Macau people ( zh, t=澳門人) are people who originate from or live in

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

. Besides their use to refer to Macau residents, these terms may also be used more loosely to refer to those who may not be residents, but have lived in the city for an extensive period of time or have a strong cultural connection with Macau. Macau people do not comprise one particular ethnicity, and people that live in Macau are independent of Chinese citizenship and residency status. The majority of Macau people are of Chinese descent and are ethnic

Han Chinese The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...

(with most having ancestral roots in the province of

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

). Macau people with Portuguese ancestry are known as the Macanese.

Name

The Chinese terms "" () and "" () refer to the Macau people and the Macanese people, respectively. Attempts by the

Portuguese Macau Macau was under Portuguese Empire, Portuguese rule from the establishment of the first official Portuguese settlement in 1557 until its Handover of Macau, handover to China in 1999. It comprised the Municipality of Macau and the Municipality of ...

government in the mid-1990s to redefine the Portuguese and English term "Macanese" as Macau Permanent Resident (anyone born in Macau regardless of ethnicity, language, religion or nationality) failed. Consequently, the Portuguese and English term "Macanese" refers neither to the indigenous people of Macau ( Tanka people) nor to the

demonym A demonym (; ) or 'gentilic' () is a word that identifies a group of people ( inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place ( hamlet, village, town, city, region, ...

of Macau, but to a distinctive minority culture (1.2% of all Macau population). However, due to the rise of localism among the Macau people (particularly the young people) after the handover of Macau, the term “Macanese” can be used loosely to refer to the people that were born in or live in Macau.

References

Macau Demographics of Macau Ethnic groups in Macau Society of Macau {{macau-stub

Name

See also

References