Cornish people: Encyclopedia II - Cornish people - Numbers of Cornish

Cornish people - Numbers of Cornish

The number of people living in Cornwall considering themselves primarily Cornish rather than English or British is unknown. Many in Cornwall consider themselves primarily British and then Cornish and use the term British to describe themselves. However many others use Cornish as a description of their ethnic/national identity and this is a phenomenon with a long historical precedent. Many indigenous Cornish also consider themselves to be English.

The question of different ethnic groups in the white population of the British Isles is difficult in itself, regardless of the Cornish question. The Celtic and Anglo-Saxon populations intermarried freely, and ethnicity in the islands is based on cultural identity as well as descent (witness the adoption of Highland Gaelic in the Scottish Lowlands, which historically were inhabited by Brythonic speakers). Similarly, as noted by Philip Payton (Professor of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter) in his book Cornwall - A History, descendants of non-Cornish people who came to live in Cornwall have adopted a Cornish identity.

The population of Cornwall was estimated to be 501,267 in the 2001 census^[1]. Cornish community organisations tend to consider half of these people to be ethnic Cornish, although such estimates are unreliable, the numbers considering themselves Cornish could be a lot lower.

A recent survey by the University of Plymouth found that, when given the opportunity, over a third of pupils in schools in Cornwall would identify as Cornish. A Morgan Stanley Bank survey indicated that when given one choice, 44 per cent of the inhabitants of Cornwall believe themselves to be Cornish, rather than British, English or European. This was the largest such figure in England (average of 21% identifying with county), but was not unusually high - in Derbyshire and East Sussex 37% identified with county first. [2]. This survey gives neither an upper or a lower bound on the number of Cornish people identifying as part of a Cornish ethnicity.

Another survey [3], (which gave people the option to choose between Cornish and English, but not both), found 35.1% of people in its (self-selected) sample of 15,000 chose Cornish, compared to 48.4% who chose English.

For processing responses to the question on ethnicity in the 2001 UK Census, the ONS for the first time granted the Cornish their own code number '06' like the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish. Campaigners, although happy with this change, expressed reservations about the lack of publicity surrounding the issue, the lack of a clear tick box for a Cornish option on the census and the need to deny being British in order to write Cornish in the "others" box. A total of 37,603 people in the UK gave Cornish as a write-in answer. In Cornwall 33,932 people (6.8% of the population) did so, varying from 9% in Penwith to 5.57% in Caradon. Outside Cornwall an additional 3,671 put down Cornish, the highest proportion being in Plymouth, with 487 (0.2%).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Numbers of Cornish", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki