Ethnicity

**Semantic type:** Organism Attribute

**Definition:** Ethnicity - an arbitrary classification of the social group a person belongs to, and either identifies with or is identified with by others, as a result of a complex of cultural, biological, geographical and other factors such as linguistic, dietary and religion traditions; ancestry, background, allegiance, or association; and physical characteristics traditionally associated with race. Increasingly the concept is used synonymously with race but this use trend has a pragmatic basis rather than scientific. Also, sImilar to the concept of ethnic origin which is an attempt to classify people, not according to their current ethnicity, but according to where their ancestors came from. Ethnic origin has become a popular classification in statistics, where the concept of race has been largely discarded.

**Synonyms:** - Ethnic Group - Ethnic Origin - Ethnic Origins