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Ethnic Groups by Country Quiz #2

Name the modern-day country that has the largest population of each selected ethnic group.
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Ethnicity: The common characteristics of a group of people, especially regarding ancestry, culture, language or national experiences.
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: June 21, 2020
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First submittedJuly 12, 2012
Times taken45,998
Average score75.0%
Rating4.27
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Ethnic Group
Country
Sherpas
Nepal
Arabs
Egypt
Basques
Spain
Khmer
Cambodia
Tatars
Russia
Zulus
South Africa
Uyghurs
China
Ethnic Group
Country
Cherokees
United States
Javanese
Indonesia
Nubians
Sudan
Hispanics
Mexico
Bengalis
Bangladesh
Ainu
Japan
Punjabis
Pakistan
Ethnic Group
Country
Tagalog
Philippines
Acadians
Canada
Inuit
Denmark (Greenland)
Berbers
Morocco / Algeria
Sinhalese
Sri Lanka
Druze
Syria
+1
Level 27
Oct 22, 2012
Very interesting quiz. I also expected Kurds to be on the list...

btw, isn't this quiz meant to show up minorities? Just because of the Arabs in Egypt, thought they're the majority.

+32
Level 65
Oct 31, 2012
The quiz instructions mention nothing about minorities.
+1
Level 82
Jan 26, 2014
Got everything except for the Acadians.

Personally I do not buy that there are many ethnic Arabs in Egypt at all. Arabic-speaking people around the world did not start to identify themselves as Arabs until the rise of Arab Nationalism which began in the 1900s. This was a political movement that grew out of a combination of things including opposition to Ottoman (Turkish) rule over most Arabic-speaking people, Western Imperialism up to and immediately following World War I, and most importantly, the personal ambitions of the Sharif of Mecca and his opposition to Zionism, the growth of which encroached on his own political power interests, which by cynically and erroneously labeling as Arab and Muslim issues he successfully changed from a local issue into the cause-du-jour of the entire Arabic-speaking world and greater Muslim ulemma for the next century.

+1
Level 82
Jan 26, 2014
Anyway the people of Egypt are Egyptians or Copts. Historically, "Arab" only applied to the desert nomads who lived beyond the borders of civilization which stopped at Jordan, Israel, and Iraq. Before 1900 or 1850 if you had asked any Egyptian if they were Arab they would have been perplexed. As conquered subjects of 12th Century Arabs they were forced to adopt some components of Arab culture, language, and religion; but they did not become Arabs to my mind any more than the Cherokee became English. Popular political movements of the last century convinced most of them otherwise, but in my opinion the only real Arabs in the world are the people indigenous to Yemen and to a lesser extent the other countries of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait).
+1
Level 82
Jan 26, 2014
Did I say Sharif of Mecca? ... I meant the Mufti of Jerusalem.
+4
Level 75
Apr 14, 2015
Acadians were easy for me because of Longfellow's poem, "Evangeline". The French Acadians from Nova Scotia moved to Louisiana and became the Cajuns.
+1
Level 74
Apr 14, 2015
This is the forest primeval...
+1
Level 51
Oct 22, 2022
"Moved" haha you surely mean being deported and kill...
+1
Level 56
Apr 14, 2015
Ah, yes, another never-ending demographic debate: Should Arabs be distinguished by country borders and in which contexts to do it?
+1
Level 82
Apr 14, 2015
Not really like that. Are Jamaicans English? Are Equatorial Guineans Spanish? If no, then why would we consider Moroccans or Lebanese to be Arabs?

On the other hand, ethnicity is whatever identity people ascribe to themselves, so even if we can see that this trend is completely recent and more to do with politics than anything else, if Egyptians, Algerians, Sudanese and Iraqis want to call themselves Arab, then I suppose they're Arab. I just won't think of them as such. No need for a debate.

+2
Level 82
Oct 27, 2016
Why would we consider Englishmen to be English then?
+2
Level 82
Jun 21, 2017
Maybe because in addition to speaking English and being English in culture they also live in England, and most have family histories and genetics going back that are also thoroughly English. Their parents, grand parents, and great great great grandparents were probably all or predominantly English. The difference here is mainly that the Arabic-speaking people outside of the Arabian peninsula did not think of themselves as Arabs (and most are not, at least in terms of genetic lineage) until pretty recently. I guess that's the only reason I find it odd. But we're already at a point where most people just take this for granted and within another few generations I'm sure it will just be assumed that this is how it always was. That's how these things tend to work...
+7
Level 82
Aug 20, 2017
So apparently it's just a question of time before a new mix or acquired identity becomes "official", and yeah, ethnicity is mostly a matter of self-identification. The only wrong thing I see is what you mention at the end – assuming it has always been like this. But it's the same in Europe. There was also a time when many tribes/ethnic groups/populations ... were only recently considered French/German/Spanish/Italian/Russian/Turkish/... and it was all quite political of course, i.e. depending on where the borders were drawn and who conquered whom. The only significant difference with Arabs I see is that many Arab countries don't have a majority Arab origin, but even that is debatable also elsewhere.
+4
Level 82
Mar 17, 2019
Djilas: yes, exactly, we agree completely.
+1
Level 75
Jul 7, 2020
I guess I don't understand exactly what ethnicity means. As far as a common ancestry doesn't it all depend on how far back you want to go? The English identity came into being in the early medieval times, but their ancestry includes Celts, Romans, Britons, Germanic tribes, Angles, Saxons, and later, Normans, so wouldn't those be part of their ethnicity, too? The Vikings left their mark on the British Isles, too, and we're guessing either Viking or Celt genes are responsible for our son being a ginger beard, but many of us have such mixtures in our DNA so how can we claim any ethnicity for a single group? It seems to me it has just come to mean whatever group one chooses to identify with.
+2
Level 82
Jul 7, 2020
ander: whatever group one chooses to identify with. Yeah you pretty much got it. It's not based on genetic lineage or DNA, though that can be among the stories that groups of people tell to try and describe why they have a shared history or identity. But it doesn't necessarily have to be. And the identification is more important than the actual DNA. Also, it's entirely possible someone can identify as having multiple ethnicities. A Mr. Peterson living in New York whose father was from Glasgow and mother was from Pakistan might identify as.. American, a New Yorker, English, British, Pakistani, Muslim, Scandinavian, Scottish, "White," "brown," a "person of color," European, Western European, Northern European, European-American, and Asian all at the same time. That would be unusual but it's entirely possible.
+4
Level 51
Apr 14, 2015
huh. the only time i've read about sherpas was in tintin in tibet, i thought it was a job, a guide or something.
+3
Level 60
Apr 16, 2015
The Sherpa are an ethnic group living in Nepal, which is where Mt. Everest is located. Since they're acclimated to the extreme lack of oxygen up there, it's pretty valuable to take one of the indigenous people with you when you try to climb the mountain. Don't worry, you're not alone; I used to think the Sherpa guide was a position or some kind of job, too.
+3
Level 70
Jun 22, 2020
The term "Sherpa" is often applied to porters in the Himalayas, whom are often ethnic Sherpas, but oftentimes they are from other mountain dwelling cultures such as the Tamang.
+1
Level 65
Apr 14, 2015
really enjoyed the quiz
+8
Level 56
Apr 15, 2015
I decided that we were shooting for the 8th century BCE with Acadian and kept guessing Mesopotamian countries. I apparently know more about Akkadians than I do about Canadians. Sorry Canada!
+6
Level 72
Jul 7, 2020
Usually, it's Canada that's apologizing. We're sorry you're sorry!
+10
Level 52
Nov 4, 2016
I think Hispanics as an ethnic group is really primarily used in the United States. People living in Spanish-speaking countries don't really refer to themselves that way. You'd be more likely to find people claiming indigenous ethnicities.
+5
Level 61
Aug 24, 2017
Right, there are Hispanics of American, European, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and mixed heritage, Hispanic/Latinx isn't really an ethnic group
+5
Level 60
Nov 9, 2018
Also the Portuguese are Hispanic so shouldn't Brazil be the largest one instead of Mexico?

Hispania was the Roman province of modern-day Iberian peninsula, which includes Portugal. Therefore the Portuguese-speaking parts of Latin America are Hispanic.

+4
Level 67
Jul 7, 2020
That's not how ethnicity works.
+2
Level 51
Jan 24, 2022
Brazil is not Hispanic; Hispanic refers to countries where people speak Spanish as their first language.
+1
Level 45
Aug 20, 2017
i only guessed basques, javanese, khmer,sherpas,zulus,bengalis,tagalog,hmong and tatars. COol Quiz!
+1
Level 57
Aug 20, 2017
great quiz!
+1
Level 49
Aug 20, 2017
I'll admit I didn't have a clue for most of these! Good quiz
+3
Level 21
Aug 26, 2017
I'm pretty sure being Hispanic/Latin doesn't mean you're part of an ethnic group? You can find Hispanic people all over the world, there are indigenous ethnic groups among Latin population like Mapuches, etc.
+2
Level 71
Sep 16, 2017
I think 'Hispanic' has become to mean 'Spanish Speaking' these days, and as that Mexico would be correct.
+1
Level 82
Mar 17, 2019
Hispanic means "of or relating to the Spanish language or culture."

If you come from a Spanish-speaking country, you are Hispanic.

+4
Level 65
Sep 26, 2019
I feel that hispanic means "south of Rio Grande" more than anything. I wouldn't count hispanic as an ethnic group, and it feels very strange in this collection of somewhat cohesive groups of people.
+2
Level 75
Jun 22, 2020
Hispanic is a misleading term developed by ignorant white Americans to suit their domestic racial needs. It has no meaning to "Hispanic" people outside the USA whatsoever and it's at least laughable for actual Spanish.
+1
Level 82
Jul 7, 2020
wth are you talking about? It means what it means, and it's not even complicated.
+5
Level 76
Apr 1, 2018
shouldn't the largest population of Hispanic people be in the USA? 'Hispanic' doesn't really exist as an ethnic group anywhere else. In Mexico people identify as Mexicans or whatever ethnic minority in Mexico they are
+5
Level 37
Apr 28, 2018
True. In most of the world people identify themselves by their country of origin: i.e., Jamaican, Peruvian, Barbadian, Dutch, German, Indian, etc., etc. Only the USA seems intent on "defining" us further.
+1
Level 82
Mar 17, 2019
false
+1
Level 82
Mar 17, 2019
false
+1
Level 79
Mar 17, 2019
For Bedouins, I typed South Sudan thinking I had already typed Sudan, but I didn't....
+1
Level 66
Mar 18, 2019
isn't the population of bedouins in Saudi Arabia greater than that of Sudan?
+5
Level 79
Oct 3, 2019
According to the wikipedia page on Bedouins, the vast majority (1.8m) are in Syria, with Saudi Arabia second (680k) and Sudan doesn't even get a mention. The wikipedia page on Sudan doesn't list Bedouins in the demographics section. What is the source of the answer giving Sudan as the most populous area of Bedouins?
+2
Level 29
Feb 8, 2020
Canada has more Inuit than either Greenland or mainland Denmark, but taken together as the entire Danish Realm, they have more than Canada.
+2
Level 75
Oct 22, 2022
According to Wikipedia, Canada's got 70k and Greenland/Denmark has 67k.
+2
Level 78
Jun 22, 2020
Hispanic isn't an ethnicity. It is a vague name for a linguistic group, the same way that I am an anglophone, yet I am certainly not ethnically anglophone.
+6
Level 84
Jun 23, 2020
According to the definition given as a caveat for the quiz, "Hispanic" isn't an ethnicity at all.

Sure, there's a common language, and some of the "Hispanic" countries share some degree of ancestry.

But some of the biggest component of an ethnicity simply aren't there. There are so many ancestral cultures from which current Latin American come and there are so many cultural differences between "Hispanic" countries. Those created different national experiences and also affected the language, with many perceptible regional differences (not quite as the Portuguese divide, but still).

If you want to check further, here's a good starting point.

tl;dr: Saying that "everyone south of the border belongs to the Hispanic ethnicity" is like saying "everyone west of the Caucasus belongs to the European ethnicity", something no one would ever say.

+1
Level 82
Jul 7, 2020
The common characteristic of Hispanic people is that they come from a Spanish-speaking culture. They almost all speak Spanish. Spanish is a language. It's something that connects them. This isn't hard to understand. And both European and European-American are also valid ethnicities. It's amazing how much confusion this one term (ethnicity) generates. I can only assume it has to do with people for so long accepting the totally BS concept of "race" as being immutable fact, and then not understanding the difference between the two. Even after reading a caveat that explains it pretty clearly.
+1
Level 24
Jul 10, 2020
Seems to me that ethnicity is only used in the west. In a diverse country like India, defining what ethnicity even means is very complicated. I mean, the only way I would describe myself is as an Urdu-speaking North Indian muslim. Can someone please help me find out my ethnicity?
+1
Level 82
Jul 11, 2020
Sounds like your ethnicity is Urdu-speaking Northern Indian Muslim.
+1
Level 53
May 9, 2021
But not any common characteristic makes an ethnicity. It has to result in the understanding that you belong to the same group in some way, and I would argue that most people who are usually classified as "hispanic" would never think of themselves that way just because they speak the required language. The only place where people identify as "hispanic" is in the US, so that's the only place where it's an ethnicity.
+1
Level 71
Jul 26, 2022
Ethnicity in India is weird. Most parts of the country have very distinct ethnic identities, but then you get to the northern Hindi belt (Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, etc.) where there's no well-defined term. Even within this area there's a lot of diversity in culture, and the only thing linking people is language. I've found the term "Hindustani" on the internet, but have met no Indian or Pakistani who actually uses it. So yeah, @Quincyz, I think your idea of ethnicity makes sense. I feel like in India, it's based more than anything on language (and religion, although that's more controversial).
+1
Level 82
Oct 21, 2022
Ethnicity everywhere is weird. Tribalism is a blight on humanity.
+1
Level 67
Jun 23, 2020
Arabs are not only from egypt, they are from the middle east. As well as Hispanics, the are from latin america. You should have more options
+5
Level 60
Jun 30, 2020
The quiz asks for the country that has the largest population of each ethnic group. Neither the Middle East nor Latin America are countries.
+1
Level 54
Sep 2, 2022
Egypt is part of the Middle East.
+3
Level 68
Jul 7, 2020
Nice quiz, although the picture confused me a little at first. Took some time for me to get Egypt, as I was expecting the UAE to be an answer at some point due to the picture of the Sheikh
+1
Level 71
Jul 7, 2020
Why is Algeria an accepted answer for Berbers? Wikipedia says that Morocco has 18 to 20 million Berbers while Algeria has 9 to 13 million.
+6
Level 82
Jul 7, 2020
Probably different sources say different things.
+2
Level 61
Jul 8, 2020
I don't think Hispanic is the correct term for Mexico, being hispanic is not an ethnicity, is has to do with hispanic language.
+2
Level 82
Jul 8, 2020
Ethnicity: The common characteristics of a group of people, especially regarding ancestry, culture, language or national experiences.
+2
Level 66
Jul 11, 2020
No kidding - Greenland has more Inuit than all of Canada?
+2
Level 82
Jul 12, 2020
Well there aren't that many Inuit in total anywhere... though the quick search I did just now indicates that there are 65,000 in Canada and only 50,000 in Greenland. However, the same search says that there are over 16,000 in Denmark proper. I had no idea about this but I guess some Inuit from Greenland decided to move to Denmark after it became a Danish territory?

Anyway, if that source is correct, then there are more in Canada than in Greenland, but Denmark + Greenland beats out Canada by just a hair.

+1
Level 73
Sep 25, 2020
Cherokees is the most guessed but I've never heard of it.

But I'm not from US.

+2
Level 73
Mar 10, 2021
The Cherokee are one of the most well-known American Indian groups in the United States. They are one of the most populous groups today by self-identification, and were one of the groups targeted by Andrew Jackson for the Trail of Tears.
+1
Level 82
Mar 1, 2022
My great great grandmother was Cherokee. So am I, technically, to a lesser extent. Though I don't often identify with any ethnicity at all, preferring to think of all people as alike in their shared humanity.
+2
Level 85
Oct 23, 2022
Why would it matter that you're not from the U.S.? I'm not from Morocco but I've heard of the Berbers. I'm not from China but I've heard of the Uyghurs. What makes the U.S. so special that it is the only country you need to be from to know anything about it?
+2
Level 73
Mar 10, 2021
I'm confused about Acadians being listed with Canada. Weren't most of them forcibly expelled to Louisiana?
+3
Level 83
Apr 17, 2021
There are still people in Canada who call themselves Acadian; and the majority of those who went to Louisiana now call their ethnicity 'Cajun', so there's potentially a difference
+1
Level 71
May 27, 2021
If anyone enjoys ethnology (or looking at cool maps), try the quiz I made here! And I'll be making a series out of these, so be sure to check back in the future for more :)
+1
Level 43
Sep 10, 2021
Great quiz but hispanic is not an ethnic group. The word just means people who speak Spanish. So it's true the biggest concentration is in Mexico but it only refers to the language not ethnic background.
+1
Level 62
Jul 26, 2022
Punjabis have been living since so so long, and there was literally no Pakistan till 1947. Punjabis are Indian originated. This is one thing I didn't like about this quiz.
+1
Level 71
Jul 26, 2022
This quiz asks for the country with the most people of this ethnic group, not where the ethnic group originated. There are clearly more Punjabi-speaking people in Pakistan then India by a sizeable margin. Pakistan has about 80 million Punjabi speakers and India only 30 million. But even if you set that aside, what does it mean that Punjabis are Indian-originated? A large part of where Punjabi culture developed is in modern day Pakistan. There was no concept of India and Pakistan as separate before 1947, but there were regional and linguistic identities. If you go centuries in the past, the first Punjabi speakers would have identified as neither Indian nor Pakistani. Punjabis originated in the Punjab, and most of the Punjab is in Pakistan today, hence Pakistan having the largest Punjabi population.
+1
Level 49
Oct 21, 2022
Druze are a religion not an ethnic group
+1
Level 54
Oct 24, 2022
Being interested in languages helps a lot!
+1
Level 72
Nov 22, 2022
Can I see what source you are using to claim that there are more Inuit in Greenland/Denmark than in Canada? Last I read, there's more in Canada, and most census data is from 4-5 years ago.
+1
Level 31
Oct 10, 2023
Arabs do not originate from Egypt.

They originate from the Arabian Peninsula, while Egypt is in North Africa.