Birth Name:
Charlize Theron
Birth Place:
Benoni, South Africa
Date of Birth:
August 7, 1975
What Race or Ethnicity?:
German, Dutch and French
Theron is a South African-born actress, film producer and model. She starred as Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster.
Theron’s mother is of German heritage while her father was of French ancestry.
Theron is able to speak, Afrikaans, Xhosa (a native African language) as well as English.
Her name, Theron is an Occitan name which is pronounced “Tronn”. Occitan is a language spoken in Occitania, located in the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Southern France, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain.
- http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language
- photo by cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com
Celebrities sharing similar heritage:
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Well in fact Jane is quite right. An Afrikaans professor named J A Hesse authored a book on the roots of the White Afrikaans speaking population in 1971 and his study had concluded that they were 7 % of non-white origin. Recent studies have found that they are up to 10 % non-white in origin. This is because the first settlers were often men who married Indian, Malay, and Khoi individuals as there was a lack of White females and the earliest settlers were mainly Dutch / Danish and German men. When the French Huguenots were sent out almost 35 years later the gender balance became more equal [ as they often came out with their wives and children ] within the emerging White population.
Therefore since Charlize Theron goes back to Jacques Therond who arrived in that wave of the late 17th century and probably earlier via other ancestral links – Charlize will no doubt be of partial non-white origin. That is the ironic heritage of the local White Afrikaans speaking population.
Just Google for pictures of Charlize’s late father Charles Theron to see evidence of this for yourselves. The late Eugene TerreBlanche also had noticeable Khoisan features. I say this is “ironic” because the local White Afrikaans speakers had acquired an unjust international reputation as being racists [ over their blanket political association with Apartheid ] when in reality they came about as a people due to the absorption of the non-white element as Afrikaans researcher André van Rensburg noted.
Just Google for My Genetic Enrichment authored by the aforementioned André van Rensburg to learn more about this particular topic.
Westerners will have their paradigms shifted and altered.
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How long were her family in South African? Because if it a known fact that most people do not know that majority of white South Africans are mixed with black. There was a study done about whites in South Africa when the settlers came no wives so there took black wives. So if her family tree goes back to the settlers of South Africa good luck on her being white and remember in South Africa there were no one drop rule. If you didn’t look black you were white and so on.
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@Justin Bieber-her ancestors settled in south Africa and years later she was born in that same country, so yes she IS south African born although it may not be the ethnicity that runs through her blood…
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she is NOT south african-born, her ancestors settled in South africa back in 1675. she is only not of african origin
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very beautiful woman. beautiful cheek bones. a true sign of beauty!
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She also has dutch ancestry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlize_Theron
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