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Samoans
From left to right: Mufi Hannemann, Malietoa Tanumafili II and Tauese Sunia
Total population
c. 465,000
Regions with significant populations
Samoa, American Samoa, New Zealand, Australia and the United States
Language(s)
Samoan
Religion(s)
Protestantism, other
Related ethnic groups
Māori, Fijians, other Polynesian peoples

Samoans are a Polynesian ethnic group living in the Samoan Islands. On their home islands they are divided between an independent state — Samoa (also informally known as Western Samoa, its former official name) — and a territory of the United States, American Samoa.

The majority of ethnic Samoans (c. 280,000 or 60 per cent) now reside in the Samoan diaspora, primarily in New Zealand (115,017), the United States (133,281) and Australia (28,091). In this diaspora, around 61 percent of ethnic Samoans can still speak the Samoan language.