Latins

The term "Latins" is a linguistic concept referring to an ancient Italic people whose language was Latin, native to the region of Latium in central Italy, and by extension to the native speakers of modern languages descended from Latin. Among the ancient Latins were the Romans, who united the whole Italian peninsula and built an empire covering the rest of the Mediterranean region. Eventually the Latin language replaced the indigenous languages in the western part of the Roman empire, known as the Latin West as opposed to the Greek East. This distinction continued after the fall of the western Roman empire, with those praying in Latin (as part of the Catholic Church) known as "Latins" and those praying in Greek (as part of the Orthodox Church) known as "Greeks". During the Middle Ages, vulgar Latin evolved into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and several other Romance (or Latin) languages. The concept of "Latin Europe" refers to the Romance-speaking countries of Europe, while the more widely used "Latin America" commonly refers to the Romance-speaking countries of the Americas. "Latin peoples" refers to both Latin Europeans and Latin Americans.

Antiquity


The Latins were an ancient Italic people of the Latium region in central Italy (Latium Vetus, "Old Latium"), in the 1st millennium BC. Although they lived in independent city-states, they spoke a common language (Latin), held common religious beliefs, and extended common rights of residence and trade to one another. Collectively, these Latin states were known as the Latin League.

A rupture between Rome, one of the Latin states, and the rest of the Latin League emerged as a result of the former's territorial ambitions. The Latin League fought against Rome in the Latin War (340-338 BC), which ended in a Roman victory. Consequently, some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, and their inhabitants were given full Roman citizenship. Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges.

The Roman Empire would go on to dominate the Mediterranean region for the next several centuries, spreading the Latin language and Roman culture. The Latin-speaking Western Roman Empire ended in AD 476, while the Greek-speaking eastern half survived on until 1453.

Middle Ages
In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek-Orthodox world, Latins was a synonym for all people who followed the Roman Catholicism of Western Christianity, regardless of ethnicity. The term was related to the predominance of the Latin Church, which is the largest autonomous particular church within the broader Catholic Church, and took its name from its origins in the Latin-speaking world which had Rome as its center.

Latin was generally a negative characterization, especially after the 1054 schism. The term is still used by the Orthodox church communities, but only in a theological context. Nonetheless, it did not share this negative connotation in the West, where many self-identified with the term, such as Petrarch, when he states "Sumus enim non greci, non barbari, sed itali et latini." ("We are not Greeks or barbarians; we are Italians and Latins.").

Latin peoples
The various Romance-speaking groups, usually those of Latin Europe and Latin America, have sometimes been collectively referred to as "Latin peoples". Other synonymous terms are "Romance peoples" or "Romanic peoples". The designation has also specifically survived in the names of two Romance-speaking groups: the Ladin people (of northern Italy) and the Ladino people (of Central America).

Likewise, the Romance languages themselves are sometimes referred to as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages.

The term Latin Europe is sometimes used in reference to European nations and regions inhabited by Romance-speaking people.

Latin America is the region of the Americas that was colonized by Latin Europeans, and came to be called so in the 19th century. The term is usually used to refer to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, namely Hispanic America and Brazil. Latin Americans are called latinoamericanos and latino-americanos in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively; the shortening of this term resulted in the name for Latinos, who are themselves sometimes just called "Latin".