What is a WASP?

[politicus]

[politicus]

This forum uses it in a bizarre way I'd never seen before...  I always thought of it as exactly what it stands for:
White (obvious enough)
Anglo Saxon (English/German/Northern European with fair features)
Protestant (mainline denomination, not evangelical).

I've heard that definition a lot, but
1. In which way are Germans and Northern Europeans Anglo Saxons?
2. Isn't Anglo Saxon almost redundant in this case, because how many White Protestants are there historically that are not British, German, Dutch or Northern European? (Huguenots? Hussites? Valdesi? Sobozinians?)

Excuse my ignorance and preliminary knowledge on the subject, but I was under the impression that the Anglos were from England and the Saxons were from Germany, giving rise to the definition I used.  As for your second point, I agree.  I was just saying I'd usually heard it used that way.  Honestly, without trying to veer off subject or getting to tender subjects, I kind of always associated it with ethnicities of people that the Nazis would have gone all googly-eyes over.

The Angles were from what is now Schleswig-Holstein, who settled in eastern Britain, where they gave their name to East Anglia, the part of Britain that sticks out northeast of London.  But the Angles settled as far north as Edinburgh.  The Saxons were in southern England around London, where they gave their name to Essex, Sussex, Wessex, and Middlesex.  Over time they became intertwined and their language of English developed. 

There is nothing beyond the name that connects the Angles with the Angel peininsula in central Schleswig. No linguistic connection to local dialects or any archeological evidence.

Anglo-Saxon is most closely related to the Frisian languages in the northern part of the Netherlands and - to a lesser degree - other Frisian languages in East Frisia and western Schleswig. Genetically there is a strong connection between the modern English population and Frisians in the Netherlands.
Maybe some came from S-H, maybe not. But the northern Netherlands/East Frisia is a more plausible place of origin for the Angles.

[politicus]

There has been a recent DNA study showing that English men (of English ancestry ) share 50-100% of genetic inheritance with (West) Frisians while having surprisingly little in common with the Welsh.

[politicus]

I don't have a link, but I will try to look into it.

I dunno enough about measuring of female DNA to discuss that aspect, but you can apparently be relatively accurate. I saw a study saying 85% of the Faroese male DNA is Nordic and 80% of the female Celtic/Gaelic which seemingly confirms the hypothesis of Norse men buying/stealing Celtic women. But presumably doing a similar study for a population the size of England with its much more complex immigration history is difficult.

Regarding a hostile takeover there is the problem with a conspicuous absence of a layer of ash from burnt down villages in excavations and a lack of wounds on the men in Germanic warrior graves from the relevant era. So the archaeological evidence contradicts a Germanic conquest. It seems the Anglo-Saxons were just more successful for some reason and was so over multiple generations leading to a large genetic imprint.

[politicus]

I for one take a dim view at the Celtic label on a genetic front. Likely the Celts were another cultural conquest and had limited genetic contribution to the original inhabitants. Uncomfortable for some but evidence points that the Celts were invaders to Ireland too.

Well, I think Celtic is discredited as a category in serious studies. In the one I refered they only used it as shorthand for comparing with the modern population in Ireland and Scotland.