The term Latins has been used throughout history to refer to various peoples, ethnicities and religious groups using Latin or the Latin-derived Romance languages, as part of the legacy of the Roman Empire. In the Ancient World, it referred to the people of ancient Latium, including the Romans. Following the spread of Christianity, it came to indicate the Catholics of the Latin Church, especially those following Western liturgical rites. Currently, it defines the peoples using the Romance languages in Europe and the Americas.[1]
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.[2] 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.[3]
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.
In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek-Orthodox world, Latins was a synonym for all people who followed the Roman Catholicism[4] of Western Christianity,[5] regardless of ethnicity.[6] 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.[7]
Latin was generally a negative characterization, especially after the 1054 schism.[4] 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.").[8]
The various Romance-speaking groups of the present day, usually those of Latin Europe and Latin America, have sometimes been collectively referred to as "Latin peoples".[9][10] Other synonymous terms are "Romance peoples"[11] or "Romanic peoples".[12] Likewise, the Romance languages themselves are sometimes referred to as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages.[13][14] The designation also specifically survived in the names of two Romance-speaking groups: the Ladin people of northern Italy and the Ladino people of Central America.
The term Latin Europe is sometimes used in reference to European nations and regions inhabited by Romance-speaking people.[15][16][17]
Latin America is the region of the Americas that was colonized by Latin Europeans, and came to be called so in the 19th century.[18] 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,[19] who are themselves sometimes just called "Latin".[20][21][22][23]
Many of the present-day independent states of Africa have main official languages that are Romance, as a result of colonization by Romance-speaking European nations in the 19th century.[24] Barthélémy Boganda, a politician of the Central African Republic, proposed a "United States of Latin Africa" in 1957 that would serve as a federation of the Romance-speaking countries in the region of Central Africa, which never came into fruition. African-American author Richard Wright, who criticized the proposal, said that "Latin Africa" correlated with "Catholic Africa" and would create an unnecessary religious division against the English-speaking "Protestant Africa".[25]