Kenya Kinski-Jones

Kinski-Jones in 2014, photo by kathclick/Bigstock.com

Birth Name: Kenya Julia Niambi Sarah Jones

Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, United States

Date of Birth: February 9, 1993

Ethnicity:
*father – African-American, with some English, Scottish, and Welsh
*mother – Polish, German

Kenya Kinski-Jones is an American model.

She is the daughter of German actress and model Nastassja Kinski and American music, film, and television producer and instrumentalist Quincy Jones. Among her paternal half-siblings are actresses Kidada Jones and Rashida Jones. Her maternal half-sister is model and actress Sonja Kinski. Her half-aunt is actress Pola Kinski and her half-uncle is actor Nikolai Kinski.

Kenya’s paternal grandfather was Quincy Delight/Delightt Jones (the son of Caesar Jones and Susannah/Susanna Burgess). Kenya’s grandfather Quincy was born in South Carolina, and was a semi-pro baseball player. Caesar and Susannah were both black. Susannah was the daughter of West Burgess and Adele, or of Osborne Burgess and Elizabeth.

Kenya’s paternal grandmother was Sarah Frances Wells (the daughter of Love Adam Wells and Mary Belle Lanier). Sarah was born in Mississippi. Love, who was black, was the son of Nelson Wells and Sarah Campbell. Mary’s father, James Balance Lanier, was white, and had mostly English, as well as Scottish and Welsh, ancestry. Mary’s mother, Cordelia Dickson, was black.

Kenya’s maternal grandfather was actor Klaus Kinski (born Klaus Gunther Nakszynski, the son of Bruno Nakszyński and Susanne Lutze). Klaus was a German actor, born in Zoppot, Free City of Danzig, present-day Sopot, Poland, and was of part Polish ancestry.

Kenya’s maternal grandmother is Ruth Brigitte Tocki, an actress. Ruth is German (by either birth or citizenship), although Tocki is usually a Polish surname.

A DNA test whose results were displayed on the show African American Lives (2006) stated that Kenya’s father’s, Quincy Jones’s, genetic ancestry was:

*66% Sub-Saharan African
*34% European

In his 2009 book about the show, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote that Quincy’s African DNA matched the Tikar people of Cameroon, the Sukuma people of Tanzania, the Tonga people of Mozambique, and the Fang people of Equatorial Guinea.

Sources: Genealogy of Kenya Kinski-Jones – https://www.geni.com

Obituaries of Kenya’s maternal grandfather, Klaus Kinski – http://www.nytimes.com
https://www.findagrave.com