This will definitely be the first web hit for "Armenian-Tongan" now...
July 24, 2015 3:20 PM Subscribe
Can you estimate how many people of Armenian-Tongan descent there currently are in the world?
My sixteen year old second cousin is 100% Armenian on her mom's side and 100% Tongan on the other. We were having a conversation the other day and she said she bet there weren't any other Armenian-Tongans except for her and her brother. I said, no way, Armenian-Tongans are rare, but there were definitely others; my guess was that there are at least 500 of them alive today.
On the one hand, the population of Tonga is only about 100,000, while the population of Armenia is three million. BUT both Tongans and Armenians have large populations living in diaspora - her parents met when they were both living in LA; her mom is a second generation immigrant while her dad is first.
I'm not looking for a definitive answer (though I'd certainly be excited to discover one exists!) I'm just hoping that people with a little more knowledge about population dynamics could take a stab at guessing, or at least give us some things to consider the next time we talk about this, in a "see if you can estimate how many cheeseburgers could fit into Yankee Stadium," sort of way.
Thanks!
My sixteen year old second cousin is 100% Armenian on her mom's side and 100% Tongan on the other. We were having a conversation the other day and she said she bet there weren't any other Armenian-Tongans except for her and her brother. I said, no way, Armenian-Tongans are rare, but there were definitely others; my guess was that there are at least 500 of them alive today.
On the one hand, the population of Tonga is only about 100,000, while the population of Armenia is three million. BUT both Tongans and Armenians have large populations living in diaspora - her parents met when they were both living in LA; her mom is a second generation immigrant while her dad is first.
I'm not looking for a definitive answer (though I'd certainly be excited to discover one exists!) I'm just hoping that people with a little more knowledge about population dynamics could take a stab at guessing, or at least give us some things to consider the next time we talk about this, in a "see if you can estimate how many cheeseburgers could fit into Yankee Stadium," sort of way.
Thanks!
What a fun question.
I don't know how to estimate, but I'd look up immigration facts and try to guesstimate.
For example, after a quick google, I could see there weren't many Tongans living in Watertown MA (a center of Armenian-American settlement in the 20th century) BUT I also saw that 1/4 of all Tongans who come to the U.S. have settled in Utah, and that 2,000 Armenians live in Utah as well. The first Armenian church opened in SLC a couple of years ago.
So... I would assume that in areas with any kind of significantly overlapping immigrant population, the second generation would inevitably create some families, a la Irish/Italians in Brooklyn.
So that's where I might start -- figuring out where the biggest immigration overlaps are, and counting *something* (pretty random) for each of these places.
Let us know if you come up with an answer.
posted by flourpot at 4:19 PM on July 24, 2015
I don't know how to estimate, but I'd look up immigration facts and try to guesstimate.
For example, after a quick google, I could see there weren't many Tongans living in Watertown MA (a center of Armenian-American settlement in the 20th century) BUT I also saw that 1/4 of all Tongans who come to the U.S. have settled in Utah, and that 2,000 Armenians live in Utah as well. The first Armenian church opened in SLC a couple of years ago.
So... I would assume that in areas with any kind of significantly overlapping immigrant population, the second generation would inevitably create some families, a la Irish/Italians in Brooklyn.
So that's where I might start -- figuring out where the biggest immigration overlaps are, and counting *something* (pretty random) for each of these places.
Let us know if you come up with an answer.
posted by flourpot at 4:19 PM on July 24, 2015
They probably aren't even the only ones in California. Apparently the Bay Area has the biggest group on Tongans in the US, and there are a bunch of Armenians in the Central Valley.
There are likely more Tongans and Armenians in California, but I'd expect some Tongans in Britain (Tonga was a British protectorate, but not a colony, which may have made immigration more difficult than from, say, Fiji) and there are at least a few Armenians (my mother's partner is British-Armenian).
posted by hoyland at 4:39 PM on July 24, 2015
There are likely more Tongans and Armenians in California, but I'd expect some Tongans in Britain (Tonga was a British protectorate, but not a colony, which may have made immigration more difficult than from, say, Fiji) and there are at least a few Armenians (my mother's partner is British-Armenian).
posted by hoyland at 4:39 PM on July 24, 2015
The biggest Tongan Diaspora is in New Zealand, so if Armenian Tongans are anywhere, my guess is they'd be in NZ.
posted by girlgenius at 4:47 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by girlgenius at 4:47 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: This is true. My New Zealand mother's family are of Tongan/Armenian-British descent (among other things). There are (right now) 29 members of this family that possess both Armenian and Tongan bloodlines, including me, though the percentages involved by this point are rather smaller than 50:50. So: not only do Armenian-Tongans other than your second cousin and her brother exist, there's one of them at least on this site.
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:22 PM on July 24, 2015 [26 favorites]
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:22 PM on July 24, 2015 [26 favorites]
Best answer: Ok google!
So in the US, there are nearly 60,000 Tongans.
There are also between half a million and 1.5 million American Armenians, out of an overall US population of 318,000,000. The 100% Armenian as opposed to partial Armenian ancestry, is probably way off the low end of that scale, but if we take the high end, then lets say up to .5% in somewhere like LA.
Still, lets use the most wildly inflated numbers we have, and say that as many as 20% of Tongan Americans are going to randomly marry American citizens, so 12,000*Armenian.5%=60 tongan/armenian couples. And if they all have 2.1 tongan armenian babies, that's 126... but they'd already be counted in the census.
Actually, I've got this backwards, so if there's nearly 17,000 Tongans of PARTIAL Tongan descent, so let's say, mixed race, pretend it's only in the past single generation, give them the highest possible change of the other heritage being Armenian, .5% then it's maybe 85 US Tongan Armenians?
Although, it's probably more like a fraction of that, there aren't actually that many Tongans in Los Angeles, there are more in SF, at maybe 13,000, so if the populations aren't in the same areas, it doesn't help.
According to Google, Australia has 25,000 Tongans, and 17,000 Armenians out of a population of 23 million. So, say 20% of Tongans, 5,000, marrying the rounded up .1% of Armenians, so 5 Tongan Armenian couples?
NZ has about 4.5 million people total, of which60,000 Tongans, but... only a few hundred Armenians?
What? Why no Armenians?
Also, according to that census page, there were NO people who checked Armenian (216) and any (non-Maori) Pacific Island nations as their ethnic backgrounds, so Sonny Jim's family are totally failing to provide useful census data. Ha! My guess is that people of mixed european ancestry aren't bothering to put Armenian down (I'm descended from about half of Europe).
We've already shown there are other people descended from Armenians and Tongans, right here on Metafilter (woo!), I guess it's down to whether you want 50/50 Tongan/Armenian or not?
Going by my extremely optimistic (*cough, bullshit!*), back of the envelope calculations, even if they only want 50%/50%, your cousins probably aren't the only Tongan/Armenians, but it is also likely to be far less than 500.
I'd pick... under 100?
(And yeah, just read about a kid of Romanian/Arabic descent who couldn't find a bone marrow match recently. :( Sign up, they'll often match you world-wide if you are a rare type)
posted by Elysum at 6:30 PM on July 24, 2015 [4 favorites]
So in the US, there are nearly 60,000 Tongans.
There are also between half a million and 1.5 million American Armenians, out of an overall US population of 318,000,000. The 100% Armenian as opposed to partial Armenian ancestry, is probably way off the low end of that scale, but if we take the high end, then lets say up to .5% in somewhere like LA.
Still, lets use the most wildly inflated numbers we have, and say that as many as 20% of Tongan Americans are going to randomly marry American citizens, so 12,000*Armenian.5%=60 tongan/armenian couples. And if they all have 2.1 tongan armenian babies, that's 126... but they'd already be counted in the census.
Actually, I've got this backwards, so if there's nearly 17,000 Tongans of PARTIAL Tongan descent, so let's say, mixed race, pretend it's only in the past single generation, give them the highest possible change of the other heritage being Armenian, .5% then it's maybe 85 US Tongan Armenians?
Although, it's probably more like a fraction of that, there aren't actually that many Tongans in Los Angeles, there are more in SF, at maybe 13,000, so if the populations aren't in the same areas, it doesn't help.
According to Google, Australia has 25,000 Tongans, and 17,000 Armenians out of a population of 23 million. So, say 20% of Tongans, 5,000, marrying the rounded up .1% of Armenians, so 5 Tongan Armenian couples?
NZ has about 4.5 million people total, of which60,000 Tongans, but... only a few hundred Armenians?
What? Why no Armenians?
Also, according to that census page, there were NO people who checked Armenian (216) and any (non-Maori) Pacific Island nations as their ethnic backgrounds, so Sonny Jim's family are totally failing to provide useful census data. Ha! My guess is that people of mixed european ancestry aren't bothering to put Armenian down (I'm descended from about half of Europe).
We've already shown there are other people descended from Armenians and Tongans, right here on Metafilter (woo!), I guess it's down to whether you want 50/50 Tongan/Armenian or not?
Going by my extremely optimistic (*cough, bullshit!*), back of the envelope calculations, even if they only want 50%/50%, your cousins probably aren't the only Tongan/Armenians, but it is also likely to be far less than 500.
I'd pick... under 100?
(And yeah, just read about a kid of Romanian/Arabic descent who couldn't find a bone marrow match recently. :( Sign up, they'll often match you world-wide if you are a rare type)
posted by Elysum at 6:30 PM on July 24, 2015 [4 favorites]
Best answer:
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:49 AM on July 25, 2015
Also, according to that census page, there were NO people who checked Armenian (216) and any (non-Maori) Pacific Island nations as their ethnic backgrounds, so Sonny Jim's family are totally failing to provide useful census data. Ha! My guess is that people of mixed european ancestry aren't bothering to put Armenian down (I'm descended from about half of Europe).Yeah, "European" is a convenient catch all; it just seems perverse to itemize your European heritage when that side of your family's been out of Europe for 160+ years, and I've never done it. I wasn't in NZ for the 2013 census, but I normally tick the NZ European/Pakeha box, plus those for the various other Polynesian ethnicities I belong to. Pretty much all of the Armenians on the 2013 NZ census I'm guessing are immigrants from the former Soviet Armenia, who started arriving in the 1990s. I very much doubt any of the hundreds of members of my wider Armenian-British family in NZ would identify as Armenian for census purposes (even those who still retain the original Armenian surname), because it's just too distant historically.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:49 AM on July 25, 2015
Response by poster: Hi everybody! Thanks so much for these answers! I saw my cousin yesterday and she was very excited to hear all this news, although I think slightly weirded out that I'd done so much work to find out this answer for her. She was super psyched to hear that I'd heard from another Tongan-Armenian, though, and she exclaimed right away "I want to talk to them!" so, sonnyjim, in the hopes that you have some young relatives who'd like an American-Tongan-Armenian penpal (or at least, Facebook friend) - a MeMail is on the way. :) Thanks again!
posted by pretentious illiterate at 11:28 AM on July 27, 2015
posted by pretentious illiterate at 11:28 AM on July 27, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Encourage your family (and everyone you know) to get tested as potential donors for bone marrow transplants. It's non-invasive (cheek swab), free and easy.
Why does this matter to you? Because like unusual blood types, unusual DNA/ethnicity combinations are very hard to find and can be extremely valuable.
Years and years ago, I was a sportswriter, and this was one of the saddest stories I happened to cover:
In September 1995, (Rod) Carew's youngest daughter from his first marriage, Michelle, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a relatively rare leukemia for a young person. Doctors wanted to perform a bone marrow transplant, but Michelle's rare ethnic heritage complicated the search for a matching donor; her father was black with West Indian and Panamanian roots and her mother was of Russian-Jewish ancestry. Carew pleaded for those of similar ethnic background to come forward. When no matching bone marrow donor was found, an umbilical cord blood transplant was performed in March 1996. Michelle died on April 17, 1996 at the age of 18. A statue of her has been installed in Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:32 PM on July 24, 2015 [9 favorites]