Ethnic Group - Terminology and Definition

Terminology and Definition

The terms ethnicity and ethnic group are derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, normally translated as "nation". The terms refer currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.

Herodotus is the first who stated the main characteristics of ethnicity in the 5th century BC, with his famous account of what defines Greek identity, where he lists kinship (Greek: ὅμαιμον - homaimon, "of the same blood"), language (Greek: ὁμόγλωσσον - homoglōsson, "speaking the same language"), cults and customs (Greek: ὁμότροπον - homotropon, "of the same habits or life").

The term "ethnic" and related forms from the 14th through the middle of the 19th century were used in English in the meaning of "pagan, heathen", as ethnikos (Greek: ἐθνικός, literally "national") was used as the LXX translation of Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews".

The recent meaning emerged in the mid 19th century and expresses the notion of "a people" or "a nation". The term ethnicity is of 20th century coinage, attested from the 1950s. The term nationality depending on context may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state).

The modern usage of "ethnic group" further came to reflect the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with external groups, such as immigrants and indigenous peoples; "ethnic" thus came to stand in opposition to "national", to refer to people with distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a state or "nation" with a different cultural mainstream. – with the first usage of the term ethnic group in 1935, and entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972.

Writing about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States, in 1977 Wallman noted that

The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes '' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, '' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. '' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'.

Within the social sciences, however, the usage has become more generalized to all human groups that explicitly regard themselves and are regarded by others as culturally distinctive. Among the first to bring the term "ethnic group" into social studies was the German sociologist Max Weber, who defined it as:

hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. According to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science, politics, and reality", "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience." Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups.

In the U.S., the OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference."