Romanians are a Romance-speaking ethnic group and nation native to Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Sharing a common culture and ancestry, they speak the Romanian language and live primarily in Romania and Moldova. The 2021 Romanian census found that 89.3% of Romania's citizens identified themselves as ethnic Romanians.
Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary, according to the 1890 census
Neacșu's letter to Johannes Benkner (former Transylvanian Saxon mayor of Kronstadt/Brașov) is the oldest document written in Romanian discovered to date.
Romanian revolutionaries of 1848 waving the tricolor flag
Romanians of Zakarpattia Oblast in Carpathian Ruthenia, western Ukraine, performing a traditional dance.
Romanian is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania, and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language.
Neacșu's letter is the oldest surviving document written in Old Romanian that can be precisely dated
Lithograph of a group portrait by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, showing Paris-based revolutionaries during the early 1840s. From left: Rosenthal (wearing a Phrygian cap), C. A. Rosetti, anonymous Wallachian
Ion Creangă
Hurmuzaki Psalter, written around 1500
