Romance peoples, also sometimes called Latin peoples or Romanic peoples, are a collection of ethnic groups originating in Europe which speak the Romance languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. Together with Slavic and Germanic peoples, they make up one of the three major ethnolingustic formations of the European continent.
Romance peoples emerged as a result of the expansion of the Roman Empire and accompanying Romanization which included the spread of the Latin language. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity led to the divergence of Latin-speaking populations into separate ethnicities; in other regions such as Britain and North Africa they gradually disappeared.
Today, European Romance ethnicities are chiefly present in the west and south of the continent, with the notable exception of Romance-speaking Romania, Moldova, and scattered minor areas in eastern Europe. In the Americas, there are also substantial, and at least partially European-descended, Romance populations; this is on account of the colonization conducted by Romance-dominated colonial empires, namely those of the Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
List of Romance ethnic groups
This is a comprehensive list of present-day Romance ethnic groups. Many of these identities are complex and often overlap.