Indian-Americans have won the Scripps National Spelling Bee 12 of the last 16 years (and eight in a row), with the two most recent competitions crowning four co-champions of South Asian descent.
Vanya Shivashankar, 13, and Gokul Venkatachalam, 14, both won the 2015 contest on Thursday night, continuing the trend that has manifested itself over the last decade and a half. They spelled the words "scherenschnitte" and "nunatak," respectively, to win.
Below are the previous winners, plus their winning words:
1999: Nupura Lala, logorrhea
2000: George Abraham Thampy, demarche
2002: Pratyush Buddiga, prospicience
2003: Sai R. Gunturi, pococurante
2005: Anurag Kashyap, appoggiatura
2008: Sameera Mishra, guerdon
2009: Kavya Shivashankar, Laodicean
2010: Anamika Veeramani, stromuhr
2011: Sukanya Roy, cymotrichous
2012: Snigdha Nandipati, guetapens
2013: Arvind Mahankali, knaidel
2014: Aunsun Sujoe, feuilleton; Sriram Hathwar, stichomythia
(All information obtained from Scripps National Spelling Bee website.)
Bonus: The 2009 and 2015 winners are sisters.
