Introduction

Table 5 lists groups of people systematically according to ethnic and national origin. An ethnic group normally refers to a group with linguistic bonds; it can also mean a group with cultural or racial ties. From its origin in the 18th Edition through to the 21st, Table 5 was named ‘Racial, Ethnic, National groups’. As of the 22nd Edition, ‘racial’ was dropped, since the idea of racial classification can be quite charged. As the beginning of the Table (T5–0) states:

Like most external tables, Table 5 is only used when instructed, but like Table 2, there is a helpful loophole. The standard subdivision T1–089 has instructions to add notation from Table 5, allowing building of numbers to represent ethnic and national groups in relation to any topic. Here the standard subdivision works as a facet indicator. However, adding Table 5 notation directly to a base number, if allowed, is preferred over using T1–089.

The first summary of Table 5 is reproduced below:

• –05 Persons of mixed ancestry with ethnic origins from more than one continent

• –09 Europeans and people of European descent

• –1 North Americans

• –2 British, English, Anglo-Saxons

• –3 Germanic peoples

• –4 Modern Latin peoples

• –5 Italians, Romanians, related groups

• –6 People who speak, or whose ancestors spoke, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician

• –7 Other Italic peoples

• –8 Greeks and related groups

• –9 Other ethnic and national groups

The divisions closely resemble the organization of Main Classes 4 and 8 and Table 6. In fact, many numbers in Table 5 are explicitly organized by language groups, e.g. those with captions starting with ‘Peoples who speak, or whose ancestors speak’. Each division listed above is further divided hierarchically. The name of each ethnic and national group enumerated in the table is indexed in the Relative Index.

Because some people can be categorized by more than one characteristic, as in the case of national groups of foreign origins and non-citizen residents, a citation order (sequence of facets in a multiple-faceted subject) and order of preference (when numbers cannot be combined and a choice must be made between two or more numbers) are needed to maintain consistency in treatment. In Table 5, the generally preferred citation order is ethnic group over nationality.