British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and also the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar). It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
Based on 2020 American Community Survey estimates, 1,934,397 individuals identified as having British ancestry, while a further 25,213,619 identified as having English ancestry, 5,298,861 Scottish ancestry and 1,851,256 Welsh ancestry. The total of these groups, at 34,298,133, was 10.5% of the total population. A further 31,518,129 individuals identified as having Irish ancestry, but this is not differentiated between modern Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland, which was part of the United Kingdom during the greatest phase of Irish immigration. Figures for Manx and Cornish ancestries are not separately reported, although Manx was reported prior to 1990, numbering 9,220 on the 1980 census, and some estimates put Cornish ancestry as high as 2 million. This figure also does not include people reporting ancestries in countries with majority or plurality British ancestries, such as Canadian, South African, New Zealander (21,575) or Australian (105,152). There has been a significant drop overall, especially from the 1980 census where 49.59 million people reported English ancestry and larger numbers reported Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish ancestry also.
Demographers regard current figures as a "serious under-count", as a large proportion of Americans of British descent have tended to simply identify as 'American' since 1980. In that year, over 13.3 million or 5.9% of the total U.S. population self-identified as "American" or "United States", which was counted under "not specified".Ancestry of the Population by State: 1980 (Supplementary Report PC80-S1-10) Issued: April 1983 This response is highly overrepresented in the Upland South, a region settled historically by Britons.Ethnic Landscapes of America – By John A. CrossCensus and you: monthly news from the U.S. Bureau... Volume 28, Issue 2 – By United States. Bureau of the CensusDominic J. Pulera. Sharing the Dream: White Males in a Multicultural America.Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44–6.Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters, 'Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, No. 79 (September 1986), pp. 82–86. Those of mixed European ancestry may identify with a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 36. Of the top ten family names in the United States (2010), seven have English origins or having possible mixed British Isles heritage (such as Welsh, Scottish or Cornish), the other three being of Spanish origin.Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census – United States Census Bureau
Sense of heritage
Americans of British heritage are often seen, and identify, as simply "American" due to the many historic, linguistic and cultural ties between Great Britain and the U.S. and their influence on the country's population. A leading specialist, Charlotte Erickson, found them to be ethnically "invisible".Charlotte Erickson, Invisible immigrants: the adaptation of English and Scottish immigrants in nineteenth-century America (1990) This may be due to the early establishment of British settlements; as well as to non-English groups having emigrated in order to establish significant communities.
Number of British Americans Table below shows census results between 1980 (when data on ancestry was first collected) and the 2020 census. Response rates for the question on ancestry was 83.1% (1980) 90.4% (1990) and 80.1% (2000) for the total population of the United States. Year Ethnic origin Population % British; total61,327,86731.67 1980 English 49,598,03526.34 Scottish 10,048,8164.44 Welsh 1,664,5980.88 Northern Irish 16,4180.01Total46,816,17518.8 1990 English32,651,78813.1 Scottish 5,393,581 2.2 Scotch-Irish 5,617,7732.3 Welsh 2,033,8930.8 British1,119,1400.4Total36,564,46512.9 2000 English 24,515,1388.7 Scottish 4,890,581 1.7 Scotch-Irish 4,319,2321.5 Welsh 1,753,7940.6 British 1,085,7200.4Total37,619,88114.4 2010 English 25,927,345 8.4 Scottish 5,460,679 3.1 Scotch-Irish 3,257,161 1.9 Welsh 1,793,356 0.6 British 1,181,340 0.4Total58,649,411TBA 2020 English 46,550,968 14.0 Scottish 8,422,613 TBA Scots-Irish 794,478 TBA Welsh 1,977,383 TBA British 860,315 TBA British Islander 43,654 TBA
Composition of Colonial America
According to estimates by Thomas L. Purvis (1984), published in the European ancestry of the United States, gives the ethnic composition of the American colonies from 1700 to 1755. British ancestry in 1755 was estimated to be 63%, comprising 52% English and Welsh, 7.0% Scots-Irish, and 4% Scottish.
Studies on origins, 1790
The ancestry of the 3,929,214 population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names in the very first United States official census and assigning them a country of origin. There is debate over the accuracy between the studies with individual scholars and the Federal Government using different techniques and conclusion for the ethnic composition. A study published in 1909 titled A Century of Population Growth by the Census Bureau estimated the British origin combined were around 90% of the white population.
Another source by Thomas L. Purvis in 1984 estimated that people of British ancestry made up about 62% of the total population or 74% of the white or European American population. Some 81% of the total United States population was of European heritage. Around 757,208 were of African descent with 697,624 being slaves.
A Century of Population Growth (1909) Estimated British American population in the Continental United States as of the 1790 Census. State or Territory British Isles Total British Total English Scotch Irish#%#%#%#%#%96.21%2.77%98.98%0.68%99.66%86.30%7.50%93.80%3.90%97.70%83.10%11.20%94.30%2.30%96.60%83.10%11.20%94.30%2.30%96.60% 93.14%4.32%97.46%1.39%98.85% 84.00%6.50%90.50%2.40%92.90% 95.00%3.60%98.60%1.00%99.60% 94.06%4.71%98.77%0.95%99.72% 58.03%7.74%65.77%7.12%72.89% 78.22%3.19%81.41%0.80%82.21% 83.10%11.20%94.30%2.30%96.60% 58.97%11.71%70.68%2.03%72.71% 95.99%3.06%99.05%0.71%99.76% 82.38%11.73%94.11%2.55%96.66% 83.10%11.20%94.30%2.30%96.60% 95.39%3.01%98.40%0.70%99.10% 85.00%7.10%92.10%2.00%94.10%82.14%6.98%89.12%1.94%91.06%
American Council of Learned Societies (1929) The 1909 Century of Population Growth report came under intense scrutiny in the 1920s; its methodology was subject to criticism over fundamental flaws that cast doubt on the accuracy of its conclusions. The catalyst for controversy had been passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed numerical quotas on each country of Europe limiting the number of immigrants to be admitted out of a finite total annual pool. The size of each national quota was determined by the National Origins Formula, in part computed by estimating the origins of the colonial stock population descended from White Americans enumerated in the 1790 Census. The undercount of other colonial stocks like German Americans and Irish Americans would thus have contemporary policy consequences. When CPG was produced in 1909, the concept of independent Ireland did not even exist. CPG made no attempt to further classify its estimated 1.9% Irish population to distinguish Celtic Irish Catholics of Gaelic Ireland, who in 1922 formed the independent Irish Free State, from the Scotch-Irish descendants of Ulster Scots and Anglo-Irish of the Plantation of Ulster, which became Northern Ireland and remained part of the United Kingdom. In 1927, proposed immigration quotas based on CPG figures were rejected by the President's Committee chaired by the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Labor, with the President reporting to Congress "the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these computations as the basis for the purposes intended." Among the criticisms of A Century of Population Growth: CPG failed to account for Anglicization of names, assuming any surname that could be English was actually English CPG failed to consider first names even when obviously foreign, assuming anyone with a surname that could be English was actually English CPG failed to consider regional variation in ethnic settlement e.g. surname Root could be assumed English in Vermont (less than 1% German), but more commonly a variant of German Roth in states with large German American populations like populous Pennsylvania (home to more Germans than the entire population of Vermont) CPG started by classifying all names as Scotch, Irish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, or other. All remaining names which could not be classed with one of the 6 other listed nationalities, nor identified by the Census clerk as too exotic to be English, were assumed to be English CPG classification was an unscientific process by Census clerks with no training in history, genealogy, or linguistics, nor were scholars in those fields consulted CPG estimates were produced by a linear process with no checks on potential errors nor opportunity for peer review or scholarly revision once an individual clerk had assigned a name to a nationality
Concluding that CPG "had not been accepted by scholars as better than a first approximation of the truth", the Census Bureau commissioned a study to produce new scientific estimates of the colonial American population, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, in time to be adopted as basis for legal immigration quotas in 1929, and later published in the journal of the American Historical Association, reproduced in the table below. Note: as in the original CPG report, the "English" category encompassed England and Wales, grouping together all names classified as either "Anglican" (from England) or "Cambrian" (from Wales).
State or Territory British Isles Total British Total English ScotchScotch-Irish#%#%#%#%#%67.00%2.20%69.20%1.80%71.00%60.00%8.00%68.00%6.30%74.30%57.40%15.50%72.90%11.50%84.40% & Tenn. 57.90%10.00%67.90%7.00%74.90% 60.00%4.50%64.50%8.00%72.50% 64.50%7.60%72.10%5.80%77.90% 82.00%4.40%86.40%2.60%89.00% 61.00%6.20%67.20%4.60%71.80% 47.00%7.70%54.70%6.30%61.00% 52.00%7.00%59.00%5.10%64.10% 66.00%14.80%80.80%5.70%86.50% 35.30%8.60%43.90%11.00%54.90% 71.00%5.80%76.80%2.00%78.80% 60.20%15.10%75.30%9.40%84.70% 76.00%5.10%81.10%3.20%84.30% 68.50%10.20%78.70%6.20%84.90% 60.94%8.21%69.15%5.99%75.14%29.81%4.08%33.89%2.92%36.81%11.20%1.53%12.73%1.10%13.83% Spanish America 2.54%0.35%2.89%0.25%3.14%60.10%8.09%68.19%5.91%74.10%
1980 The 1980 census was the first that asked people's ancestry. The 1980 United States Census reported 61,327,867 individuals or 31.67% of the total U.S. population self-identified as having British descent. In 1980, 16,418 Americans reported "Northern Islander". No Scots-Irish (descendants of Ulster-Scots) ancestry was recorded, although over ten million people identified as Scottish. This figure fell to over 5 million each in the following census when the Scotch-Irish were first counted.
1990