Montenegrins

Montenegrins (Montenegrin: Crnogorci / Црногорци, lit. 'People of the Black Mountain', pronounced [tsr̩nǒɡoːrtsi] or [tsr̩noɡǒːrtsi]) are a South Slavic ethnic group that share a common ancestry, culture, history, and language, identified with the country of Montenegro.

Montenegrins are mostly Orthodox Christians; however, the population also includes Catholics, Muslims and irreligious people. The Montenegrin language is the official language of Montenegro.

Historically, the Montenegrin nation comprised many tribes. Most tribes formed in the 15th and 16th centuries, about the time when the Ottoman Empire established its control of the medieval state of Zeta. Today, the tribes are mainly studied within the frameworks of social anthropology and family history, as they have not been used in official structures since the time (1852-1910) of the Principality of Montenegro; however, some tribal regions overlap with contemporary municipal areas. The kinship groups give a sense of shared identity and descent.

Outside of Montenegro and Europe, Montenegrins form diaspora groups in (for example) the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina. It is estimated that around 600,000 Montenegrin-descended people reside outside of Montenegro. In 2023 a total of 152,649 Montenegrins both held Montenegrin citizenship and resided outside of Montenegro.

According to one triple analysis – autosomal, mitochondrial and paternal — of available data from large-scale studies on South Slavs and their proximal populations, the whole genome SNP data situates Montenegrins with Serbs in between two Balkan clusters. According to a 2020 autosomal marker analysis, Montenegrins are situated in between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.

Y-DNA genetic study done in 2010 on 404 male individuals from Montenegro gave the following results: haplogroup I2a (29.7%), E-V13 (26.9%), R1b (9.4%), R1a (7.6%), I1 (6.1%), J2a1 (4.7%), J2b (4.4%), G2a (2.4%), Q (1.9%), I2b (1.7%), N (1.4%), H (1.4%), L (1.2%), and J1 (0.49%). A 2022 study on 267 samples from northeastern Montenegro found that the "most common haplogroups are I2 and R1b, both identified in 23.97% of samples, followed by E (22.47%), J2 (11.61%), I1 (6.74%), G2 (3.75%), R1a (3.37%), I1 (1.12%), G (1.12%), N (0.75%), C (0.37%), T1 (0.37%) and Q1 (0.37%)".

Slavs settled in the Balkans during the sixth and seventh centuries. According to De Administrando Imperio, there existed three Serb polities on the territory of modern Montenegro: Duklja, roughly corresponding to the southern half; Travunia, the west; and the Principality of Serbia, the north. Duklja emerged as an independent state during the 11th century, initially held by the Vojislavljević dynasty; it was conquered and incorporated into the state of the Nemanjić dynasty. De Administrando Imperio does not mention which Slavic people lived in Duklja, but the state was considered to be one of the first Serb states, alongside Raška formed chiefly under the Vlastimirović and Vojislavljević dynasties respectively.

In the late 14th century, southern Montenegro (Zeta) came under the rule of the Balšić noble family, then the Crnojević noble family; by the 15th century, Zeta was more often referred to as Crna Gora (Venetian: Monte Negro). The Crnojevići were driven out from Zeta by the Ottomans and forced to retreat above the Bay of Kotor where they built a monastery and a royal court in Cetinje, the future royal capital of Montenegro, before eventually fleeing to Venice.