Lithuanians

Lithuanians () are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two million make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.

==Theories on the origin of Lithuanians== thumb|Lithuanian tribes in antiquity until the beginning of the 13th century by Adolfas Šapoka Theories about the origin of Lithuanians (ethnogenesis) have been recorded since the 15th century, when, like many European nations, Lithuanian nobles sought to emphasize a noble and ancient descent. The most influential was the Roman (Palemon) theory, which claimed Lithuanians originated from Roman patricians led by a nobleman named Palemon who fled Rome, a legend repeated in 16th–17th century chronicles to strengthen noble authority and political legitimacy. From the 16th century, other versions appeared, linking Lithuanians to the Goths, Heruli, Greeks or Hittites, reflecting Western European historiographical traditions that tied nations to ancient peoples known from classical sources, though these accounts were more ideological than historical. Similar legendary origin theories were common across Europe in the Middle Ages, as noble families and ruling dynasties sought to link themselves with the prestige of antiquity. The Palemon legend in particular was especially influential in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it appeared in chronicles and genealogical works to bolster the political autonomy of the Lithuanian nobility. In the 18th century, Enlightenment scholarship began to critically question such legends, and by the late 19th century research into Lithuanian origins was based on linguistics, archaeology, onomastics, and Baltic studies, which clarified the position of Lithuanian among Indo-European languages and the settlement patterns of Baltic tribes. Modern scholarship situates the Lithuanian language within the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family, notable for preserving many archaic features. It holds that Lithuanians formed from eastern Baltic tribes, with the Lithuanian language and culture developing from the first centuries CE through the early Middle Ages, and the Lithuanian ethnos consolidating between the 9th and 13th centuries, culminating in the emergence of a unified Lithuanian identity and statehood.