So where are you from really?

I have seen many people ask others where they are from. This is mostly amusing and sometimes irritating.

This is a nice question while transitioning from small talk to a fruitful discussion. But makes little sense to be trying to guess a person's nature on the basis of where he or she is from.

For example, I was recently told about a guy: he is Punjabi but his family came here from Rajasthan a couple of generations ago.

To paraphrase Chuck Palahniuk, on a long enough time scale, we all came from Africa!