The Nicarao are a Nahua people who live in western Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica. They spoke the Nahuat language before it went extinct in both countries.

The Nahuas are a group of the Indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and El Salvador. They are a Mesoamerican ethnicity. The Mexica (Aztecs) are of Nahua ethnicity, as are their historical enemies, the Tlaxcallans (Tlaxcaltecs), and the Toltecs which predated both groups are often thought to have been as well. However, in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity.