Brazilians

Brazilians

Brasileiros
Total population
c. 203 million[1] (2022 census)
Regions with significant populations
Brazilian diaspora: c. 4.9 million (2023)[2]
United States	2,085,000[2]
Portugal	513,000[2]
Paraguay	263,200[2]
United Kingdom	230,000[2]
Japan	210,471[2]
Germany	170,400[2]
Spain	161,944[2]
Italy	159,000[2]
Canada	143,500[2]
Argentina	101,502[2]
France	95,000[2]
French Guiana	92,493[2]
Ireland	80,000[2]
Netherlands	80,000[2]
Bolivia	75,700[2]
Switzerland	64,000[2]
Belgium	50,000[2]
Australia	48,180[2]
Mexico	45,000[2]
Uruguay	31,050[2]
Suriname	30,000[2]
Angola	25,000[2]
Languages
Portuguese (99.7%)[3]

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Brazilians (Portuguese: Brasileiros, IPA: [bɾaziˈlejɾus]) are the citizens of Brazil. A Brazilian can also be a person born abroad to a Brazilian parent or legal guardian as well as a person who acquired Brazilian citizenship. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many ethnic origins, and there is no correlation between one's stock and their Brazilian identity.

Being Brazilian is a civic phenomenon, rather than an ethnic one. As a result, the degree to which Brazilian citizens identify with their ancestral roots varies significantly depending on the individual, the region of the country, and the specific ethnic origins in question. Most often, however, the idea of ethnicity as it is understood in the anglophone world is not popular in the country.

After the colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese, most of the 16th century, the word "Brazilian" was given to the Portuguese merchants of the Brazilwood tree, designating exclusively the name of such profession, since the inhabitants of the land were, in most of them, indigenous, or Portuguese born in Portugal or in the territory now called Brazil.^[4]

However, long before the independence of Brazil, in 1822, both in Brazil and in Portugal, it was already common to assign the Brazilian gentilic to a person, usually of clear Portuguese descent, resident or whose family resided in the State of Brazil (1530–1815), belonging to the Portuguese Empire. During the lifetime of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815–1822), however, there was confusion about the nomenclature.