Going a bit off topic here but I noticed that many of the Latvian players share a striking resemblance to scandinavians ex. Blueger, Dzerins while others resemble eastern europeans slavs . My understanding was that people from these country as well as the other baltic nations have both Scandinavian ancestry as well as Slavic, is this correct? Forgive me I didn't know where else to ask and wanted an answer from a true Latvian.
Some cents from me about family names in Latvia - there are different influences for them. Latvians didn’t had family names, commonly they were called in name of farmstead they come – like John from Stiebri (just as example). Then come Germans, Poles, Russians and Swedes as well and they come with own rules. So we become many Family names which ended with: –sons (from Swedes), many –bergs (from Germans), mani –vics (from Poles), and –ovs (from Russians). That is not a full list of course
Same there was also a economical or political benefit to change family names depend on rulers. Centuries ago there was a free land available for those, who changed believe to orthodox and changed the family names to Slavic.
That is only one explanation, why many people in Latvia have non-Latvian family names.
) and then there's Artūrs Kulda, who doesn't give interviews in Latvian at all. 
As you said sometimes it is easy to point out certain characteristics. It is very easy to tell who is slavic but myself since as vinituu mentioned there were so many historical ties to different nations I cannot tell who is a Latvian myself. Lithuanians for some reason I have a much easier time picking them out and Estonians I believe have many Russian and Finnish ties, after all about a quarter of the Estonian population is ethnically russian, same with Latvia, but not so in Lithuania. Is there great genetic disparity between the Baltic nations?
