Birth Name: Daniel Snider
Place of Birth: Astoria, New York, United States
Date of Birth: March 15, 1955
Ethnicity: Ashkenazi Jewish, Swiss (possibly Swiss-French), possibly Hungarian (from Romania)
Dee Snider is an American singer, songwriter, actor, television and radio personality, and screenwriter. He is the lead singer of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister.
He is the son of Marguerite, a former art teacher, and Bob Snider, a former New York state trooper and Mineola court clerk.
In his book Shut Up and Give Me the Mic, Dee wrote:
My mother taught the sixth-grade Sunday-school class at my church. A devout Christian woman, born and raised Roman Catholic by her Swiss parents, she went to church every Sunday of her life… until the day she married my formerly Jewish dad.
In the same book, he wrote:
The guys were tired of my abuse (I thought it was dressing-room banter!) and voted—unbeknownst to me—that I could no longer participate in the exchange of insults between band members. Supposedly my lack of giving a shit, and my Swiss-Ukrainian-Transylvanian heritage, left little for the guys to work with when they retaliated.
On his twitter account, Dee wrote:
So was my grandmother! Transylvanian actually!… I’m Hungarian! :) I’m sure you did great!
Well, my grandmother was from Transylvania! (for real)
Due to Dee’s mother’s given name being Marguerite, it is possibly that she was of Swiss-French descent. Transylvania, Romania, is home to the Hungarian-speaking ethnic minority in Romania, also known as Székelys. It is not clear if Dee was referring to his paternal of maternal grandmother. If he was referring to his paternal grandmother, she might have been of Jewish descent from Transylvania. The same is true for Dee’s Ukrainian ancestry, it is not clear whether he has Ukrainian or Ukrainian Jewish ancestry.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
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