re: White Americans think they are mostly German but they are mostly British

Angles, saxons, jutes, etc. Were germanic peoples.

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My dad thought we were Scott-Irish, until one of his aunts completed a verifiable genealogy. We're from England.

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My father's side came from Ireland, but my last name originated in England. At some point in time they moved to Ireland. Should I consider myself English or Irish, or both?

We were German before we were British.

Fun German Fact- You can't say 9 out loud without sounding German.

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I got stuck 8 generations back at the first male to arrive in North America at Mobile AL on a ship from France in ~1700.

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Your reparations bill will be large

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cold steel and sex appeal.

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RefineryRich

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My father always thought we were German. We have a funny spelled last name that seems like it would make more sense in German. I traced our ancestry and he has to be 98% English and Scots Irish.

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I mean maybe your father is an idiot.

The largest ancestry group in the US is German.

English are actually below African Americans, mexican and Irish.

Austrian/Irish/Italian

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Apparently this is a common occurrence in the south for people that don’t really know where their ancestors came from (old stock Americans).

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Why would Southern Americans think they're of "German" stock, particularly without a German last name?

The South was heavily, heavily settled by Scots Irish and English. Even the Irish tended to percolate Southward much later in their cycles, although there were a shite ton of Irish waves, particularly after the war.

So, outside of Louisiana with its relatively unique French experience, all other Southern states would be expected to be heavily English and Scots Irish.

First off, the "Britons" were an amalgamation of Roman settlers and native Celts. The displaced Celtic people that retained their identity fled/hunkered down (primarily) to Devon/Cornwall (SW Britain), Wales (West Central) and Scotland.

The Anglo-Saxon migrations that displaced/replaced the Britons in what is now England were of Germanic stock. The French-speaking Normans who conquered the Anglo-Saxons in the 11th Century were, themselves of a hybrid Germanic-French stock. Combine that with the Danish incursions and the broader Viking era settlements (particularly in Scotland) and the entire area of Britain and Ireland is at least partially a mashup of Celtic, Latin, Germanic and French ancestry, to use Continental terms.

ETA: The term "Scots Irish" comes from the older English practice of trying to colonize/recolonize Ireland with Protestant Scots, particularly in Ulster. Somewhat ironic in that the ancestral Scots, who largely displaced and assimilated the Picts in what is today Scotland, were themselves originally from Northern Ireland.

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Didn’t Britons comes from Germany?

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Some of the English (not Irish or scots) are. Saxons , Jutes, etc. They came over after the Romans left from what is modern day Denmark northern Germany and Netherlands.

It’s likely you have both ancestries, as do most people in the south (white or black)