Tamil Americans

In the second half of the 20th century, Tamils from India migrated as skilled professionals to the United States, Canada, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The Tamil American population exceeds 1,500,000 individuals.^[2] The Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America functions as an umbrella organization for the growing community.^[3]

Central New Jersey is home to the largest population concentration of Tamil Americans. Sizeable populations of Indian American Tamils have also settled in New York City, and New Jersey and New York house separate Tamil Sangams.^[4] The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and the Research Triangle area on the East Coast as well as Silicon Valley on the West Coast also have Tamil associations.^[5][6]

The New York City and Los Angeles metropolitan areas are home to the largest concentrations of Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan Americans.^[7][8][9] New York City's Staten Island alone is estimated to be home to more than 5,000 Sri Lankan Americans,^[10] one of the largest Sri Lankan populations outside Sri Lanka itself,^[11] and a significant proportion of whom speak Tamil.

The Indian Tamil community in the United States is largely bilingual. Tamil is taught in weekly classes in many Hindu temples and by associations such as the American Tamil Academy in South Brunswick, New Jersey and the Tamil Jersey School in Jersey City.^[12][13]

The language's written form is highly formal and quite distinct from the spoken form. A few universities, such as the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, have graduate programs in the language.^[14]

The Indian Tamil community is majority-wise connected to the Hindu community. In most Hindu temples in the United States, the prayers are in Sanskrit. However, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, the "Tamil Temple" ("Tamil Annai Thirukkoyil") conducts all the prayers in the Tamil language. The Hindu Temple in Houston, Texas, is dedicated to Meenakshi, a manifestation of the goddess Parvathi. There are also active Tamil Christian and Muslim minorities, as well as Jains and Buddhists. Tamil Muslims also hold a Tamil Muslim Community Sangam-Iman America/QMFUSA^[15]

Academia

• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate
• Raj Chetty – Economist, professor of economics at Harvard University renowned for his research on equality of opportunity in the United States
• G. V. Loganathan – Professor and a victim of the Virginia Tech massacre
• C. Mohan – Computer scientist
• Sendhil Mullainathan – Economist, Harvard professor
• Sethuraman Panchanathan – Executive Vice President, Knowledge Enterprise Development and Chief Research Innovation Officer at Arizona State University
• Arogyaswami Paulraj – Wireless researcher, winner of Marconi Prize
• V. S. Ramachandran – Physician, neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego
• Venkatraman Ramakrishnan – Structural biologist and Nobel laureate
• Maya Shankar – Scientist
• Siva Sivananthan – Academic, scientist, businessman and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago
• Subra Suresh - Former President of Carnegie Mellon University
• Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah – Social anthropologist
• S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan – Mathematician
• Sudhir Venkatesh – Sociologist and urban ethnographer

Arts & Entertainment

• Ashok Amritraj – Indian-American film producer
• Aziz Ansari – Actor and stand-up comedian
• Sunkrish Bala – Actor
• Maitreyi Ramakrishnan - Actress
• Jay Chandrasekhar – Actor and director
• Vijay Iyer – Pianist
• Poorna Jagannathan – Actress and producer
• Clarence Jey – Record producer and songwriter
• Mindy Kaling – Actress
• Padma Lakshmi - Author, actress, model, television host
• Mary Anne Mohanraj – Writer
• Sendhil Ramamurthy - Film and television actor
• M. Night Shyamalan – Film director
• S. J. Sindu – Writer
• M.I.A. (rapper) - Rapper, record producer and singer
• Rajan Somasundaram – Music composer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist
• Prashanth Venkataramanujam – Actor, television writer, and producer; head writer and producer of Patriot Act
• Divya Victor – Poet

Business

• Krishna Bharat – Computer scientist; founder of Google News
• Vasant Narasimhan - chief executive officer (CEO) of Novartis
• Indra Nooyi – chairwoman and former CEO of PepsiCo Incorporated
• Sundar Pichai - chief executive officer (CEO) of Google
• C. K. Prahalad – Late world-renowned management guru
• Raghuram Rajan – Economist, winner of Fischer Black Prize
• Ram Shriram – Billionaire venture capitalist
• Raj Rajaratnam – Founder of Galleon Group
• Chandrika Tandon – Businesswoman and artist

News & Journalism

• Sukanya Krishnan – News anchor
• Hari Sreenivasan – Broadcast journalist

Politics & Law

• Kamala Harris – Vice President of the United States
• Maya Harris – Lawyer, public policy advocate, and television commentator
• Raja Krishnamoorthi – U.S. Representative from Illinois
• Pramila Jayapal – U.S. Representative from Washington
• Susheela Jayapal – County commissioner for Mulltnomah County, Oregon
• Nimi McConigley – Former U.S. Representative from Wyoming
• Visvanathan Rudrakumaran - Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam
• Sri Srinivasan – United States circuit judge
• Savita Vaidhyanathan – Politician, former mayor of Cupertino
• Vivek Ramaswamy – Entrepreneur, author and candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries from Ohio

Religion

• Ananda Coomaraswamy – Philosopher & Historian

Sports

• Vijay Amritraj – Indian-American tennis player and commentator

• Fuller, C. J. & Haripriya Narasimhan (2014). Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226152882.
• Narayanan, Vasudha, "Tamils" in David Levinson and Melvin Ember, ed. (1997). American immigrant cultures: builders of a nation. Simon & Schuster Macmillan. pp. 874–79.
• Underwood, Kelsey Clark (1986). Negotiating Tamil Identity in India and the United States. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley.
• Underwood, Kelsey Clark. "Image and Identity: Tamils' Migration to the United States." Papers Kroeber Anthropological Society (1986): 65+