I should explain my last 'Blog entry for American readers. In the UK, “Asian” is generally taken to mean South Asian, coming from the Indian subcontinent—for example Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi—so I had to use “Oriental” to refer to my being mistaken for Singaporean or Chinese, say. “Far Eastern” tends to be used to describe the relevant countries, rather than their peoples.

I also had to resort to “half African” because my questioner was definitely speaking English as a second language and I doubt “half Sierra Leonean” would have meant much to her, not that country of origin means much ethnically speaking in West Africa. To someone who thinks I look Eastern European, distinguishing the various sub-types of black Africans was going to be a challenge.