Panethnicity in the context of Fethullah Gülen

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 hyphenated ethnicity (or rarely hyphenated identity) is a reference to an ethnicity, pan-ethnicity, national origin, or national identity combined with the demonym of a country of citizenship-nationality, another national identity, or in some cases country of residency or country of upbringing. The term is an extension of the term "hyphenated American". The term refers to the use of a hyphen between the name of an ethnicity and the name of the country in compound nouns: Irish-American, etc., although modern English language style guides recommend dropping the hyphen: "Irish American".

The concept should not be confused with that of mixed ethnicity and multiraciality, i.e., the ethnicity or race of a person whose parents have different ethnicities/races, which can also be written in a hyphenated way.

Yugoslavs or Yugoslavians is an identity that was originally conceived to refer to a united South Slavic people. It has been used in two connotations: the first in a sense of common shared ethnic descent, i.e. panethnic or supraethnic connotation for ethnic South Slavs, and the second as a term for all citizens of former Yugoslavia regardless of ethnicity. Cultural and political advocates of Yugoslav identity have historically purported the identity to be applicable to all people of South Slav heritage, including those of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Although Bulgarians are a South Slavic group as well, attempts at uniting Bulgaria with Yugoslavia were unsuccessful, and therefore Bulgarians were not included in the panethnic identification. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia and establishment of South Slavic nation states, the term ethnic Yugoslavs has been used to refer to those who exclusively view themselves as Yugoslavs with no other ethnic self-identification, many of these being of mixed ancestry.

In the former Yugoslavia, the official designation for those who declared themselves simply as Yugoslav was with quotation marks, "Yugoslavs" (introduced in census 1971). The quotation marks were originally meant to distinguish Yugoslav ethnicity from Yugoslav citizenship, which was written without quotation marks. The majority of those who had once identified as ethnic "Yugoslavs" reverted to or adopted traditional ethnic and national identities, sometimes due to social pressure, intimidation, detrimental consequences, or prevention to continue identifying as Yugoslav by new political authorities. Some also decided to turn to sub-national regional identifications, especially in multi-ethnic historical regions like Istria, Vojvodina, or Bosnia (hence Bosnians). The Yugoslav designation, however, continues to be used by many, especially in the United States, Canada, and Australia by the descendants of Yugoslav migrants who emigrated while the country still existed.

Habesha peoples (Ge'ez: ሐበሠተ; Amharic: ሐበሻ; Tigrinya: ሓበሻ; commonly used exonym: Abyssinians) is an ethnic or pan-ethnic identifier that has historically been applied to Semitic-speaking, predominantly Oriental Orthodox Christian peoples native to the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea between Asmara and Addis Ababa (i.e. the modern-day Amhara, Tigrayan, Tigrinya peoples) and this usage remains common today. The term is also used in varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion of other groups.

European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since the 17th century, European Americans have been the largest panethnic group in what is now the United States. According to the 2020 United States census, 58.8% of the White alone population and 56.1% of the White alone or in combination gave a detailed European write-in response.

The Spaniards were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the contiguous United States, although arriving in small numbers, with Martín de Argüelles (b. 1566) in St. Augustine, then a part of Spanish Florida, and the Russians were the first Europeans to settle in Alaska, establishing Russian America. The first British child born in the Americas was Virginia Dare, born August 18, 1587. She was born in Roanoke Colony, located in present-day North Carolina, which was the first attempt, made during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to establish a permanent English settlement in North America.

Latin Americans (Spanish: Latinoamericanos; Portuguese: Latino-americanos; French: Latino-américains) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America).

Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-ethnic and multi-racial. Latin Americans are a pan-ethnicity consisting of people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, many Latin Americans do not take their nationality as an ethnicity, but identify themselves with a combination of their nationality, ethnicity and their ancestral origins. In addition to the indigenous population, Latin Americans include people with Old World ancestors who arrived since 1492. Latin America has the largest diasporas of Spaniards, Portuguese, Africans, Italians, Lebanese and Japanese in the world. The region also has large German (second largest after the United States), French, Palestinian (largest outside the Arab states), Chinese and Jewish diasporas.

European Canadians are Canadians who can trace their ancestry from Europe. They form the largest panethnic group within Canada. In the 2021 Canadian census, 19,062,115 people or 52.5% of the population self-identified ethnic origins from Europe. People may nominate more than one ethnic origin in the census.

European Australians, or Australians of European descent, are citizens or residents of Australia whose ancestry, or part of it, is traced back to the peoples of the area now described as Europe. They form the largest panethnic group in the country. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within European ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to more than 57.2% (46% North-West European and 11.2% Southern and Eastern European). It is impossible to properly quantify the precise proportion of the population with (some) European ancestry for both definitional, scientific and mathematical reasons. For instance, many census recipients nominated two European ancestries—as well they might, given the nature of ancestry—tending towards an overcount. (As well, respondents were limited to the nomination of a maximum of two ancestries on that question.) Conversely, 29.9% of census recipients nominated "Australian" ancestry (categorised within the Oceanian ancestry group, although most of them are likely to have had some Anglo-Celtic or European ancestors), tending towards an undercount.

Since the early 19th century, people of European descent have formed the majority of the population in Australia. European-originating ideas, values, systems of government and law, and immigrants, have been widely adopted and influential in Australian culture, government and society, leading to the assessment of Australia as a partly European-derived country.

Supraethnicity (from Latin prefix supra- / "above" and Ancient Greek word ἔθνος / "ethnos = people") is a scholarly neologism, used mainly in social sciences as a formal designation for a particular structural category that lies "above" the basic level of ethnicity. It is often paired with subethnicity, a similar technical term with the exact opposite meaning, also designating a particular structural category, but that which lies "under" the level of ethnicity. Both terms are used in ethnic studies in order to describe structural and functional relations between basic (common) form of ethnic identity and various related phenomena that are classified as belonging to "higher" (supraethnic) or "lower" (subethnic) levels. Formally, both categories (supraethnic and subethnic) are designating levels, not the contents. For example, there are several distinctive phenomena that are manifested on the supraethnic level, like: metaethnicity, multiethnicity (pluriethnicity), panethnicity, polyethnicity, or transethnicity, each of them having their own distinctive contents, but all of them sharing the same structural "supraethnic" level. There have been attempts to define some common, not only structural but also functional properties of supraethnicity, but such attempts were challenged by the present state of terminological diversity and inconsistency within the ethnic studies.

Czechoslovaks (Czech and Slovak: Čechoslováci) is a designation that was originally designed to refer to a united panethnicity of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. It has later adopted two distinct connotations, the first being the aforementioned supra-ethnic meaning, and the second as a general term for all citizens of the former Czechoslovakia regardless of ethnicity. Cultural and political advocates of Czechoslovak identity have historically ascribed the identity to be applicable to all people of Czech and Slovak heritage both in the country and in the diaspora.

Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of Czech and Slovak nation states, the term ethnic Czechoslovaks has been used to refer to those who exclusively view themselves as Czechoslovaks with no other ethnic self-identification, many of these being of mixed ancestry.