Dutch Americans

Not to be confused with the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Dutch Americans
Nederlandse Amerikanen (Dutch)
Netherlands United States
Self-reported (partial) Dutch ancestry (2021)
Total population
3,083,041[1] (0.93%) in combination

884,857[2] (0.27%) Dutch alone

2021 estimates, self-reported
Regions with significant populations
California; Mountain states, especially in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado; Northeast, especially in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey; Midwest, especially in Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin
Languages
English, Dutch (0.0486% of the total US population)[3]
2009-2013 estimates, self-reported
Religion
74% Protestant, 10% Roman Catholic, 15% other[4]
Related ethnic groups
Dutch people, Dutch Brazilians, Dutch Canadians, Dutch Surinamese, Afrikaners, Pennsylvania Dutch, Belgian Americans, Dutch West Indian Americans, Surinamese Americans

Dutch Americans (Dutch: Nederlandse Amerikanen) are Americans of Dutch and Flemish descent whose ancestors came from the Low Countries in the distant past, or from the Netherlands as from 1830 when the Flemish became independent from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands by creating the Kingdom of Belgium. Dutch settlement in the Americas started in 1613 with New Amsterdam, which was exchanged with the English for Suriname at the Treaty of Breda (1667) and renamed New York City. The English split the Dutch colony of New Netherland into two pieces and named them New York and New Jersey. Further waves of immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.

According to the 2021 American Community Survey, an estimated 3.1 million[1] Americans claim total or partial Dutch heritage, while 884,857[2] Americans claimed total Dutch heritage. In 2021, 113,634 Dutch Americans were foreign-born (of which 61.5% in Europe).[5] The 2009-2013 survey estimated 141,580 people of 5 years and over to speak Dutch at home,[3] which was equal to 0.0486% of the total population of the United States. In 2021, 95.3% of the total Dutch American population of 5 years and over only spoke English at home.[5]

Prominent (partial) Dutch American political figures include Presidents Martin Van Buren, Warren G. Harding, and Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.S. Senators Philip Schuyler, Nicholas Van Dyke, Hamilton Fish, John C. Ten Eyck, Daniel W. Voorhees, Arthur Vandenberg, Peter G. Van Winkle, Alan Simpson, Fred Thompson, John Hoeven, and Christopher Van Hollen. Two of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Egbert Benson and John Jay, were also of Dutch descent. Governors John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Harold G. Hoffman and Thomas Kean of New Jersey, William Henry Vanderbilt III of Rhode Island, George Bell Timmerman Jr. of South Carolina, and Cornelius P. Van Ness of Vermont were also born to Dutch American families. Today the majority of the Dutch Americans live in Michigan, California, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Not included among Dutch Americans are the Pennsylvania Dutch, a group of mainly German Americans who settled in Pennsylvania in the colonial era and whose name is a derivation of the Pennsylvania Dutch endonym Deitsch, which means "Pennsylvania Dutch" or "German".[6][7][8][9] Ultimately, the terms Deitsch, Dutch, Diets and Deutsch are all descendants of the Proto-Germanic word *þiudiskaz, meaning "popular" or "of the people"; while all Germanic cognates of the term refer to some Germanic people, they more commonly refer to Germans than Netherlanders.[10]

  1. ^ a b "Table B04006 - People Reporting Ancestry - 2021 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". United States Census Bureau. 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Table B04004 - People Reporting Single Ancestry - 2021 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". United States Census Bureau. 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference census0913 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society, p. 120
  5. ^ a b "Table S0201 - (Dutch) Selected Population Profile in the United States - 2021 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". United States Census Bureau. 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2023.
  6. ^ Hughes Oliphant Old: The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 6: The Modern Age. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007, p. 606.
  7. ^ Mark L. Louden: Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language. JHU Press, 2006, p.2
  8. ^ Hostetler, John A. (1993), Amish Society, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 241
  9. ^ Irwin Richman: The Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Arcadia Publishing, 2004, p.16.
  10. ^ W. Haubrichs, "Theodiscus, Deutsch und Germanisch – drei Ethnonyme, drei Forschungsbegriffe. Zur Frage der Instrumentalisierung und Wertbesetzung deutscher Sprach- und Volksbezeichnungen." In: H. Beck et al., Zur Geschichte der Gleichung "germanisch-deutsch" (2004), 199–228