Shawn Mendes

2014 MuchMusic Video Awards - Arrivals

Mendes in 2014, photo by Prphotos.com

Birth Name: Shawn Peter Raul Mendes

Place of Birth: Pickering, Ontario, Canada

Date of Birth: August 8, 1998

Ethnicity:
*Portuguese (father)
*English (mother)

Shawn Mendes is a Canadian singer, songwriter, model, and youth soccer player. He started his career by posting snippets of cover songs to Vine. His songs include “Life of the Party,” “Show You,” “Something Big,” “Stitches,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Treat You Better,” “Mercy,” “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back,” “In My Blood,” “Lost in Japan,” “Youth,” “If I Can’t Have You,” “Señorita,” “Wonder,” “Monster,” “Summer of Love,” “It’ll Be Okay,” and “When You’re Gone.” He voiced the title character in the film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.

Shawn is the son of Karen, a real estate agent, and Manuel Mendes, a businessperson, who dealt in restaurant supplies. Shawn’s father is of Portuguese descent, from Algarve. Shawn’s mother is originally English; she was born in Yeovil, Somerset, England.

Shawn’s maternal grandfather is Peter G. Rayment (the son of Cecil C. Rayment and Violet Elizabeth M. Knight). Peter was born in Chard, Somerset, England. Cecil was the son of William Rayment and Gladys Ivy Osborne. Violet was the daughter of Andrew Frederick Knight and Ellen Jane Shephard.

Shawn’s maternal grandmother is Suzanne C. M. Collins (the daughter of Frederick George Patrick Collins and Beryl J. Cave). Suzanne was born in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. Frederick is the son of George Patrick Collins and Martha Winifred Cadman. Beryl is the daughter of Frederick Charles Cave and Nellie Amelia Tucker.

Shawn’s matrilineal great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were Henry Coward, who was born, c. 1790, and Louisa Allen, who was born, c. 1802, both of them in Dorset.

Source: Genealogy of Shawn Mendes (focusing on his mother’s side) – https://www.geni.com

35 Responses

  1. anen87 says:

    I think he looks like an *even mix* of of both his ethnicities. Shawn has iberian elements too google spanish model XAVIER SERRANO you can see the similarities!

  2. lelo4 says:

    Looks very Atlantid. Interesting that Iberian-British mixes can easily end up looking fully British, the same is not true for Italian-British mix.

    • caligurl2 says:

      Ahem Hayden Christensen as well as Hayden Panettiere and Lindsay Lohan and also John Travolta, Bradley Cooper and many others are half italian half nothern european and look way more northern european than Shawn Mendes lol. Why do Iberians on the internet always try to act like they’re super white compared to Italians. Spain was literally conquered foe centuries by moors. Don’t sit here and try to claim no mixing happened at all in the span of centuries. I myself have seen way more pseudo Arab looking people in Spain like Bel Gris than I ever have seen with Italians. Most of the time I can’t even tell Mexicans apart from Southern Spanish people.

    • caligurl2 says:

      Anyway there’s a reason scientist no longer use such scientific racism as anthropology on an ethnic basis, it only further gives ways for people like you to seperate humans and pretend to be superior. This “atlantid” type you’re talking about people all over southern europe have this look it isnt exclusive to British people. As I said you anthropology nerd types always pick a certain phenotype you’re obsessed with or consider the best looking and try to portray everyone who fits said phenotype as looking like what your perceived master ethnicity. Again, there’s a reason it’s not taken seriously by any one else but neo nazis and arm chair scientist on forums.

      • andrew says:

        @caligurl

        I believe Lelo4 is the moderator, or maybe one of the many anti-Italian trolls, who live in a so-called Internet anthropology forum. This Iberian/British controversy started because both ethnic groups are genetically pred. Rb1 (but from different subclades of the haplogroup), so some Internet nerds, mostly New Worlders, started associating Iberians to Brits. Actually there’s little to no overlap between them. According to old school anthropologists, Iberia is the cradle of Mediterranean race (also called Ibero-Insular because it’s also widespread in Med islands like Sardinia, for example). Also Iberia has the highest solar irradiation of whole Europe and the only desertic areas of the Continent (where Sergio Leone shot his movies). All the exotic fruits and vegetables you have on European tables come from Spain, because of the hot climate conditions. This is one the reasons, more than the 800 years of Moorish rule, because pigmentation in Iberia is overall darker than in other parts of Southern Europe.

    • CoolBeANs says:

      Hahahhahaha are you kidding me??? People from Spain are not even white. We have a thing here in America called census, maybe you people have never heard of it idk. Anyway any person of Spanish origins goes listed under the category Hispanic/Latino. I mean people like Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem are not white at all and they’re from Spain

      • Oaken05 says:

        You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and accordingly everything you said in that post is incorrect.

        • CoolBeANs says:

          Oh yeah?? Are you an American to know how American census works?? I know I am and I know that Spanish people of all origins are Hispanic, not white

          • Oaken05 says:

            You can repeat that a dozen more times and it won’t be true. That’s not how our Census self-ID works. There is so much lacking in your understanding of the country I’m not sure where to begin…so I won’t. Go educate yourself.

          • passingtime85 says:

            Some quotes uote from census.gov:

            The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requires two minimum categories for data on ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino) and five minimum categories on race (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander and White).The Census Bureau is also required by Congress to use the category “Some Other Race.” People may report multiple races.

            Hispanic or Latino: A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.

            The race and ethnicity categories generally reflect social definitions in the U.S. and are not an attempt to define race and ethnicity biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. We recognize that the race and ethnicity categories include racial, ethnic, and national origins and sociocultural groups.

            End quote.

            It’s sort of willy nilly and up to the person how they feel. A Spaniard may identify totally as white, but the US government considers them a sub-category based on their language/culture. But like they say, it’s not really about classification in a taxonomic sense, it’s just about data collection on demographics.

  3. ethnicitiies says:

    Was his mother born in England and was his father born in Portugal?

  4. bakchoyhurl says:

    Looks extremely different in this picture.

  5. tinasheeeee says:

    I thought he was Spanish or Portuguese.

    • migeek says:

      Lol he is portugese and if he was spanish he surname would end in Z

      • lovemusic933 says:

        Not true, actually Spanish names usually end in ez or es. Google it and also google the last name mendes, it comes from Spain. I’m 99% sure he has Spanish in him.

      • JamesMathieu says:

        All Portuguese surnames are also Spanish last names (but it is not true the other way around). Galicia, in northwestern Spain, has a language called Galician which is related to Portuguese (and is one of Spain’s 4 official language). Both Galician and Portuguese came from a similar language that split, creating Galician, then Portuguese.
        Since Galician and Portuguese are so similar, the surnames in both places are the same or similar. A surname like Mendes is common in both Portugal and Galicia (and, to a lesser extent, small parts of the surrounding areas). And since Galicians often emigrate to other areas of Spain, they take those surnames and spread them around.

        He could possibly have some Spanish, but we’ll never know unless he says so. Otherwise, he’s most likely 50% Portuguese.

        • MadBadDog says:

          As a basque living in Pontevedra (Galicia), I can assure you that Mendes is not a common last name in Galicia, much less in Spain. Mendes is a classic 100% portuguese origin surname.

        • Obey says:

          “All Portuguese surnames are also Spanish surnames”? Wrong! Spanish is something totally different from Portuguese. Shawn is a descendant of Portuguese and not Spanish, otherwise he would have “Spanish” in the description. Portuguese are white like the English, mostly blond, for example the Emperor of Brazil Pedro II, son of the Empress Maria Leopoldina of Austria, an Austrian with Latin name, also blonde with blue eyes. Europeans like French for example have Rodriguez last name without being Spanish.

    • Capricious says:

      Same (and I got it right).

      He has those cute Mediterranean eyes.

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