Ukrainian Americans

A **Ukrainian American** is a citizen of the United States with ancestors from Ukraine. There have been Ukrainian people living in North America since the early 1600s. There are about one million Ukrainian Americans and many live in the North East and the West of the United States, in states like New York, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington.

## Numbers
The number of Ukrainians in the United States is 354,832.  There are 408,504 people who identify as Ukrainian.  Many of them were born in the United States. Only about 20% are actual immigrants. About a third of people of Ukrainian origin speak Ukrainian. Almost 143 thousand (15%) use it in everyday life. 

States with the largest number of people using the Ukrainian language in the family (2006—2008):

* New York — 22,462
* California — 17,350
* Washington, DC — 17,175
* Illinois — 12,043
* Pennsylvania — 10,188
* New Jersey — 10,078
* Ohio — 9,112
* Oregon — 5,261
* Florida — 5 141
* Michigan — 4,523
* Connecticut — 3,190
* Massachusetts — 2,963
* Georgia — 2,464
* North Carolina — 1 996
* Wisconsin — 1,771
* Maryland — 1,683
* Minnesota — 1,674
* South Carolina — 1,126
* Texas — 1,157
* Virginia — 1,056
* Colorado — 1,046
* Tennessee — 1,046

## Famous Ukrainian Americans 
* Igor Sikorsky (d. 1972), designer of helicopters and airplanes
* Joe Schuster (d. 1992), one of the authors of comics about Superman
*Anna Politkovskaya (d. 2006), journalist, writer.
*Nicholas Oresko (d. 2013), war hero
* Richard Levins (d. 2016), scientist (ecologist)
* Steve Ditko (d. 2018) comic book writer
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg (d. 2020) – United States Supreme Court Justice
* Jackie Stallone (d. 2020), astrologer
* Sergiy Vilkomir (d. 2020), computer scientist
* Igor Vovkovinskiy (d. 2021), once the tallest living American
* Dustin Hoffman (b. 1937), actor
*Bob Dylan (b. 1941) singer-songwriter, poet
*Barbra Streisand (b. 1942), singer
* George Dzundza (b. 1945), actor
* Semion Mogilevich (b. 1946) – alleged criminal
* Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) movie director, producer, screenwriter
* Sylvester Stallone (b. 1946) actor, director, screenwriter, producer
*Steven Tyler (b. 1948), singer in Aerosmith, songwriter
* David Copperfield (b. 1956), illusionist/magician
*Michael Bolton (b. 1953), singer and songwriter
* N.Gregory Mankiw (b. 1958), economist
* David Duchovny (b. 1960), movie actor
*Wayne Gretzky (b. 1961), US-Canadian ice hockey player  
* Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962), novelist, journalist
*Michael Smerconish (b. 1962), CNN host
* Ulana Suprun (b. 1963), former acting Ukrainian Minister of Healthcare 
*Lenny Kravitz (b. 1964), singer, instrumentalist
* Milla Jovovich (b. 1975), movie actress
* Jan Koum (1976), founder of WhatsApp
* Vladimir Kozlov (b. 1979), wrestler
* Olga Kurylenko (b. 1979), French film actress
* Natalie Wood (d. 1981) – actress
* Mila Kunis (b. 1983), movie actress
* Kendra Wilkinson (b. 1985), TV personality
* Chris Zylka (b. 1985), actor
* Traci Lords – actress born Nora Kuzma; her father was of Ukrainian ancestry
* Vera Farmiga – actress
* Taissa Farmiga – actress
* Erika Eleniak – actress, father is of Ukrainian descent
* Matt Czuchry – actor
* Walter Matthau – actor
* Leonard Nimoy – actor
* Jack Palance – actor
*Leonard Bernstein – composer and conductor who was one of Hollywoods 10 blacklisted, of Jewish descent
*Jackie Evancho – classical crossover singer
*Bill Evans – jazz musician and composer
*G-Eazy – songwriter-rapper
*Stan Getz - jazz saxophonist and band leader, popularizer of cool and bossa nova sub-genres
*Vladimir Horowitz, pianist
*Melanie Safka – folk singer, performed at Woodstock
*Nicole Scherzinger – singer, songwriter and television music competition judge; of Ukrainian descent on her mother's side
*Eliot Engel - New York Congressman
*Gary Johnson – former Governor of New Mexico
*Chuck Schumer - senior US senator from New York
*Victoria Spartz – Indiana State Senator 
*Paul Wellstone – former US Senator from Minnesota
* Theodosius Dobzhansky – geneticist and evolutionary biologist
* Milton Friedman – economist
* George Gamow – astrophysicist; first suggested hydrogen fusion as source of solar energy
* Simon Ramo – physicist; Russian–Ukrainian
* Albert Bandura, Canadian-American psychologist

## Related pages
*List of people with Ukrainian ancestry

## References