What is the best way to determine ethnicity of surnames?

Answer by  Roland27 (16334)

Online is the easiest. There are sites where you type in the name and they give you the origin of that name.

Answer by  Barbie87 (277)

Most Chinese surnames are a single syllable. Korean surnames are most often Kim. The most popular Vietnamese surname is Nguyen. Japanese surnames are multi-syllabic and contains a lot of vowels. African-American surnames that are very common include: White, Jackson, and Brown. Irish and Scottish surnames usually have and O'-something in them. Italian surnames usually end in -nio.

Answer by  wantnot (305)

It helps to know a lot of people with different ethnic ancestry. You can just ask them about the ethnicity of their surnames, and figure out a pattern; for example, names ending in -ski are probably Polish, while names ending in -sky are probably Czech. Watch the Olympics to learn a lot of ethnic names!