Ethnicity of Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His parents were second-generation Sicilian Greeks, and the family additionally had Arabian and French roots.

Frank Vincent Zappa with perents

His mother, Rose Marie (née Colimore), was of Italian and French ancestry; his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from Partinico, Sicily. Zappa, the eldest of four kids, was raised in an Italian-American family in which Italian was spoken frequently by his grandparents



From Frank Zappa Book:
FZ:"My ancestry is Sicilian, Greek, Arab and French. My mother's mother was French and Sicilian, and her Dad was Italian (from Naples). She was first generation. The Greek-Arab side is from my Dad. He was born in a Sicilian village called Partinico, and came over on one of the immigrant boats when he was a kid."

FZ:"My Dad's Dad seldom bathed. He liked to sit on the porch with wads of clothes on. He liked to drink wine, and started off every day with two glasses of Bromo Seltzer.
My mother's mother didn't speak English, so she used to tell us stories in Italian -- like the one about the mano pelusa -- the hairy hand. "Mano pelusa! Vene qua!" she would say in a scary 'grandma voice' -- that was supposed to mean "Hairy hand! Come here!" -- then she would run her fingers up my arm. This is what people used to do when there was no TV."