Estonians or Estonian people (Estonian: eestlased) are a Finnic ethnic group native to the Baltic Sea region in Northern Europe, primarily their nation state of Estonia.

Estonians primarily speak the Estonian language, a language closely related to other Finnic languages, e.g. Finnish, Karelian and Livonian. The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages, which also includes e.g. the Sami languages. These languages are markedly different from most other native languages spoken in Europe, most of which have been assigned to the Indo-European family of languages. Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros, Setos), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in the 20th century.

There are approximately 1 million ethnic Estonians worldwide, with the vast majority of them residing in their native Estonia. Estonian diaspora communities formed primarily in Finland, the United States, Sweden, Canada, and the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

Estonia was first inhabited about 13,000–11,000 years ago, when the Baltic Ice Lake melted. Living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put Estonians' ancestors among Europe's oldest permanent inhabitants. On the other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE). It has also been argued that Western Uralic tribes reached Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of the Sámi peoples, and arrived in the Baltic region later in the Bronze Age or the transition to the Iron Age at the latest. This lead into the formation of Baltic Finnic peoples, who would later become such groups as Estonians and Finns.

The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas, literally meaning "land people" or "country folk". It was used until the mid-19th century, when it was gradually replaced by Eesti rahvas "Estonian people" during the Estonian national awakening. Eesti, the modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to have similar origins to Aesti, the name used by the Germanic peoples for the neighbouring people living northeast of the mouth of the Vistula. The Roman historian Tacitus in 98 CE was the first to mention the "Aesti" in writing. In Old Norse, the land south of the Gulf of Finland was called Eistland and the people eistr. The Wanradt–Koell Catechism, the first known book in Estonian, was printed in 1525, while the oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th-century chronicles.

Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century during the Estonian national awakening, some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane spread among Estonians along with the older maarahvas. Anton thor Helle's translation of the Bible into Estonian appeared in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in the 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By 1800, more than a half of adult Estonians could read. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as Estonians, including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), appeared in the 1820s. The ruling elites had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a Baltic-German Estophile, became the first author to treat the Estonians as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of the 19th century. However, in the middle of the century, Estonians became more ambitious and started leaning toward the Finns and their so-called Fennoman movement as successful model of national movement. By the end of 1860s, the Estonians became unwilling to reconcile with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at Russification in the 1880s, their view of the Russian Empire remained positive.

Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian and German rule and settlement. According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young Estonians considered themselves Nordic, and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important. The Nordic identity among Estonians can overlap with other identities, as it is associated with being Finno-Ugric and their close relationship with the Finnish people and does not exclude being Baltic. In Estonian foreign ministry reports from the early 2000s Nordic identity was preferred over Baltic one.

After the Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option to acquire the citizenship of Estonia upon returning to the newly independent country. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920, and 37,578 people resettled from Russia to Estonia in 1920–1923.^{[citation needed]}