Are there really more Americans of German ancestry than English ancestry?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

True.  While my ancestry is mostly British, if pressed to call myself a hyphenated American, it would be as a Canadian-American since that is where my most recently immigrated ancestors came from.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Oh, and Jim? John Cabot was not an Englishman.... oh wait. I see what you did there (ie neither was Columbus a Spaniard.)

I had to Wiki this and it completely blew my mind. Though I knew Columbus wasn't from Spain.

Does anyone know why we insist on changing historical figures names that way? I mean, why is it so difficult to refer to Christopher Columbus as Christoforo Colombo? Why is Friedrich the Great (the German ruler) referred to as Frederick? It's very ethnocentric and misleading. I doubt textbooks in Mexico refer to the 43rd President of the United States as Jorge Caminador Arbusto.

Probably not, but I expect they call the European discover of the Americas by the name Cristóbal Colón just as the Spanish Wikipedia article names William the Conqueror as Guillermo el Conquistador.

Let's not forget that while we tend to think of personal names as semi-random groupings of sound, they once were all words of meaning, so it's no surprise that at one time people translated names just as they would any other word.  After all, whether translated as 진지한 or transliterated as 어니스트 I'd still be Ernest in Korea.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't see how German could have surpassed English after 1900.

Thing is, we see English as so indistinguishable from American that if there is any other ancestry, that's the one that will be mentioned.  It's sort of like sandwiches.  Does anyone ever bother to mention their sandwich uses white bread?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I've never seen any data that Scots-Irish outnumber English in the South, but it seems very trendy these days to claim Southern whites are actually Celts and contrast "Celtic" Southerners to "Anglo-Saxon" Yankees.

Let's not forget that it was also trendy pre-Civil War in the south for Southerners to claim descent from Norman conquerors while asserting Northerners came from conquered Anglo-Saxons.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I've never seen any data that Scots-Irish outnumber English in the South, but it seems very trendy these days to claim Southern whites are actually Celts and contrast "Celtic" Southerners to "Anglo-Saxon" Yankees.

Let's not forget that it was also trendy pre-Civil War in the south for Southerners to claim descent from Norman conquerors while asserting Northerners came from conquered Anglo-Saxons.

Are we talking English Civil War, or what? Because that's just ridiculous.

No pre-American Civil War, and yes it is ridiculous.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You know, this discussion also makes me wonder things like...

1) What percentage of white Americans today have at least one ancestor who lived in North America at the time of the Revolutionary War?

2) What is the average %age of ancestry for such people today that comes from the Revolutionary War era (and earlier)?

3) And then, out of curiosity, repeat the above questions for the Civil War.

Like I said, in my case, I did have some ancestors living in North America during the Colonial period, though the majority of my ancestors didn't come to North America until after the Civil War.  I think ~10% of my Mom's ancestry is from folks living here in the Colonial Era, while for my Dad it would be 0%.  But what's average?  Are there really many people left where it's >50%?  And where do they tend to live?  In the South?

I get to be an oddball here as I have ancestors who lived in the future United States at the time of the so-called Revolution, but not during the so-called Second Revolution as the ones who'd been here fr the first had had to escape to Canada afterwards.