ethnic roots
Cultural family origins
Ethnic roots are a person's ancestral heritage—the cultural, national, or racial background of their family line.
The phrase emphasizes connection to origins: She traveled to Ireland to explore her ethnic roots.
Someone reconnecting with traditions, language, or homeland is often said to be rediscovering or returning to their ethnic roots.
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- lineageDescent from progenitors
- family treeChart of ancestors
- family nameHereditary portion of identity
- old countryImmigrant's ancestral homeland
genealogy · oral history · passed down · folklore · native tongue · ancestors · cultural identity · bloodline · homeland · mother country · naming conventions · forebears · self-identity · descent · cuisine · cultural expression · ancestral homeland · kinship
- cultural heritagefolklore, traditions, customs, folk music revival, museum collections
- rootstaproot, root system, root tip, fibrous root, primary root
- familymother, father, parents, siblings, parent
- ancestryancestors, kinship, ancestor, clan, ancestry
- genealogyfamily trees, family history, descendants, ancestors, ancestry tracing
ethnic rootscivic identity
Connection to one's community
naturalization · political allegiance · professional identity
ethnic rootsrootlessness
State of having no anchor
cultural displacement · deracination · uprootedness · cultural alienation · displacement
ethnic rootscosmopolitanism
Belief in shared humanity
global citizenship · universalism · cultural hybridity · mixed heritage · transnationalism