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They are descendants of the Roman colonists or of the Romanized Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian local population (see Origin of Romanians for more about the dispute about the origin).

The origin of the name is Germanic: the same origin led to the words "Welsh" and "Walloons" in other parts of Europe. Slavic peoples initially used the name Vlachs when referring to Romanic peoples in general. Later on, the meaning got narrower or just different. For example Italy in Polish is called Wlochy. In English, Wallachia is the name given to a part of their original territory. The term was originally an exonym , as the Vlachs used various words derived from romanus (români, rumâni, rumâri, aromâni, arumâni etc).

Map of BalkansThe Balkans is the historic and geographic name used to describe southeastern Europe (see the Definitions and boundaries section below). The region has a combined area of 550,000 km² and a population of around 53 million. The countries of Albania, Bosnia with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted

RomaniansThe Romanians are the majority inhabitants of Romania and of Moldova (also called "moldovans"), while other groups of inhabitants lived or still live in Romania. In English they are usually called Romanians, except in some historical texts, where they are (also known as Daco-Romanians, speaking Romanian languageRomanian Romana is an Eastern Romance language, spoken by about 28 million people, most of them in Romania, Moldova (where it is the official language) and neighbouring countries. Romanian romana Spoken Romania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Serbia, H) are living in

• RomaniaRomania (formerly spelled Rumania or Roumania is a country in southeastern Europe. Romania is bordered by Ukraine and Moldova in the northeast, Hungary and Serbia in the west and Bulgaria to the south. Romania also has a small sea coast on the Black Sea. - 20.5 millions
• MoldovaThis article refers to the Republic of Moldova. For information about the adjacent Romanian region, see Moldavia . For other meanings see Moldova (disambiguation The Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in eastern Europe, located between Romania to - 2.8 millions

and as a minority in

• UkraineUkraine Ukrayina in Ukrainian; in Russian) is a republic in eastern Europe which borders the Black Sea to the south, the Russian Federation to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west and Romania and Moldova to the west and - 500,000; in Southern BessarabiaBessarabia is a former region of Eastern Europe comprising most of current-day Moldova and districts of Ukraine. It is bounded by the Dniestr river to the north and east, the Prut to the west and the lower Danube river and the Black Sea to the south. and Northern BukovinaBukovina Bucovina in Romanian; Bukovyna in Ukrainian; Buchenland in German; Bukowina in Polish), on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains, is a historical province now split between Romania and Ukraine. Map of Romania with Bukovina highlighted (the borde
• Serbia and Montenegro - 75,000 (30,000 in Vojvodina)
• Hungary - 70,000 (0.7% of the total population)
• Slovakia - 9,000

Aromanians (speaking Macedoromanian language) are living as a minority in:

• Northern Greece mainly in the Pindus Mountains

Note: the Greek government does not recognise any ethnic divisions, so there are no exact statistics. See Demographics of Greece.

• Republic of Macedonia - 9,695 (0.5% of the total population)
• Albania - between 10,000 and 40,000
• Romania - about 50,000; mostly in Dobruja
• Bulgaria

Megleno-Romanians (speaking Megleno-Romanian language) are living in Northern Greece.

Istro-Romanians (speaking Istro-Romanian language) are living in Croatia, with a population of 1,200.