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Languages of Odisha · Census 2011

Many voices.
A closer look at home.

A language is lived in conversation, song and memory. These numbers offer one way to explore where people reported their mother tongue—and to follow the stories behind it.

Meet the languages → · Start with a district →

Choose a voice. Explore its districts.

Census language group ODIA. Includes the individual Odia, Sambalpuri, Desia and other entries listed beneath it.

ODIA · language group3,47,12,1701,75,92,182 male · 1,71,19,988 female
Share of Odisha’s population · all areas82.70%Out of 4,19,74,218 people, Census 2011

30 districts · ordered by number of people

“Share of district” asks how common the selected entry was within that district. “Share of Odisha’s entry” asks how much of its statewide population lived there. District names follow the source’s 2011 labels.

ODIA language group · district population, Census 2011 · all areas
DistrictPeopleShare of districtShare of Odisha’s entry
Ganjam32,21,73291.29%9.28%
Cuttack23,97,70591.36%6.91%
Khordha20,74,39192.13%5.98%
Baleshwar20,49,07488.30%5.90%
Jajapur16,49,45790.27%4.75%
Balangir16,20,62798.28%4.67%
Puri16,15,24995.09%4.65%
Kalahandi15,01,55695.22%4.33%
Kendujhar14,21,28578.88%4.09%
Bargarh13,86,47893.60%3.99%
Mayurbhanj13,69,02954.33%3.94%
Bhadrak13,64,09690.56%3.93%
Kendrapara13,17,43391.47%3.80%
Anugul12,16,55595.50%3.50%
Dhenkanal11,47,42896.20%3.31%
Koraput10,78,79878.19%3.11%
Jagatsinghapur10,49,69192.32%3.02%
Nabarangapur9,65,63379.09%2.78%
Sundargarh9,62,14645.96%2.77%
Nayagarh9,54,04699.09%2.75%
Sambalpur8,20,35778.80%2.36%
Subarnapur6,04,08399.00%1.74%
Nuapada4,98,97181.75%1.44%
Baudh4,38,11699.31%1.26%
Rayagada4,14,25842.80%1.19%
Jharsuguda4,05,88070.04%1.17%
Kandhamal3,89,65253.15%1.12%
Debagarh2,81,08989.94%0.81%
Malkangiri2,57,49841.99%0.74%
Gajapati2,39,85741.51%0.69%

“Not separately listed” means this entry has no row for that district in this table. It does not establish an absence of speakers today.

CSV includes male/female counts, denominators and original row numbers. All data are public Census aggregates.

Languages travel together

More than one language

Understand the statewide picture →

88,50,241 people in the ODIA group reported at least one additional language. Of these, 43,28,097 reported two additional languages. Statewide, all areas, Census 2011.

C-17 reports additional languages for the statewide Census language group, across rural and urban areas combined. People reporting three languages are included among those reporting at least two. These are not district counts or separate counts for each mother-tongue entry.

Follow the numbers into a story

Read a language introduction, find a publication, or help us understand the names and places behind the table.

Odia →Santali →Kui →Kuvi →Saora / Sora →Ho →Juang →Koya →Sambalpuri →Desia →

Suggest a correction or source

Sources, definitions & how we checked the numbers

Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Original workbooks downloaded 1 October 2026 and preserved unchanged in the Utkal knowledge bundle.

We checked male/female and rural/urban sums for all 21,188 C-16 data rows, reconciled district counts with the state for each entry, checked group totals against their listed children, and matched all 90 C-17 group populations to C-16. The residual OTHERS group is included in totals. Arithmetic checks do not independently establish the accuracy of self-reported language identities.

This first atlas displays state and district data. Subdistrict rows remain in the original C-16 workbook. There is no current population estimate, geographic boundary map, migration inference or language-vitality ranking here. Native-speaker and specialist naming review remains open.

Research and implementation prepared with AI assistance under Ahimanikya Satapathy, Founder & Editor-in-Chief.