asian
n. countablen. a person who comes from Asia or whose family is originally from there.
n. a person of Asian descent or a native or inhabitant of the continent of Asia.
Many Asians live in this neighborhood.
The university student union hosted a festival celebrating the diverse cultures of Asians from across the continent.
The census data provides a detailed breakdown of the various ethnic groups that identify as Asian within the metropolitan area.
From Latin āsiānus. By surface analysis, Asia + -an. The modern North American and Australasian usage, referring to East and Southeast Asians collectively, seems to be a shortened form of "Asian American", a term whose origins activists and academics trace back to 1968 and University of California, Berkeley (UCLA) students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, who, inspired by the Black Power Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, founded the "Asian American Political Alliance" as a way to unite Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino American students on campus. It replaced the term "Mongoloid", but still continued the racial grouping of "Mongoloid". The usage in Britain and some of its former colonies such as South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, stems from South Asians historically forming the bulk of immigrants from the continent of Asia to these places. In the rest of the Anglosphere, the word "Asian" is sometimes, albeit less frequently, used to refer to South Asians and Central Asians, but rarely (if ever) to Near Easterners.
When used as a noun to refer to people, it is always capitalized. In British English, it often specifically refers to people from South Asia, while in American English, it more commonly refers to people from East Asia.