British Americans

British Americans are citizens of the United States of British or partial-British ancestry. British Americans commonly have English, Scottish, Scotch-Irish (Ulster), or Welsh family heritages. Irish-Americans are often not considered British descent and, although some do, many do not think of themselves as of British descent (even though Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from the 12th century AD until 1922).

British American or American?

Many British Americans have ancestry in America that dates back to colonial times in the 17th and 18th centuries. With their roots being in America for such a long period, many British Americans have begun to think of themselves ancestrally simply as "Americans". Worldwide that line of thinking is often found. For instance, today's southern Italians don't consider themselves Greeks or partially Greek because their ancestors came from Greece, and today's English don't consider themselves to be Germans because their ancestors were Germanics from continental Europe. But in American society, hyphenated-Americanism prevails because so much of the population has relatively recent roots elsewhere.

Some other Americans have forgotten the origins of their distant ancestors, or prefer to identify with the ethnicity of ancestors who arrived more recently, which provide more distinctive folkways than the general American culture.

Some Americans with a Scottish or Welsh background identify with those "nations" and not with Britain as a whole and so do not refer to themselves as British.

Number of British Americans

According to 2000 Census figures, there are 62.4 million Americans of self-reported British ancestry today. These include:

• 28.2 million English
• 20 million American (the overwhelming majority of those who answered "American" as their ancestry are thought to be of British ancestry)
• 5.4 million Scottish
• 5.2 million Scotch-Irish (Ulster)
• 1.9 million Welsh
• 1 million British (answered "British" as ancestry on the Census.)
• 650,000 Canadian (the overwhelming majority of those who answered "Canadian"--as opposed to French Canadian-- as their ancestry are believed to be of British ancestry)

According to these figures, a little more than 30% of the white population in the USA is of British ancestry. These figures also make British Americans the largest national ethnic group in the U.S. when counted collectively, although the Census Bureau does not count them as such.

External Link

Census Bureau ancestry figures (bottom of page)