Romanians

In the Balkans, the Romanians are a Romance ethnic group and nation that originated in Romania and Moldova. They are united by their common Romanian culture and ancestry, as well as by their use of the Romanian language, which is the most widely spoken Balkan Romance language and descended from the Latin language. A little less than 89 percent of Romanian people classified themselves as belonging to the ethnic Romanian group, according to the country's census from 2011.

Moldovans are being counted as Romanians, according to one interpretation of the census results in the nation, which would imply that the latter constitute a significant portion of the majority in Moldova. Romanians are also an ethnic minority in a number of neighbouring countries in Central and Eastern Europe, mainly in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Ukraine (which includes Moldovans), Serbia, and Bulgaria, where they are particularly numerous.

Today, estimates of the number of Romanian people worldwide range from 24 to 30 million, evidently depending on the definition of the term Romanian, which includes Romanians native to Romania and the Republic of Moldova, as well as native speakers of Romanian, as well as other Balkan Romance-speaking groups considered by the Romanian Academy to be a constituent part of the broader Romanian people, specifically Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians, and other Istro-Romanians.