British people

British people

Union Flag
Total population
British c. 72 million British diaspora c. 200 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
United Kingdom	57,678,000[A][2]
United States	109,531,643[B][3][4] 678,000[C][5]
Australia	19,301,379[B][6][7] 1,300,000[D][8]
Canada	17,325,860[B][9][10] 603,000[D][8]
New Zealand	3,372,708[B][11][12] 215,000[D][8]
South Africa	1,603,575[B][13] 212,000[D][8]
France	400,000[D][14]
Spain	297,229[D][15][16]
Ireland	291,000[D][8]
Argentina	270,000[B][17][18][19]
United Arab Emirates	240,000[C][20]
Germany	115,000[C][21]
Languages
English Angloromani Antiguan and Barbudan Creole British Sign Cornish Guernésiais Irish Irish Sign Jèrriais Llanito Manx Pitkern Sercquiais Shelta Turks and Caicos Creole Virgin Islands Creole Welsh Scots (including Ulster-Scots) Scottish Gaelic
Religion
Mainly Christianity (Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Catholicism, Methodism) See also: Religion in the United Kingdom
^ British citizens of any race or ethnicity. ^ a b c d e f People who identify of full or partial British ancestry born into that country. ^ a b c UK-born people who identify of British ancestry only. ^ a b c d e f g British citizens or nationals.

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British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits,^[22] are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.^[23][24][25] British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons^[24] and considerable proportions of English people.^[26][27] It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.^[28]

Though early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity.^[29] The notion of Britishness and a shared British identity was forged during the 18th century and early 19th century when Britain engaged in several global conflicts with France, and developed further during the Victorian era.^[29][30] The complex history of the formation of the United Kingdom created a "particular sense of nationhood and belonging" in Great Britain;^[29] Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English, Scots and Welsh cultures, whose distinctiveness still resists notions of a homogenised British identity.^[31] Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by Unionists.^[32]

Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans.^[33] The progressive political unification of the British Isles facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the late Middle Ages, early modern period and beyond.^[34][35] Since 1922 and earlier, there has been immigration to the United Kingdom by people from what is now the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth, mainland Europe and elsewhere; they and their descendants are mostly British citizens, with some assuming a British, dual or hyphenated identity.^[36] This includes the groups Black British and Asian British people, which together constitute around 10% of the British population.^[37]

The British are a diverse, multinational,^[38][39] multicultural and multilingual people, with "strong regional accents, expressions and identities".^[40][41] The social structure of the United Kingdom has changed radically since the 19th century, with a decline in religious observance, enlargement of the middle class, and increased ethnic diversity, particularly since the 1950s, when citizens of the British Empire were encouraged to immigrate to Britain to work as part of the recovery from World War II. The population of the UK stands at around 67 million,^[42] with 50 million being ethnic British. Outside of the UK, the British diaspora totals around 200 million with higher concentrations in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with smaller concentrations in the Republic of Ireland, Chile, South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean.^[1]