173 13:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories are less strictly maintained than lists for whatever reason, but I might check about who in the cat could fit.--T. Anthony 15:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnicity lists discussion

Please see discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for current discussion of a potential policy to apply to all ethnicity lists on Wikipedia, including this one. JackO'Lantern 20:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I have sourced the list in accordance with Wikipedia's No Original Research and Verifiability policies. Basically, anyone described by a reliable source as "Finnish" or "Finnish-American" (i.e. as opposed to "of Finnish descent", "Finnish mother", etc.) is on the list. Here are the people I couldn't find anything for. If you have a reliable source that fits that please restore the names:

Mad Jack O'Lantern 08:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

    • Well, for Chris Guest there's one big clue: he's the 5th Baron Haden-Guest, and until recent reforms was a member of the House of Lords (look at his entry). Halle Berry's mother was born in Liverpool. Eastwood's daughter was born to Frances Fisher, who was born in England. And Richard Dawson? As English as John Smith.
    • Tyrone Power, Sr. was born in England and descends from an English composer. Granted his father was Irish. Richard Dawson was born in England, but I believe became a citizen. Someone want to get the sources to put some of these names back.--T. Anthony 14:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I put Guest back. I might work on Dawson and Power later.--T. Anthony 05:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worthless?

This list is pretty worthless. It is woefully thin - the Finnish list is as big. The number of English-Americans is in eight figures: is this list the best we can do? An example of how all these lists are a mess: Tom Hanks' article basically says he is mostly of English descent, with some Welsh. Guess which list he is on? Yet on the category for actors he is listed as English. Which is it?! 86.17.246.75 22:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason this was thin when I edited on it is because there was great concern that such a list would be enormous beyond reason if we included everyone who was just of English descent. So, back then anyway, we were mostly adding people who called themselves English-American or had lived in England before living in the US. It's possible that concern is still keeping this from getting as large as you'd like.--T. Anthony 14:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
For the most part, the reasons the list is thin are: The majority of people who are of predominantly English descent had ancestors who moved here so long ago that it is impossible to indeed confirm that they are of English descent. I'd bet, to use a random example, that Nancy Grace, John Mark Karr and Patsy Ramsey are all of mostly English descent, though this would never be mentioned in any source so we can't verify it. The other reason this list is short and is indeed missing a large number of people who could be verified as English Americans, is that there are no English American editors adding as many names as possible, as we have on so many other X-American lists. Mad Jack 16:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Possible I suppose. My father is almost purely of English descent with a bit of Scotch and Northern Irish. I'd imagine most English-descended Americans like me never identify as English-American. Mostly I just mention being almost exclusively English, Dutch and Belgian as a source of embarrassment. List of Dutch Americans was quite small too as many don't identify as that either.--T. Anthony 14:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't matter whose father, mother, etc. was English. IF you have a source that actually describes the person as "English American" (or "British American") or "English" (if they are also "American") then you can put them on the list, if not, no. So no "English mother", "English descent", etc. Tom Hanks' ancestors immigrated here centuries ago. I seriously doubt anyone, including himself, considers Hanks "English American" (but feel free to prove me wrong with a good source). This is the same as is being done with all of these lists to put them in proper shape. Mad Jack 06:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George W. Bush?

Isn't George W. Bush an English American?

I bet he'd be mightily surprised to be called an "English American". He's basically an "American" (as, I suppose, is anyone whose ancestors moved here over 300 years ago. Much like, English people who have Norman French ancestors are not "French English" people) Mad Jack 16:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
English Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates in the northwest European nation of England.
Actually English Americans for Wikipedia purposes are those people described by reputable sources as English Americans. Obviously at some point in time people become just "Americans", with no little tag in front of them (which is exactly why you will never, ever find a reputable source that would call George Bush an "English Ameriacn"). Otherwise, you may as well call half the population of Britain "French-British" because some of their ancestors were Norman. Mad Jack 16:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American English?

I wonder if we should have a corollary list of American-English people like Henry James and T. S. Eliot.--T. Anthony 10:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

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