Sneako’s Ethnicity and Family Roots

Sneako is an American streamer who started out with street interviews on YouTube and later became known for misogynistic and antisemitic content.

Father’s side

Mother’s side

Haitian Hungarian Ashkenazi Jewish Filipino

Nationality: American
Born: September 8, 1998, New York City, New York
Birth name: Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy

Sneako at a visit to the football club Johor Darul Ta’zim in Malaysia in April 2026 — Photo: MuhammadRaymen01, CC0

Father’s sideMother’s sideBorn in New York City, New York

What is Sneako’s ethnicity?

Sneako’s father is from Haiti and his mother is Filipino. His father is half Black, and his father’s father was half Hungarian and half Ashkenazi Jewish, as Sneako told VladTV in January 2026.^[1] Reports about him usually sum this up as Haitian and Filipino ancestry.^[2]

His birth name is Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy.^[3] Sneako started as a childhood nickname and became his gamer tag when he made Call of Duty videos. He launched his YouTube channel in May 2013, at 14.^[1] His content later turned to misogyny and antisemitic jokes.^[2] Several platforms banned him, among them YouTube, which terminated his channels in October 2022 and reinstated them in October 2025. By May 2023 he had converted to Islam.^[3]

Where are Sneako’s parents from?

Father’s side

Grandfather

Georges Louis Joseph Kenn

HungarianAshkenazi Jewish

Born in Belgrade

Born around 1925. Fought against the Nazis in World War II, then moved to Haiti. Died before Sneako was born

Grandmother

Edwige Fouchard Kenn de Balinthazy

Haitian

Daughter of the Haitian historian Jean Fouchard. Met Sneako’s grandfather in Haiti

Father

Stéphane Kenn de Balinthazy

HaitianHungarianAshkenazi Jewish

Born in Haiti

Photographer, born in 1963. Half Black, half Hungarian and Ashkenazi Jewish

Mother’s side

Grandfather

Victor K. Dedios

Married in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1967

Grandmother

Leticia Dedios, née Santos

Married in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1967

Mother

Cheryl Kenn de Balinthazy, née Dedios

Filipino

Sneako

Born in New York City, New York

Father’s side

His father, Stéphane Kenn de Balinthazy, comes from Haiti and is half Black.^[1][4] A 2024 death notice for Stéphane’s sister in the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste lists him with his wife Cheryl and their children, among them Nicolas.^[4] Stéphane was born in 1963 and is a Haitian-American photographer. His series Bleeding Rust, close-ups of rusted paint on walls across Haiti, was part of the 2015 exhibition From Within & Without on the history of Haitian photography at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale.^[5]

The other half of his father’s family goes back to Sneako’s grandfather, Georges Louis Joseph Kenn. Sneako says he came from Hungary and was half Hungarian and half Ashkenazi Jewish.^[1][6] The parish register of his wedding gives Belgrade as his birthplace and names his parents as Georges Louis Kenn and Rosalie Guba, both no longer alive by 1956.^[7] According to Sneako, he fought against the Nazis in World War II, moved to Haiti after the war and hid his identity there to start a new life.^[1] Sneako says relatives of his died in Auschwitz, and he calls his surname a Polish-Hungarian name.^[6] His grandfather died before Sneako was born, and the family learned about the Jewish line only recently. When Vlad worked out that this made Sneako about 12.5 percent Jewish, he agreed.^[1]

In Haiti the grandfather met Sneako’s grandmother, whom Sneako describes as Black.^[6] She is Edwige Fouchard Kenn de Balinthazy, Stéphane’s mother.^[4] The couple married in April 1956 in Pétion-Ville above Port-au-Prince. He was 31, she was 20, and her father signed the register as a witness.^[7] Her father was Jean Fouchard (1912–1990), a Haitian journalist and historian who wrote several books on the maroons, enslaved people who fled the plantations of colonial Saint-Domingue. He was private secretary to Haiti’s president from 1933 to 1940 and later the country’s ambassador in Havana.^[8] Sneako is his great-grandson.

Mother’s side

His mother, Cheryl Kenn de Balinthazy, is Filipino.^[1] Her maiden name is Dedios, according to the notice in Le Nouvelliste.^[4] Her parents, Victor K. Dedios and Leticia Santos, married in Hartford, Connecticut, in March 1967.^[9] Details about her family, such as the region it comes from, have not been made public in the sources we checked. Sneako visited the Philippines in April 2026 and thanked the country on X afterwards.^[10]

In his own words

“My grandfather from Hungary immigrated to Haiti and met my grandma. So my dad’s half Black and then part white, part Jewish, and my mom’s Filipino.”

Interview with Mario Nawfal, May 17, 2025

“My dad, he’s from Haiti. My mother’s Filipino. My dad is half Black and his father, my grandfather, he’s half Hungarian and then half Ashkenazi Jew.”

Interview with VladTV, Jan 29, 2026