Our part of the Mediterranean, actually the Tyrrhenian sea in our case, was a crossroads for every invading culture in the old world. We have an amazingly diverse genetic pool and it is getting worse as we expand out into the world. I am not certain that there is a single answer for this question.
Many of our people have Sicilian roots.. Sicily is remarkably similar to the islands in its diversity and is not a real genetically related group. You will find a genetically different person every fifty feet in Sicily. If you wanted to say what our ethnicity is, it would include Greek, Sicels, Latins, Arabs, Jews, Vikings, French, Spanish, Phoenecian and you name it.
However, if you needed to choose a name for our islands' sources, you might look at the depopulation of the islands in the 1500s. Red-beard the Turkish pirate laid siege to Lipari and most of the people of the islands were sold into slavery. A few returned after being ransomed. These were the old mixed early population. Many of the rest of the people were brought to the islands from Calabria, which is visible from the islands. Obviously this was close enough to have old connections with the islands' population anyway. (This is about the time the Cafarellas arrived. Whether we are Calabrian or from farther north...Sorry...don't know yet. But there were Cafarellas in and around Caserta north of Naples at this time, and some of the related names like Colonna suggest more northern connections.) This was not the first depopulation either. The earliest populations of the islands may not even exist anymore.
The Calabrians are also a mix, but somewhat less diverse, more Latin who were native to the peninsula, Greek in the form of the descendants of early colonists from mainland Greece and Spanish who came along with the Spanish rulers based in Naples.
There were a couple more waves of immigrants to the islands over the next centuries, but by far, you could say we are predominantly ethnically or culturally Calabrians, while we linguistically used a more Sicilian dialect as we were governed from Messina and traded heavily with mainland Sicily for a very long time. Dance, music and other cultural characteristics are closely related to Sicily, but again, economic and political ties can have a powerful influence and Calabrian culture is somewhat similar in some things.
In my immediate family, we have:
Vasquez..Spanish, possibly Jews run out of Spain after the Christian re-conquest or possibly diplomats or settlers from Spain.
Lazzaro..Jewish. I have DNA results that say both Ashkenazi and Sepharic Jews in the family.
Cafarella..Arabic mixed with Italian with contacts in central and northern central Italy. Possibly Rome, Lazio and Campagna. Malfa(My Grandparents' village) is remarkably similar to Amalfi.(The city state south of Naples)
Cincotta.. Probably very old Greek and Italian and some even say they were Spanish. They also note the fact that CINQUE or CINCO and OTTO or 58 makes up the name.
Whatever we are, it is not simple.
You may say Sicilian because the islands are governed from there...but each individual would have to examine his own roots to really confirm that designation.
I think that Calabrian (Calabrese) is a better description of most of us and I like that it sounds more exotic.
Some of us in America just say we are Sicilian because of the glamour associated with the designation...perhaps we like that people believe we are all related to Mafia and the Godfather series and can wipe you out with a phone call...I think it is a testosterone thing!
The funny thing is that Sicilians can only say that they are Sicilian by geographic designation, just as we in the USA can only say that we are American by Geographic luck.
Australians too I guess.
I have mentioned Jewish ancestry a couple of times, so this might be a good place to discuss this.
Jewishness is a hotly debated designation. You can be called Jewish without a single middle eastern gene but have a sort of religious designation. There are also a number of theories as to where Jews came from. Needless to say, the 19th and 20th century origins of some of these theories may be well grounded in the Nazi movements and motivations. Those are debates that will have to continue till everyone is satisfied as to the history of the Jewish people and is not my problem.
As to who we are, well, I have had some indication that I have both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish roots.
New ideas seem to indicate that these two groups may have come from the same European origin. Rome was one of the largest populations of Jews in the dark and Middle ages. As the Christians were not allowed to engage in money matters, such as loaning of money at interest, European kings invited the Jews of Rome to form communities in the rest of Europe. Many Jews of central Europe eventually ended up concentrated in Germany and the east. There, they formed their own somewhat different culture and language from the western Jewish populations. These Eastern Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish and had unique pronunciation of Hebrew and variations in customs of their own.
The Jews who stayed in the west, particularly in Spain had their own cultural group which perpetuated through various governing rules in the country in a very friendly manner, till the inquisition of the Christian rulers finally drove them out. These were the Sephardic Jews.
Now the Ashkenazi in many but not all cases may not even qualify as Jews as all. It seems that genetics tells us that many of the early Jews who settled in the central and eastern areas married local pagans or Christians and whether they converted or not, do not actually qualify in the minds of Rabbis in Israel as eligible to claim return to Israel...that is if they actually find out.
Do not quote me, as I am relying on fairly new information, and this is still up for debate. Meanwhile, If you are interested, you should explore this topic for yourselves. It is a very interesting topic, and by contacting me directly, you may help me clarify and correct all this in time.
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