Just under 100,000 people across England and Wales identified as Cornish or Cornish and British in Census 2021.

Within Cornwall, today’s national identity data shows that 14.0% of the population (80,000 people) reported a Cornish only identity, up from 9.9% (53,000) in 2011.

A further 1.6% (9,000) selected Cornish in combination with one or more UK identities, up from 1.0% (5,000) in 2011.

Census 2021 allowed people to identify as Cornish via a search-as-you-type functionality, making it easier for people to self-define on the online questionnaire.

They could also write in Cornish on the paper form.

“Today’s data gives the first insights into how many people identify as Cornish,” Office for National Statistics deputy director Jon Wroth-Smith said.

“We can see, in Cornwall, the number of people who chose to describe their national identity as ‘Cornish only’ increased by just under 30,000.

“There’s even more data to follow. Next year we will produce an analytical report on the population who identify as Cornish, and how their health, housing, work and education differs from those who do not identify as Cornish.”

In total, 99,754 people across England and Wales identified as Cornish only or Cornish with one or more other UK identities in Census 2021.

Of the 13,045 people outside Cornwall identifying as Cornish only, 1,290 live in Devon, with a large concentration in Plymouth.

There are also pockets of people identifying as Cornish in Bristol, while in London 799 people said they were Cornish.

The ONS has also released data on ethnic group, language and religion.

Nearly 87% of people living in Cornwall identified their ethnic group as White (English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British).

This is above the England and Wales average of 74.4%.

However, 38,406 people (6.7) reported their ethnic group as White Cornish, while a further 4,372 people put Cornish in the Other ethnic group: Any other ethnic group category.

These were the second and third highest ethnic group responses in Cornwall.

In Cornwall, 98.2% of people said their main language was English. This compares with 91.1% nationally. Some 471 people said their main language was Cornish.

Meanwhile, 46.2% of people reported no religion in Cornwall, while 45.4% said they were Christian. Interestingly, 1,769 people said they were Pagan, the third most commonly described religion in Cornwall.

Meanwhie, fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian for the first time.

The proportion of people who said they were Christian was 46.2%, down from 59.3% in the last census in 2011.

In contrast, the number who said they had no religion increased to 37.2% of the population, up from a quarter.

Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% last year.

The census is carried out every 10 years by the ONS.

People were asked the broad question what their religion was rather than being asked more specifically about their beliefs or religious practices, in the voluntary question included in the census since 2001.

Ticking “no religion” does not mean having no beliefs, says Prof Linda Woodhead, from King’s College London.

“Some will be atheist, a lot will be agnostic – they just say, ‘I don’t really know’ – and some will be spiritual and be doing spiritual things,” she said.

Separately, when people were asked about their ethnic group, 81.7% of residents in England and Wales identified as White, down from 86.0% a decade earlier, according to the census.

And 74.4% of total population of England and Wales identified as White as well as English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British.

The next most common ethnic group was Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh accounting for 9.3% of the overall population – 5.5 million people, up from 4.2-million.

The number of people identifying as Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African was 2.5% of population, up from 1.8%, taking the figure from 990,000 to 1.5 million.

In terms of national identity among those who described it as not being the UK, the most common response was Polish, followed by Romanian.