Ancestry in the context of Genetic test

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Attributes that ethnicities believe to share include language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment. Ethnicities are maintained through long-term endogamy and may have a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, with some groups having mixed genetic ancestry. Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. It is also used interchangeably with race although not all ethnicities identify as racial groups.

By way of assimilation, acculturation, amalgamation, language shift, intermarriage, adoption and religious conversion, individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be divided into subgroups or tribes, which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from the parent group. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a panethnicity and may eventually merge into one single ethnicity. Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis.

A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinshipand descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim other descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societies' exogamy rules are on a clan basis, where all members of one's own clan, or the clans of both parents or even grandparents, are excluded from marriage as incest.

Clans preceded more centralized forms of community organization and government, and have existed in every country. Members may identify with a coat of arms or other symbol.

Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnic background. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such as scientific racism, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded. In terms of political systems (e.g. apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws, racist ideology may include associated social aspects such as nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, and supremacism.

While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in contemporary social science, the two terms have a long history of equivalence in popular usage and older social science literature. "Ethnicity" is often used in a sense close to one traditionally attributed to "race", the division of human groups based on qualities assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g., shared ancestry or shared behavior). Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, there is no distinction between the discrimination resulting from either basis of race or ethnicity, but that the terms do have different meanings that may not always coincide. It further concludes that superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous. The convention also declared that there is no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.

Puerto Ricans (Spanish: Puertorriqueños, [pweɾtoriˈkeɲos]), commonly known as Boricuas, but also occasionally referred to as Borinqueños, Borincanos, or Puertorros, are an ethnic group based in the Caribbean archipelago and island of Puerto Rico, and a nation identified with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico through ancestry, culture, or history. Puerto Ricans are predominately a tri-racial, Spanish-speaking, Christian society, descending in varying degrees from Indigenous Taíno natives, Spanish and other European colonists, and West and Central African slaves, freedmen, and free Blacks. As citizens of a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans have automatic birthright American citizenship, and are considerably influenced by American culture. The population of Puerto Ricans is between 9 and 10 million worldwide, with the overwhelming majority residing in Puerto Rico and the mainland United States.

The Albanians are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula who share a common Albanian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are the main ethnic group of Albania and Kosovo, and they also live in the neighboring countries of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia, as well as in Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Albanians also constitute a large diaspora with several communities established across Europe and the other continents.

The language of the Albanians is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group. Albanians have a western Paleo-Balkanic origin, and, for geographic and historical reasons, most scholars maintain that they descend at least partially from the Illyrians, but the question of which other Paleo-Balkan group(s) contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Albanians is still a subject of academic debate.

The Portuguese people (Portuguese: Portugueses – masculine – or Portuguesas) are a Romance-speaking ethnic group and nation indigenous to Portugal, a country that occupies the west side of the Iberian Peninsula in south-west Europe, who share culture, ancestry and language.

The Portuguese state began with the founding of the County of Portugal in 868. Following the Battle of São Mamede (1128), Portugal gained international recognition as a kingdom through the Treaty of Zamora and the papal bull Manifestis Probatum. This Portuguese state paved the way for the Portuguese people to unite as a nation.

Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, ancestry, ethnic or national origin, and/or skin color and hair texture. Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain group. Governments can discriminate explicitly in law, for example through policies of racial segregation, disparate enforcement of laws, or disproportionate allocation of resources. Some jurisdictions have anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the government or individuals from being discriminated based on race (and sometimes other factors) in various circumstances. Some institutions and laws use affirmative action to attempt to overcome or compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. In some cases, this is simply enhanced recruitment of members of underrepresented groups; in other cases, there are firm racial quotas. Opponents of strong remedies like quotas characterize them as reverse discrimination, where members of a dominant or majority group are discriminated against.

The Albanians of Croatia (Albanian: Shqiptarët në Kroaci; Croatian: Albanci u Hrvatskoj) are people of full or partial Albanian ancestry and heritage who are an ethnic minority in Croatia.

They are an autochthonous national minority recognized by the Constitution of Croatia. As such, they elect a special representative to the Croatian Parliament, shared with members of four other national minorities. The Albanian language is recognised in Croatia.

Ancestral domain or ancestral lands are the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. The term differs from indigenous land rights, Aboriginal title or Native Title by directly indicating relationship to land based on ancestry, while domain indicates relationships beyond material lands and territories, including spiritual and cultural aspects that may not be acknowledged in land titles and legal doctrine about trading ownership.

In biology, homology is similarity in anatomical structures or genes between organisms of different taxa due to shared ancestry, regardless of current functional differences. Evolutionary biology explains homologous structures as retained heredity from a common ancestor after having been subjected to adaptive modifications for different purposes as the result of natural selection.

The term was first applied to biology in a non-evolutionary context by the anatomist Richard Owen in 1843. Homology was later explained by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, but had been observed before this from Aristotle's biology onwards, and it was explicitly analysed by Pierre Belon in 1555. A common example of homologous structures is the forelimbs of vertebrates, where the wings of bats and birds, the arms of primates, the front flippers of whales, and the forelegs of four-legged vertebrates like horses and crocodilians are all derived from the same ancestral tetrapod structure.

British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and also the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar). It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.

Based on 2020 American Community Survey estimates, 1,934,397 individuals identified as having British ancestry, while a further 25,213,619 identified as having English ancestry, 5,298,861 Scottish ancestry and 1,851,256 Welsh ancestry. The total of these groups, at 34,298,133, was 10.5% of the total population. A further 31,518,129 individuals identified as having Irish ancestry, but this is not differentiated between modern Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland, which was part of the United Kingdom during the greatest phase of Irish immigration. Figures for Manx and Cornish ancestries are not separately reported, although Manx was reported prior to 1990, numbering 9,220 on the 1980 census, and some estimates put Cornish ancestry as high as 2 million. This figure also does not include people reporting ancestries in countries with majority or plurality British ancestries, such as Canadian, South African, New Zealander (21,575) or Australian (105,152). There has been a significant drop overall, especially from the 1980 census where 49.59 million people reported English ancestry and larger numbers reported Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish ancestry also.