MA NAME A SAAAAAAALL <| sep |> Of course there are grey areas where someone is some percentage influenced by different factors . And even if the majority of someone ' s influence comes from a place they may not like that place and claim to be from somewhere else . Plenty of plastic paddies in the world that ' s for sure . Tldr you don ' t get to decide If I go around saying I am Irish , because I visited it once , and have a greatgrandfather from there , actual real Irish people find it kind of annoying . That is reasonable . So there is actually some degree of consensus about whether someone is from a place or not . I think most people would agree that to claim to be from a place , you have to be predominantly influenced by that place . Otherwise , if you claim to be from a place but only visited it one wet Sunday then you just annoy people . Now people like Gordon Ramsay and you are in grey areas where they have spent time in multiple places . In Gordon Ramsay ' s case , he can call himself Scottish if he wants no skin off my nose but if someone wants to use him as an example of Scottish culture then people who are unambiguously from that culture are entitled to object if they feel that he isn ' t in fact entirely from Scotland but only has a Scottish background . tldr people do in fact get to have opinions