What was the ethnic background of Nikola Tesla's mother?

Tesla’s mother, Georgina “Đuka” Mandić, was of Serbian ethnic background. Tesla was born into an ethnic Serb family in Smiljan, a village then within the Austrian Empire and now located in Croatia.

Đuka Mandić came from a Serbian Orthodox family. Her father was an Eastern Orthodox priest, as was Tesla’s father, Milutin Tesla. Although she received no formal education, she was known for making household tools and mechanical devices and for memorizing Serbian epic poetry.

Tesla later credited his mother with influencing his memory and creativity. Her practical inventiveness became part of the family story surrounding Tesla’s own technical imagination. The family’s Serbian identity coexisted with the changing political geography of the region: Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire, while Smiljan is today in the Republic of Croatia.

That geography can cause confusion in trivia questions. “Croatian” describes the modern location of Tesla’s birthplace, not his mother’s ethnic background. Likewise, “Austrian” refers to the empire’s political jurisdiction at the time, not the family’s ethnicity. Serbian is therefore the single best answer for this question.