Fermanagh
Many people almost always seem to identify someone's ethnicity based on their looks, which usually is an accurate way to do so, but sometimes it's only semi-accurate, if you grant it that there is such a thing when it comes to ethnicity.
It's horribly inaccurate. Or do you mean race? Race and ethnicity are different things.
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First of all, even if that person is indeed of Mexican descent, that doesn't necessarily mean that that person is a Mexican National, which is what the word "Mexican" implies, just as the words "American", "Russian", "Irish", "Canadian", "British", and "Australian" and so forth do.
Russian and Irish do not just mean "national". Are you completely unaware of there being a Russian and Irish ethnic groups?
Even someone who comes from a non-nation state like Mexico or the US still has with some identity of being those nationalities, so it's not really incorrect to use if they're nationals of other countries.
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Even if someone says "Mexican" with the intention of refering to a person as being of Mexican descent, and not necessarily being a Mexican National, why don't they just say "Mexican-American"?
Because that's unwieldly and the assumed same exact meaning of saying they're Mexican. People don't talk like that in basic conversation.
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Second of all - these identifications being based on looks alone - said person may not even be Mexican; they could be Brazilian, or Puerto Rican, or Cuban, or Ecuadorian, or Columbian, or of some other similar ethnic background.
None of those are ethnicities, and the racial makeup of those countries varies from one to the other.
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Also, what about surnames? Can people even recognize the respective ethnic origins of surnames anymore?
Yes, this one is pretty poor to use as an example.
Granted people themselves might not be good at identifying where a surname comes from (I've known people to confuse Italian and Spanish surnames with regularity). But the surname itself does have an exact origin that with some research anyone could pinpoint.
I'm not sure you comprehend how people get their surnames to begin with.
You aren't just randomly born with say a Russian surname without there being a reason for it, mostly likely being that they have some paternal Russian ancestry.
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To some extent, most likely, but do people know how to recognize a Jewish person, or an English person, etc.?
Jewish surnames can be pretty obvious, sometimes extremely obvious. Though Ashkenazi Yiddish style names can sound German.
English ones are easy too, the problem with English ones is they're so common we don't even take notice of them as ethnic names. But that's ignorance, not truth.
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Can people tell the difference between a Scottish surname and an Irish surname (even though a few are shared with origins too deep for common knowledge)? Etc. Etc.
Absolutely. This is a pretty ignorant if offensive thing to suggest. The difference between the two can get you hurt still in Northern Ireland (the Catholics being ethnic Irish, and the Protestants being largely descended from Scottish settlers).
I have in my ancestry an Irish surname, it goes back to specify an exact region that an Irish clan used to control around County Cavan.
I invite you to see how such a thing could be indistinguishable from any given Scottish name (hint: it can't).
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