If it doesn’t sound too much like a confession in a support group, my name’s Denzil and I’m a planter. Or am I?

I know from our family tree that my great-grandfather, William McDaniel ran a coal business in Glasgow in the mid-1800s. When his wife died at a young age, he was left with a very young child, my grandfather Tom McDaniel who was sent back to County Tyrone to be brought up by family.

Apart from the links between Glasgow and Tyrone, then of course in the days away before partition, there is the family name. McDaniel is one of the many variations of McDonald, and people who use Irish versions such as MacDomhnaill are probably from the same clan somewhere in the past.

Many people think it’s Protestants like me who are probably Ulster Scots.

But I was talking on Monday evening to an Irish Republican in Belfast who reminded me that he was probably a planter as well. And when I thought of his surname, it made me realise he almost certainly was.

It was a reminder of the complex nature of a mixture of identities in everyone’s past, and indeed that identities aren’t fixed anyway and can change as generations mix and move on.

I heard somewhere recently of someone in the south of Ireland who felt he was a gael through and through but when he did one of those DNA tests, he discovered a mixture of identities in his background……..including some Ukrainian ancestral blood.

The United States Congressman Richard Neal used the term "planter" on a visit to Northern Ireland last week and many in the Unionist community expressed offence, taking the term as an insult.

The US politician has defended its use, saying it is an accurate historic reference and that he also referenced the term “gael”.

It is, of course, accurate to say that people who came here from Scotland and England in the 17th century were described as planters, but their ancestors of today, now so long settled, are oblivious to their antecedents displacement of previous communities that some even refer to this place as “our” country.

That was clearly shown on Saturday when a parade to celebrate the formation of Northern Ireland was heavily dominated by the loyal orders; I wonder what message that sent out to others in the community about their place in society here.

It’s not just the Catholic or Nationalist community asking that; there are many Protestants and others who are asking about their status and welcome in today’s Northern Ireland.

The membership of the loyal orders is dwindling and mainly an older demographic, and they do not represent many people who want a modern socially progressive place.

I must stress that loyal order folk are entitled to their identity and should be fully respected in their expression of it. It’s marvellous for them that they had such a good day on Saturday in that regard. 

But they form just one section of society and other sections are entitled to feel their identity should be equally valued. 

Commentators in the last week have referenced the poet John Hewitt’s use of the term planter, particularly in the booklet 'The Planter and the Gael'. That seems all very well in a historical context, or an analysis in academia, but the use of the word planter in reference to circumstances today does seem to have touched a raw nerve in the Unionist community.

I get that. And we all need to be careful about language and I recall one Protestant woman being quite annoyed at references to oppression saying “I didn’t oppress anyone". The fact is, though, that the genesis of the conflict of the last century in Ireland was the fact that differences between the planter and the gael broke out into violence periodically.

I remember a quote which said: “History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us.” We shouldn’t pretend otherwise, and need to understand our history better in order to escape from it.

Part of understanding is to accept that in the past, the island as a whole was dominated by the binary division of two communities.

That would seem to be changing dramatically in a more secular society, and the latest Life and Times survey, conducted by Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, confirms many other findings and elections that attitudes towards identity are shifting further and further.

We are now a community of at least three minorities, be it Catholic, Protestant and neither.  Or British, Irish, Northern Irish or none of these. 
Indeed, there is a fourth cohort of new communities who have settled here and made this place their home.

There are a number of factors in the changing demographic, and Brexit has undermined the Union in forcing many people to think about their identity.

Times are changing and identities are not fixed either. Many families can point to shifts in identity in their own background due to marriage for example and as individuals many people have been on a journey of change.

Others just don’t get the point of identity anyway, particularly younger people, and others struggle with what their identity means.

I remember having a conversation with a friend about faith and identity and, unsure of where his viewpoint was coming from, I posed the classic question one shouldn’t ask: “Yeah, but what are you?”

He replied quite seriously: “I’m a Protestant atheist,” which stumped me for a moment as I grappled with the cognitive dissonance that the same person who believed there was no God, also insisted he was part of a Reformed faith that held fast to the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God.

In a land of complex and competing identities, I did sort of understand though; being brought up in a certain church often gives people a sense of who they are. Or sometimes or a just sense of belonging.

But identity is a far wider thing than the church you happened to be born in, or the flag under which previous generations in your family and community happened to wrap themselves in.

Your identity is you; all of you, how you treat others and many other qualities and aspects.

I don’t really care if you call me a planter, or to be more accurate from planter stock. Because that’s not me any more.

Aside from this being home for generations, I’m an Enniskillen man, born and bred and feel Irish as much as any gael. I have learned and changed along life’s journey and have my own identity and beliefs now.