Players with nationalities you didnt expect based on their name

[CraigBillington]

Matt Finn is not a Finn

I'm part Finn but have no ties to Finland, either

 

[Civetty]

Seems to be a lot of Hockey players with Swedish names that are Americans, usually from Minnesota.

 

[Strawberry Fields]

Lang was my big one. 8/9 year old me was mindblown when I learned he was European.

For all the jokes about players like Regehr I'm surprised no one's mentioned Brunei legend Craig Adams (unless I totally missed it).

 

[Look Up]

Yanni Gourde - thought he was Greek.

 

[Lambo]

Barkov, Komarov

 

[CarlWising]

I'm often not surprised when a player happens to be American of Canadian. Especially not American, because they are made up from immigrants, all types of names are pretty well represented there. Sure Saad sounds Syrian but I would be more surprised if an NHL player was actually from Syria and not from the US. There's basically only 10+ countries or so that produces NHL players.

Any time I stumble across NHL player with a Swedish sounding name like Lindros or Ekblad that I have never heard of, I suspect that's because he's from North America or Finland.

Non traditional hockey names like Yamamoto, Zibanejad and Ho-Sang I'd assume are from places with a lot of immigrants from places where those names are common. Sweden's a good guess for Zibanejad (Is it Persian or Kurdish?) and for Yamamoto and Ho-sang I'd just guess either Candada or the US.

Well the names Lindros and Ekblad do come from Sweden(most likely). Ekblad means Oak leaf in Swedish

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Sebastian Aho being Swedish not Finnish, same with Tommy Salo back in the day (particular as Finnish Sami Salo was active at the same time). In the reverse the goalie Niklas Backstrom being Finnish while the center Nicklas Backstrom is Swedish. I only learned about the Swedish Finns and Finland Swedes primarily as a result of looking that stuff up due to that confusion (well, it was actually Charlton and Finland football player Jonatan Johansson who really got me looking into it further).

 

[schnapshot]

Another is Brandon Saad sounding Syrian.

His dad is Syrian.

 

[Beerfish]

McDavid not being from the highlands of scotland is an outrage.

 

[Kleefeld]

Well there seem to be a lot of Swedes with German names (and a Dane - Ehlers) but I always knew they weren't German since we have so few NHL-caliber players that it's easy to know them all by name. Thought Niskanen was Finish for a long time.

 

[The Moose is Loose]

I always thought Seth Jones was Russian, damn who knew

 

[DrMartinVanNostrand]

Took me a long time to realize that Bohemia was even Czech, and not Germany

Go back through history...it hasn't always been that way!

 

[Machinehead]

You guys remember Michal Jordán from the Hurricanes?

Sam Rosen told us he was Czech the first time I saw him but we got a solid two years of fans and announcers going "wait, Michael Jordan???!"

 

[ItWasJustified]

P.K. Subban - Intuitively I would locate this person to Sweden, for some reason.

Subban literally translates to ''the bitch'' in Swedish, so it would be very weird if he was Swedish.

Barkov fools many people thinking he is Russian

Sasha Barkov comes off as Russian but is Finnish.

He is ethnically Russian. Both his parents are from Russia and he speaks Russian as well as Finnish.

Didn't expect Wahlstrom to be from Bahhston

His dad obviously anglified their surname when he moved to the US as an adult.

Seems to be a lot of Hockey players with Swedish names that are Americans, usually from Minnesota.

Because for some reason, Swedes that immigrated in the 1800s wanted to emigrate from one cold place to another cold place.

 

[TomppaKoo]

Subban literally translates to ''the bitch'' in Swedish, so it would be very weird if he was Swedish.


He is ethnically Russian. Both his parents are from Russia and he speaks Russian as well as Finnish.

His dad obviously anglified their surname when he moved to the US as an adult.

Because for some reason, Swedes that immigrated in the 1800s wanted to emigrate from one cold place to another cold place.

I guess, intuitively, that was my point...

 

[Iapyi]

I remember being very surprised when I first heard Adrien Plavsic was Canadian. He came into the NHL in 1990 when Europeans were not as numerous and it threw a few for a loop.

Kadri is Lebanese, a very common descent in canada these days and so I'm sure we will see many in the nhl some day, though I do believe he is the only one of that descent right at the moment.

Max Domi is Albanian.

Actually he's Canadian. Born in Winnipeg. btw - his dad Tie, who is also Canadian, also played in the NHL.

 

[19Yzerman19]

Always thought Satan was from hell.

Actually he's from heaven, he just got sent down to hell.

 

[MessierII]

I assumed Zajac was just another good Czech player the devils found. I think around 2010 I figured out he was from Winnipeg.

 

[torniojaws]

Canada and Minnesota are full of Finnish-origin people who often kept their Finnish last names. I'm actually more surprised there aren't more players like Virtanen.

 

[SotasicA]

Burakovsky

That was kind of easy because the first thing I thought of with another Burakovsky was his dad Robert. Like, is he related to Robert? Is he also Swedish? It checks out.

 

[CraigsList]

Definitely biased a bit, but Regehr from Brazil definitely is a top 3 pick in this exercise

 

[Filunki]

The y-names went out of fashion in the 90s and names like say William or Kevin became more common, as you can see in players like William Karlsson and Kevin Lankinen.

But Kevin Lankinen is from Finland

 

[OKR]

Canada and Minnesota are full of Finnish-origin people who often kept their Finnish last names. I'm actually more surprised there aren't more players like Virtanen.

Apparently there were lot of young girls included in the group who first moved to Minnesota, so i’d assume most eventually took their husbands last name so thats partly why Finnish surnames aren’t more common.

 

[McDNicks17]

Patrick Russell is probably a good one.

With that name and the Oilers signing him out of the NCAA, you'd probably never expect him to be Danish.

 

[The Hanging Jowl]

Most of the names dropped in the threads and not surprising. In my opinion, the most surprising part is that you guys follow the NHL daily but you don’t bother to do any research at all

Or maybe we did do our research and are just answering the OP's question about how we were surprised when we found out the nationality of certain players?