What ethnicity would you assume some one is with the last name whitehead?

Question

What ethnicity would you assume some one is with the last name whitehead?

Answer 1

My, you certainly got a lot of "I just want the points and known nothing about Genealogy answers", did you?

Well the Surname Whitehead originates, or is first found in England. There are numerous spellings including Whitehed. However that doesn't mean you are of English Ancestry. Surname was words and words come from languages not countries.

Also the word Ethnicity when talking about Genealogy is not used because it simply means the cultural group that you were raised in.

It has nothing to do with the country of origin of a family, or what the heritage of a family might be and that word is used to identify very specific items in Genealogy.

Also NOTHING is ever assumed in Genealogy, if it cannot be proven it doesn't exist.

Hope I was helpful.

Answer 2

The name English but that doesn't mean anything. I believe Sentinen Laulu stated it very well. A person could have had an ancestor 15 generations back with the name Whitehead and he married a Croatian girl and all their descendants since then married other Croatians. So their ethnicity would be Croatian even though their surname was English.

Answer 3

Genealogy is factual and researched based, a surname is just a word and assuming anything is not something a genealogist would do especially about a word, only people who don't know anything about genealogy and/or think surnames tell you what country someone was born/raised in would assume and as it is an English language word or rathr two words and the English language was heard, spoken, influenced every continent in the World and so on anyone of those places a person could have chosen that name to use as their surname (and did)..surname hunting is not the way to find where your ancestry is from, ONLY researching the record trail will tell you anything at all

Answer 4

I wouldn't. Unless I was very ignorant, which I'm not.



A person with that name might have a single ancestor of English origin. Or be married to a person with a single ancestor of English origin. Or be descended from a slave whose master was called Whitehead. Or have an ancestor from somewhere else in the world whose name meant 'white head' and had been translated out of the original language.

Answer 5

English.

Answer 6

You will get a lot of guesses from visitors to this area.

the REGULARS here have experience, that it is always wrong to assume anything. We have run into every exception under the sun, not to mention, we work with provable records. Never guess on anything in genealogy.

Answer 7

No clue. It could be a Chinese woman who married Mr. Whitehead and took his surname. It could be a person whose ancestors are all Spanish except for one great-great-great-grandfather who was an Englishman named Whitehead and whose name descended through the male line. It could be a German immigrant named Weisskopf who decided to anglicize her name when moving to America. It could be an African American whose ancestor adopted the name Whitehead randomly or from the former slave "owner" when he was emancipated. You can't assume anything.

Answer 8

I wouldn't assume at all. Last names won't tell you a person's ethnicity.

Answer 9

I agree with Alsergrunds answer. Maybe it could also be a Native American name? But i'm just making assumptions.

Answer 10

English or from the somewhere in the UK.

Answer 11

Nothern European.