Actually, the surname seems to be Armenian. :-)

Attributing the correct ethnicity seems to matter a lot more outside of the US, Canada, and Commonwealth.

I got an earful (screenful?) for calling a historical ethnic Russian painter Ukrainian, just because he was born in current-day Ukraine. This all predates the current conflict, and was from someone I'd consider educated, too.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nikola_Tesla/Nationality_...

In my experience US, Canada and Commonwealth are the ones obsessed with (positively or negatively) ethnicity and race.

Race, yes, but nobody born here asks me "where are you from?" upon first meeting, whereas I get this a lot from europeans and people from more tribal societies.

I'm an American, and I get asked "where are you from?" almost every time I meet a new person here (in America). I look very non-American and have an accent most people find hard to pin down, so I'm thinking that the question is just not posed to people who look and 'speak' very American.

Well, I'm Canadian, so we can't really compare. I look brown, but have a basically Toronto / SF accent.

Ethnic Russian from Kazakhstan.