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Tamil Americans

Tamil Americans (Tamil: தமிழ் அமெரிக்கர்கள், romanized: tamiḻ amerikkarkaḷ) are Americans who are of Tamil origin. The majority of Tamil Americans come from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Significant minorities are from other Indian states like Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, etc., as well as from other countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore.

In 2000, the number of Tamil speakers in the US numbered approximately 50,000 individuals. By 2010 the number surged to 127,892 and grew to 293,907 by 2022.[1] The growth of the Tamil population in the United States is attributed to the H-1B visa program, and the presence of a large number of Tamil students studying in American universities.

Language[edit]

The Indian Tamil community in the United States is largely bilingual. Tamil is taught in weekly classes in many Hindu temples and by associations such as the American Tamil Academy in South Brunswick, New Jersey and the Tamil Jersey School in Jersey City.[12][13]


The language's written form is highly formal and quite distinct from the spoken form. A few universities, such as the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, have graduate programs in the language.[14]

Religion[edit]

The Indian Tamil community is majority-wise connected to the Hindu community. In most Hindu temples in the United States, the prayers are in Sanskrit. However, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, the "Tamil Temple" ("Tamil Annai Thirukkoyil") conducts all the prayers in the Tamil language. The Hindu Temple in Houston, Texas, is dedicated to Meenakshi, a manifestation of the goddess Parvathi. There are also active Tamil Christian and Muslim minorities, as well as Jains and Buddhists. Tamil Muslims also hold a Tamil Muslim Community Sangam-Iman America/QMFUSA[15]

– Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

– Economist, professor of economics at Harvard University renowned for his research on equality of opportunity in the United States

Raj Chetty

– Professor and a victim of the Virginia Tech massacre

G. V. Loganathan

– Computer scientist

C. Mohan

– Economist, Harvard professor

Sendhil Mullainathan

– Executive Vice President, Knowledge Enterprise Development and Chief Research Innovation Officer at Arizona State University

Sethuraman Panchanathan

– Wireless researcher, winner of Marconi Prize

Arogyaswami Paulraj

– Physician, neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego

V. S. Ramachandran

– Structural biologist and Nobel laureate

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

– Scientist

Maya Shankar

– Academic, scientist, businessman and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Siva Sivananthan

- Former President of Carnegie Mellon University

Subra Suresh

– Social anthropologist

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

– Mathematician

S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan

– Sociologist and urban ethnographer

Sudhir Venkatesh

Fuller, C. J. & Haripriya Narasimhan (2014). . University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226152882.

Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste

Narayanan, Vasudha, "Tamils" in David Levinson and Melvin Ember, ed. (1997). . Simon & Schuster Macmillan. pp. 874–79.

American immigrant cultures: builders of a nation

Underwood, Kelsey Clark (1986). . PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

Negotiating Tamil Identity in India and the United States

Underwood, Kelsey Clark. "Image and Identity: Tamils' Migration to the United States." Papers Kroeber Anthropological Society (1986): 65+