What Do You Call Someone From Bangladesh? (Explained!)

People from Bangladesh are called Bangladeshi. The term Bengali encompasses a much wider range of an ethnolinguistic group, and you can find Bengalis in India and Pakistan as well as Bangladesh. Bangladesh is centered on the Bengal region, but Bengal is greater than just Bangladesh. The term is Bangladeshi, though any given individual may be Bengali.

National identity can always be a complex question, but the simplest answer to the question of what you would call a citizen of Bangladesh is just Bangladeshi.

The broader question about ethnic and cultural identity is where things get more complicated, so let’s dive in and try to tackle this question in more detail.

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What do you call people from Bangladesh?

Someone from Bangladesh, to give you the simple answer, is called Bangladeshi.

This is the broadest term that you can use for any person who, in one way or another, is a citizen of Bangladesh.

There are essentially two ways we might define someone’s national identity: their legal citizenship, and their ethnic background. Anyone born into or naturalized into Bangladeshi society is going to be called Bangladeshi in the sense that that is where their legal citizenship lies.

Of course, the question is a lot more complex than this.

Ethnically, Bangladeshis are around 98% Bengali.

But there are no fewer than 50 ethnic groups recognized by the Bangladeshi government.

All of these people, in a legal sense, are Bangladeshi, and no doubt many of them think of themselves in this way ethnically.

Bengal is a wider region in the Indian subcontinent, covering parts of Bangladesh and the Indian region of West Bengal.

The vast majority of Bangladesh’s population is made up of Bengali Muslims.

This represents around 150 million people, or about 91% of the total population of the country.

Bengalis are considered an indigenous group in Bangladesh, but there are also a number of other minority indigenous groups.

The Chakma comprise the largest group after Bengalis, a majority of whom are Buddhist.

There are close to half a million Chakma living in Bangladesh.

There are a number of other indigenous groups such as the Marma people, the Mro, Tanchangya and the Bawm people.

Members of these groups that live in Bangladesh have legal citizenship in Bangladesh, but they may prefer to think of themselves in terms of their more localized ethnic identity, rather than as Bangladeshi.

You can see, then, that this kind of question is always somewhat complicated, especially in an ethnic melting pot like Bangladesh.

Where does the name itself come from?

Where does the name “Bangladesh” come from?

The term Bangladesh is not very old, having first appeared in the early 20^th Century, as best we can tell.

Importantly, the country we know today as Bangladesh did not exist until 1971 when it gained independence from Pakistan.

The term literally means “Bengali country,” with desh being derived from the Sanskrit word desha meaning country or land.

Bangladesh itself is a more recent invention, then, but the term Banga has been in use since the first millennium BCE.

Bengal was a recognized region for millennia, and so the name Bangladesh is simply derived from taking the region and adding “land” or “country” on to it in the modern sense of a country.

Where do Bangladeshis live?

To further complicate the question, it’s also important to remember that Bangladeshis do not only live in Bangladesh.

The vast majority do, of course, but understanding the extent of Bangladeshi diaspora is an important piece of the overall picture.

There are around 200 million Bangladeshis worldwide, around 166 million of which live in Bangladesh.

The total Bangladeshi diaspora, though, comprises roughly 13 million people.

As you can see, there is some margin for error in the estimations.

After Bangladesh, the largest group of Bangladeshis can be found in Saudi Arabia, where there are around 2.5 million Bangladeshis living.

There are over a million in the UAE, and a further million in Malaysia—the United Kingdom and United States are also home to close to a million Bangladeshis.

Any one of these individuals may feel themselves to be ethnically Bengali or they may feel more kin with their new home nation.

You will only ever know by asking the individual, but the point is that ethnic identity is rarely clear cut.

Bangladeshis don’t just live in Bangladesh.

Is it Bangladeshi or Bengali?

Bangladeshi means someone who comes from Bangladesh—Bengali means someone who is ethnically Bengali, which could mean they come from Bangladesh or the Bengal region of India.

Though the vast majority of Bangladeshi people are Bengali, by no means all of them are.

So, you cannot simply use the terms interchangeably—they mean two distinct things.

If we are talking purely about the country of Bangladesh, then you would say they are Bangladeshi.

Again, they may and most likely are also Bengali, but this is a different descriptor to their national identity.

National and ethnic identity do not always have to be precisely aligned, and they are certainly not always in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, to put it mildly, is huge.

The Bengal region encompasses a wider area, and though there are certainly shared elements of ethnicity and culture between Bangladesh and other parts of the Bengal region, the two remain distinct identifiers.

People from Bangladesh, to give you the simple answer one more time, are called Bangladeshi, though there are naturally many other ethnic groups represented in the country’s population.

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Founder - @PollyWebster

Polly Webster is the founder of Foreign Lingo and a seasoned traveler with a decade of exploration under her belt.

Over the past 10 years, she has journeyed to numerous countries around the globe, immersing herself in diverse cultures, traditions, and languages.

Drawing from her rich experiences, Polly now writes insightful articles about travel, languages, traditions, and cultures, sharing her unique perspectives and invaluable tips with her readers.

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