Šokci (Serbo-Croatian: Šokci / Шокци, pronounced [ʃǒkt͡si], SHOCK-tsee; singular masculine: Šokac / Шокац, feminine: Šokica / Шокица; Hungarian: Sokácok) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to historical regions of Baranya, Bačka, Slavonia, and Syrmia. These regions today span eastern Croatia, southwestern Hungary, and northern Serbia. They primarily self-identify as a subgroup of Croats and therefore they are not considered a separate ethnicity in Croatia and elsewhere.

Šokci are considered to be a native population of Slavonia and Syrmia in Croatia. The Croatian Bureau of Statistics does not record the Šokci as a separate ethnicity. According to the 2022 census in Serbia, 302 people declared as ethnic Šokci. Outside of Slavonia and Syrmia, they live in the settlements of Bački Monoštor, Sonta, Sombor, Bački Breg in the Serbian Bačka, and Hercegszántó in Hungary.

The term Šokac (masculine), Šokica and Šokčica (feminine), is used for the part of Croatian Ikavian speakers native in Slavonia, Baranja, Bačka and Bosnia. The oldest documents are from 1644–1698, 1702 (population of Đakovo Diocese), katolici, Šokci jali Slovinci ... Šokci rehuć Slovinci katolici. According to the contemporary Antun Kanižlić (1699–1766), the term Šokci was a slang reference to Catholic Slavonians that was used by the Orthodox. In Croatia, particularly in Lika it is opposed to term Vlachs (for Orthodox Serbs), and the Serbs pejoratively use it for the Croats. Denominal šokčiti ("Catholicize"), šoketati ("to speak Ikavian"). Eastern Slavonia and western Syrmia in Croatia is often referred to as Šokadija ("land of the Šokci"), although the term is not geographically limited, it is rather a general moniker for the Šokac "ancestral land".

The ethnonym is of unknown etymological derivation, and there are several hypotheses on the origin: Matija Petar Katančić (1750–1825), the first to theorize on the name, connected the ethnonym with the toponym of Succi or Succus in Thrace, found in the work of Ammianus Marcellinus (fl. 353–378). He also derived it from šljivov sok (plum juice). Ćiro Truhelka derived it from Albanian shoq < Latin sočius, but comparison to Montenegrin surname Šoć makes it dismissive. Others, including Vuk Karadžić, derived it from Italian word sciocco [ˈʃɔkko] ("frenzied, insane"). F. Kluge (1924) derived it from German schock, "a detachment of 60 men", which was the size of historical border patrols on the Sava. V. Skarić (1932) theorized that it was derived from German der Sachse ("Saxon", sh. Sas), for which there's lack of historical evidence. Petar Skok derived it from Turkish-Persian noun šoh ~ suh ("wicked, shameless, unclean") with suffix "-gin, -kin" ("unclean"). In his unfinished etymological dictionary published in 1973, the editors considered most reasonable the Romanian şoacăţ with primary meaning a mouse, and secondary meaning a mockery for Western Europeans (especially Germans) who dressed in urban fashion, from which derives adjective şoacăfesc (German), abstraction įoacăţie. Other assumptions are from Serbo-Croatian word skok or uskok ("to jump, leap, to jump in"), or from folk etymology šaka ("fist"), from the way they make the sign of the cross which is different from Orthodox's sign with three fingers.

The origin of Šokci people is not completely clear. The prevalent opinion of modern scholars, based on etymology, is that they were Catholics who moved from the south, across the Sava from Bosnia, by the end of the Ottoman wars in Europe, as the Ottomans were retreating. The Šokci in Baranja are considered to be descendants of settlers from a mass migration of Croats from an area near Srebrenica, Bosnia into the region after the Ottoman retreat in the 18th century. However, there's also a theory, based on historical sources, that the Šokci need to be considered as autochthonous Catholic population of Slavonia and Syrmia (i.e. both Slavonian and Bosnian Posavina and Syrmia). The feeling of being indigenous rather than a settler is an important characteristic of the population.

The appearance and spreading of the name Šokac is relation with the Ottoman conquest and subsequent migrations of different confessional populations. The earliest known mention of the name Šokac, in the sense of toponym, is from Mačva in the Sanjak of Zvornik (1533). In the 1560s are recorded many anthroponyms deriving from the ethnonym of Šokac (Sokaç, Şokçe, Şokçit) in Srijem. A decade later are also present in Nógrád County and Sanjak of Požega. Since the late 16th century began Franciscans missions (mostly on the initiative of Ragusan priests) in Slavonia, Srijem and Podunavlje (including Bačka).

Bartol Kašić in 1613 recorded that most of Christian Catholics in Sanjak of Syrmia, Sanjak of Segedin, Sanjak of Mohács and else are "sokaci di lingua croata". Four years later, Marin Dobrojević recorded that in that area of the Southern Pannonian Plain there's many Catholics who are "almost all of Slavic language, who are usually called Šokci". A 1615 Ottoman ferman by sultan Ahmed I prohibited Serb Orthodox metropolitans from taking various fees from [Catholic] "Hungarian and Šokci infidels". Another such ferman was issued in 1627 by Murat IV for "Šokci infidels" in the Sanjak of Požega. In 1628 and 1632 there was a dispute between "Dubrovnik Latins", "Šokci" and "Bosniaks" for the use of Catholic chapel in Belgrade, with the Šokci described as "artisans from Posavina and the villages around Belgrade and Požega". In 1633 are recorded in Našice.

They are also mentioned in the documents of the Roman Catholic Church where they requested Jeronim Lučić to become the bishop of Bosnia and Slavonia in 1635, a military court case regarding Serbian Patriarchate of Peć in Bosnia (with "Latin and Šokci dhimmi" of Motike and Dragočaj near Banja Luka, Kotor, Jajce), and in one writing from the time when Eugene of Savoy invaded Ottoman territory down to Sarajevo in 1697.^{[citation needed]}