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Real vs Fake Italians
Repost from another website. I don't have written this post, it's just a repost.
Although in the recent past having an Italian surname was a near definitive evidence of one's Italian ancestry, today bearing an Italian surname is no longer a sufficiently reliable indicator of ethnic origin.
As a result of mass immigration over the last twenty to thirty years, today there are more than 5 million people in Italy of foreign background. A number of these first-generation and second-generation immigrants — including those newly-arrived in Italy from other shores — have taken to altering their names and surnames, changing them into something more Italian-sounding.
With the exception of Albanian and Romanian immigrants, who sometimes adopt Italian surnames in an attempt to pass themselves off as locals, immigrants of European origin tend to retain their original surnames — indeed it is extremely rare for Germanic or Slavic immigrants in Italy to adopt Italian surnames. Immigrants from Africa and Asia, on the other hand, have been known to frequently alter their surnames. This includes immigrants coming from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, India, China, as well as Gypsies and other non-European minorities.
Whereas in the past the practice of adopting Italian names was limited to only a few relatively isolated cases, such as Mario Balotelli — a footballer of Ghanaian origin — today the practice has become much more widespread. We are now faced with several thousands of cases in which immigrants of non-European origin have adopted fake Italian names and surnames, deceptively attempting to pass themselves off as Italians.
The motivations behind this trend are uncertain. Perhaps it is self-delusion; perhaps it is a desperate attempt to avoid discrimination, knowing that native Italians are not as welcoming of immigrants compared to other European countries; or perhaps it is the first step in a larger plan: namely to pretend to be an “Italian” in the hopes of later immigrating to a more welcoming country, such as Germany, France or Sweden.
In any case this fact must be emphasized: just because someone has an Italian surname does not mean they are Italian. If you see a person who looks rather strange — perhaps resembling more a Moroccan or a Gypsy than a European — then there is a good chance that he is not ethnically Italian. Indeed it is not uncommon nowadays to discover foreign-looking individuals who pretend to be Italian, who in fact have recent foreign ancestry, often hiding the fact that they have a foreign-born parent, sometimes being the product of a mixed marriage, and in some cases not being Italian at all.
Once more, just because someone today is born in Italy or has an Italian surname or has Italian citizenship, this does not necessarily mean they are ethnically Italian. Keep this in mind whenever you see someone with visibly non-European features who claims to be an Italian.
Some examples :
Emmanuel Galli - Korean
Francesca Fiume — Chinese
Gaia Scodellaro — African-American
Giulia Bertinelli — African
Lorena Cesarini — Senegalese
Carolina Visca — Colombian
Nadia Battocletti — Moroccan
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Originally Posted by Adamastor
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