Tangier is a town in Accomack County, Virginia, United States, on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. The population was 604 at the 2000 census. The tiny island community has attracted the attention of linguists because its people speak a unique English Restoration era dialect of American English, hypothesized to be nearly unchanged since the days of its first occupation by English colonists. Each of the original surnames and several of the present surnames on the island originated in the United Kingdom, predominantly from Scotland.