Ethnic majority
An ethnic majority refers to an ethnic group that comprises the majority of a particular population. Ethnicity refers to the mother's tongue and identification with a historical nation or other cultural heritage, as well as with religious traditions and behavioral practices inherited from relatives. A person that was adopted as child from another culture but raised in a domestic family may identify with the ethnic majority of the country.
An ethnic majority contrasts with those who mainly identify them selves with ethnic minorities (official minority languages) of the population, for example indigenous people, or with immigrant ethnicities. A national state is a state or country that originated from its ethnic majority or nation (nationality). Note that a person may identify with several etchnic groups, or with a multi-etchnic culture.
In anglo-saxic countries, ethnicity as well as race are registered in official statistics, based on self-reported identification by the individual, for example in view to discover discrimination. In for example Scandinavian countries, no official statistics is kept on ethnicity or race. According to the European GDPR law, it is typically not allowed to register ethnicity or race.
In the context of genealogy, for example medical genetics or genealogical DNA tests, ethnicity is defined based on biological rather than cultural heritage. However, various genealogical DNA tests result in contradictory and insecure estimates of the ethnic mix of a person, since the result of each test depends on the reference group and how it is divided into ethnic groups. Thus, it is typically not possible to securely determine if a person belongs to the ethnic majority or not using genetic tests.
Ethnicity is sometimes confused with race, which however is defined based on heritage from a certain continent. The zoological meaning of race cannot be applied to humans since race can not be identified unambiguously from biological features such as skin color. It is disputed to what extent race can be identified using genetics.