# Humanities & Anthropology > Anthropology & Ethnography > Guess the Ethnicity >  Guess this woman

## Angela

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## Leandros

French, Italian, etc

Στάλθηκε από το PE-TL10 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk

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## davef

Italian, Spanish

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## Sakattack

British?

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## Angela

I'll wait for more guesses.

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## davef

she looks really italian in the third pic

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## Balkan1992

North Italian

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## Gabriele Pashaj

Purtroppo non so perché non riesco a vedere le immagini/ Sadly I do not know why I can’t view the pictures 


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## Salento

> Purtroppo non so perché non riesco a vedere le immagini/ Sadly I do not know why I can’t view the pictures 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Eupedia Forum


Esci dall’App. Usa il browser, e prova anche a cliccare Full Site.

Use the Browser instead of the App, and try also clicking on Full Site.

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## Gabriele Pashaj

O cielo... per me sembra impossibile.. direi Italiana .../ It seems to me impossible.. I think she’s Italian

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## I1a3_Young

I would say British but for the eyebrows. They have a southern Euro or near eastern look. Northern Italy?

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## Angela

> I would say British but for the eyebrows. They have a southern Euro or near eastern look. Northern Italy?


They're just plucked a certain way. :) It's considered the "perfect" eyebrow shape. Nowadays women even pay to have it tatooed on, and they pluck the rest away, because not everyone can get it. You fool people into believing you have that nice prominent eyebrow bone by using a lot of highlighter. :)

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

Hard to tell, I’d say French or British, leaning toward British.

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## Angela

Since the thread got buried and there were no more guesses, I'll reveal. 

It was definitely a surprise to me as well. I thought for sure she was Italian or southern French. Except for the fact that her eyes are larger, and her skin is fairer in some pictures, she looks remarkably similar to my mother: face shape, head shape, high cheekbones, nose, mouth, even her build, slightness, legs, down to the high arched, delicate feet. In actuality, she's a Canadian actress of Finnish descent: Sarah Manninen.





Some people can really fool you.

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## Angela

> wow has she done a DNA test? no one would ever guess she is Finnish, maybe somewhere recently in her family tree shes mixed? recessive genes?


I can't explain it either. I did a search and she's even listed on a site of famous Finnish-Canadians. 

Her natural skin tone is very fair, and my mother's isn't, but in this picture she has approximately my coloring when I was in my twenties and thirties, so that isn't unknown in Italy either. (I think her hair is slightly darkened here as in most of her pictures it's dark brown.)

 

Here her hair is lighter, but I think I can see the roots, so I don't think it's natural. It softens her strong bone structure, though.

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## Angela

> I think she could also possibly pass as an Iranian or Turkish. I find it interesting how hair color and eye color can change appearance so much


As to the second I agree, which is why hair and eye color are so unreliable.

However, she looks IRANIAN?

I guess Emmylou Harris looks Iranian too. This is why the British guess wasn't so far off.





Today: good, strong bones hold up

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## Angela

> As to the second I agree, which is why hair and eye color are so unreliable.
> 
> However, she looks IRANIAN?
> 
> I guess Emmylou Harris looks Iranian too. This is why the British guess wasn't so far off.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


How about Enya?




Or Carrie Moss?

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## I1a3_Young

I would never have guessed Finnish. Then again, I can't remember meeting a Finn in my life.

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## Teegurr

Northern Italian or Southern French?

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## Ben1234

French/British, or just northern French

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## Mike94

French/Southern Italian?

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## Strudel

I would have guessed Irish for Sarah Manninen, as she reminds of the dark haired light skinned Irish that I find quite beautiful. Enya is a great example of this. Sarah is a gorgeous Finn. She looks like she might actually have a fair amount of red pigmentation in her natural hair colour, just based on the one photo with best lighting. 

Carrie Moss looks to me like she has Germanic ethnicity, particularly from her strong jaw line.

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## yonaga

Actually Finnish would have been one of my guesses. But only because Angela is a smart lady and created this thread not because the lady was Italian/Spanish/Southern French. I have got some Finnish ancestors myself so I know not all are blonde :)

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## Angela

> Actually Finnish would have been one of my guesses. But only because Angela is a smart lady and created this thread not because the lady was Italian/Spanish/Southern French. I have got some Finnish ancestors myself so I know not all are blonde :)


I like to blow up stereotypes. Too many people are too rigid in their thinking.

That said, she looks a LOT like my mother, who is Ligurian and Tuscan. :) My mother had a bit of a Carrie-Anne Moss look as well.

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## MOESAN

there are simplistic stereotypes, and there more realistic and nuanced stereotypes: but BY DEFINITION stereotypes are supposed to reflect the bigger number typical of somewhere, not the exceptions; if we try to find exceptions, even in "pure" folks, we can always find exceptions, exception needs rules BTW, but what is the gain? Just the game, what is good too.

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## Angela

In some countries where there's a lot of diversity in terms of phenotype, like Italy, for example, or even, perhaps, France, there isn't ONE phenotype which defines what Italians look like. It depends whether you're in southern or northern Italy, even northwest versus northeast. Sardinia is different altogether. Northwest Italians look more "southern French like", northern Lombards more central European, northeastern Italians a bit Slavic, some southern Italians look more Greek like, some overlap with people even further east. Some, I do agree, seem to me as if they couldn't be anything but Italian, but I've never seen a non Italian who is able to pick them out. 

I remember one discussion I had with someone where I said the idea that Italians are always long and narrow faced, a supposedly "Mediterranean" trait, was completely incorrect. Otherwise, how then could Luca Zingaretti be explained? He certainly isn't an exception in Italy. He couldn't look more Italian of a certain type, and yet, he doesn't look like that at all. In fact, he looks a great deal like my paternal grandfather, although he's a Roman.



If a certain phenotype represents, say, 20- 30% of the people of Italy taken as a whole it's not an "exception". To say someone who looks like that 20% of the population doesn't look "Italian", is insulting as well as being incorrect. It also leads people to be consistently wrong in "guessing" the nationality of certain Italians, although that's just a game.

There's no substitute for living in and extensively traveling in a country. As a corollary, relying on old plates is a very bad idea, imo. They were chosen by people operating out of their own subjective pre-conceptions from what I can tell. They can't even decide on the nomenclature, or the definitions. At least genetics shows the very large variation in Italians. All people need to do is look at the "space" we occupy on a PCA set at normal standards. 

As for the woman I posted here, I posted her because I was so surprised that she was of Finnish descent, and I was just sharing that surprise. I also thought either I'd learn she was indeed part of the normal spectrum there, or she was not. Either way, it was meant to be fun, and secondarily to jolt people a bit out of their certainty that certain stereotypes should be relied upon. 

What I do know for a certainty is that she indeed looks a LOT like my mother: head shape, face shape, eye shape, everything, as well as coloring and body build, and no, my mother is NOT an exception in our province. This Finnish woman may indeed be an exception in Finland. I don't know one way or another because I've never been there.

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## MOESAN

I expressed myself poorly.
It's true in a lot of places, some diverse looks can compete as almost equally typical in them, or common enough.
I think some looks can be shared by diverse regions in diverse countries too. Others are typical of a reduced number of places and almost completely excluded of certain other regions, at the opposite.
I avow that spite I saw a lot of people on life or on pictures, I stay puzzled by a lot of people of Europe when I have to say their place of origin, without speaking about fresh migrants.

Angela, concerning the woman on these pictures, she doesn't evocates a Finn to me as a whole, but I'm not sure her mother is of Finnish origin. My first choices would have been N- or CN- Italian or French, but the answer was already given when I looked at her.

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## Angela

> I expressed myself poorly.
> It's true in a lot of places, some diverse looks can compete as almost equally typical in them, or common enough.
> I think some looks can be shared by diverse regions in diverse countries too. Others are typical of a reduced number of places and almost completely excluded of certain other regions, at the opposite.
> I avow that spite I saw a lot of people on life or on pictures, I stay puzzled by a lot of people of Europe when I have to say their place of origin, without speaking about fresh migrants.
> 
> Angela, concerning the woman on these pictures, she doesn't evocates a Finn to me as a whole, but I'm not sure her mother is of Finnish origin. My first choices would have been N- or CN- Italian or French, but the answer was already given when I looked at her.


Ah, I see. Then we agree. :)

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## halfalp

Outlier Finns are sexy.

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