Irish-American
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (Self-identified "Irish" 34,587,835 11.1% of the US population (2013) Self-identified "Scots-Irish" 3,212,402 1.0% of the US population (2013) Estimate of Americans with any Scots-Irish ancestry 27,000,000 Up to 11.1 % of the U.S. population) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Throughout the United States, with particular concentrations in the Northeast, the South and large cities elsewhere, particularly Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia Plurality in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Delaware, and Pennsylvania |
|
| Languages | |
| English (American English dialects); minority can speak Irish | |
| Religion | |
| Catholic and Protestant | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Breton Americans, Cornish Americans, English Americans, Manx Americans, Scottish Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Welsh Americans and other Celtic Americans |
Irish Americans (Irish: Gael-Ṁeiriceánaiġ) are an ethnic group comprising Americans who have full or partial ancestry from Ireland, especially those who identify with that ancestry, along with their cultural characteristics. About 33.3 million Americans—10.5% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2013 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. This compares with a population of 6.4 million on the island of Ireland. Three million people separately identified as Scots-Irish, whose ancestors were Ulster Scots who emigrated from Ireland to the United States. The distinction between Irish and Scots-Irish is arbitrary and was overcome when Protestant Irish formed the United Irishmen in Ireland and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in the States.
Many colonial settlers coming from the province of Ulster came to be known in the United States as the "Scots-Irish", although most descendants of the Scots-Irish today identify their ancestry as "American" or "Irish", some were descendants of Scottish and English tenant farmers who had been settled in Ireland by the British government during the 17th-century Plantation of Ulster. An estimated 250,000 migrated to the United States during the colonial era. Only 20,000 immigrants of these immigrants from Ireland were Catholics—English, Irish or a few Germans. Catholics numbered 40,000 or 1.6% of the total population of 2.5 million in 1775. However religious numbers should be noted in context that at this period of time the Roman Catholic religion was proscribed and discouraged and that many Protestants are descendants of Catholics by logical definition. The Scots-Irish settled mainly in the colonial "back country" of the Appalachian Mountain region, and became the prominent ethnic strain in the culture that developed there. The descendants of Scots-Irish settlers had a great influence on the later culture of the United States through such contributions as American folk music, country and western music, and , which became popular throughout the country in the late 20th century.
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