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. ^[1]