New Zealanders

New Zealanders
Tāngata Aotearoa

Flag of New Zealand
A group of young New Zealanders at a climate change protest in Wellington, 2019
Total population
c. 5.8 million
Regions with significant populations
New Zealand	c. 5,340,000
Australia	640,770[1]
United Kingdom	58,286[2]
United States	22,872[2]
Canada	17,485[3]
Netherlands	4,260[2]
United Arab Emirates	4,000[4]
Japan	3,146[2]
Hong Kong	3,000[5]
Germany	2,631[6][7]
Ireland	2,195[2]
France	1,400[8]
Brazil	1,256[9]
Switzerland	4,000
Languages
English · Te Reo Māori · Other minority languages
Religion
Plurality: Irreligious Minority: Christianity (Anglican, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism) and other minority religions[10]
Related ethnic groups
Australians, Britons

New Zealanders (Māori: Tāngata Aotearoa) are people associated with New Zealand, sharing a common history, culture, and language (New Zealand English). People of various ethnicities and national origins are citizens of New Zealand, governed by its nationality law.

Originally composed solely of the indigenous Māori, the ethnic makeup of the population has been dominated since the 19th century by New Zealanders of European descent, mainly of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish ancestry, with smaller percentages of other European and Middle Eastern ancestries such as Greek, Turkish, Italian and other groups such as Arab, German, Dutch, Scandinavian, South Slavic and Jewish, with Western European groups predominating. Today, the ethnic makeup of the New Zealand population is undergoing a process of change, with new waves of immigration, higher birth rates and increasing interracial marriage resulting in the New Zealand population of Māori, Asian, Pasifika and multiracial descent growing at a higher rate than those of solely European descent, with such groups projected to make up a larger proportion of the population in the future.^[11] New Zealand has an estimated resident population of around 5,338,500 (as of June 2024).^[12] Over one million New Zealanders recorded in the 2013 New Zealand census were born overseas, and by 2021 over a quarter of New Zealanders are estimated to be foreign born.^[13] Rapidly increasing ethnic groups vary from being well-established, such as Indians and Chinese, to nascent ones such as African New Zealanders.^[14]

While most New Zealanders are resident in New Zealand, there is also a significant diaspora, estimated at around 750,000. Of these, about 640,800 lived in Australia (a June 2013 estimate^[update]),^[1] which was equivalent to 12% of the resident population of New Zealand. Other communities of New Zealanders abroad are heavily concentrated in other English-speaking countries, specifically the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, with smaller numbers located elsewhere.^[2] New Zealanders have had a cultural influence on a global scale, through film, language, te ao Māori, art, science, music and technology, and founded the modern women's suffrage and anti-nuclear movements. Technological and scientific achievements of New Zealanders stem back as far as Kupe and the earliest Polynesian navigators, who used sophisticated astral methods that helped laid the groundwork for both navigation and modern astronomy.^[15] Modern trench warfare is often argued to have originated in New Zealand among Māori in the 19th century.^[16] New Zealanders also pioneered nuclear physics (Ernest Rutherford),^[17] the women's suffrage movement (Kate Sheppard), modern Western conceptions of gender identity (John Money) and plastic surgery (Harold Gillies).^[18]

New Zealand culture is essentially a Western culture influenced by the unique environment and geographic isolation of the islands, and the cultural input of the Māori and the various waves of multiethnic migration which followed the British colonisation of New Zealand. A colloquial name for New Zealanders is a Kiwi (/kiːwiː/).^[19][20][21]